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Violet wine is a simple springtime floral wine, made with either cultivated or wild violets. Common garden pansies are a type of cultivated violet and can be used to make pansy wine with this same recipe.

Violet Wine

Wild violets are abundant on our land here in Vermont, and every year, I try out new violet recipes. They top salads in season, of course, but sometimes you want something a bit more.

Wild violet jelly was a big hit with the kids, and it tastes like fresh spring berries. The same color compounds that give blueberries and strawberries their flavor also give purple violets their color, and you can taste it in the jelly.

This year, I’m looking for something that’ll please a more mature palate, so I settled on a floral wine. We tend to use honey insead of sugar, making it a violet mead, but the process is the same.

I already make dandelion wine and lilac wine; why not violet wine?

There are plenty of recipes for violet wine in historical herbals, but in all those recipes, the violets are infused into a already made white wine. The main reason there is that they’re using the grapes as a sugar source, since wine grapes were MUCH cheaper than sugar or honey back in the day.

Things have shifted a bit, and now wine grapes aren’t exactly available in every yard, but sugar and honey are easy to get, so we’ll be brewing this one from scratch rather than making an infused wine. (Though, if you prefer, you can just infuse violets into a sweet white wine.)

Wild Violet Flowers

When making violet wine, you’ll follow the same process as with any small-batch country wine.

For flower wine, it’s nice to include the flowers in the primary ferment to allow them to impart all their lovely flavors to the wine. You’ll also need to add some sugar, a few other winemaking additives (to balance acidity and feed the yeast), and a nice strain of wine yeast.

At the start, the mixture ferments for 7 to 10 days, during which you’ll see the most active bubbling. Once that active fermentation slows, it’s time to move the mixture to a clean container for secondary, straining out the flowers and leaving the sediment behind.

In secondary, your wine will ferment more slowly, ideally in a nice, cool, dark location like a closet or basement. It’ll spend 2 to 3 months here for wine, and 4 to 6 months for mead.

Next, all that needs to be done is bottle the wine and let those flavors improve with age.

I’ve assembled this quick recipe assuming you’re already familiar with the general winemaking process and its related terms. For those new to winemaking, or who may need a little refreshing, I have an assortment of guides to help you:

Beginners Guide to Making Fruit Wines takes you through the winemaking process from start to finish.
How to Make Mead (Honey Wine) is very similar, but is important to read when working with honey to understand the particularities.
Equipment for Winemaking will take you over all the necessary equipment needed to make that very first batch.
Ingredients for Winemaking covers all the other things you’ll need ingredient-wide (other than yeast).
Yeast for Winemaking can be intimidating given the dozens and dozens of strains out there. I’ve broken it all down for you here!

Ingredients for Violet Wine

Just a handful of ingredients are needed to make violet wine. For those newer to the world of winemaking, you may wish to read this guide on winemaking ingredients to see what each of these things does and any substitutions that you can use.

To make a one-gallon batch of violet wine, you will need:

1 quart violet blossoms, loosely packed
5-½ to 6 cups sugar (or 3 lbs honey, for mead)
A few blueberries (optional, for color)
4 to 6 cups white grape juice, optional, adds body
1 tsp Yeast Nutrient
Juice of 3-4 lemons (can also use Acid Blend)
⅛ tsp Wine Tannin
Wine Yeast

For your violet blossoms, you’ll need to gather about a quart of loosely packed flowers (4 cups). You can choose either wild or cultivated blossoms, but they must be unsprayed and sourced from a location free of pesticides and other pollutants.

Wild violets growing in full sun

As for sugar, 5-½ to 6 cups should be a good amount to yield a nice wine. Unlike fruit or grape wines, flowers tend to lack acidity and tannins, so you’ll need to add tannin powder for a balanced wine and some lemon juice for added acidity.

Some also choose to add some white grape juice to floral wines as flower wines can lack body. Do note, this isn’t usually necessary for mead. If you decide to add some white grape juice, you may wish to decrease the sugar by ½ cup to 1 cup in the recipe.

You can use the juice of 3 or 4 lemons (about ¼ a cup) or opt for an acid blend instead.

In addition to this, you’ll need a small packet of yeast nutrient, as yeast can’t survive on sugar alone. Lastly, you’ll need to select a good wine yeast.

Some good yeast options for flower wines include Red Star Cotes des Blancs, Lalvin D47 or Lalvin K1-V1116.

Red Star Cote des Blancs is a slow fermenter that takes longer to finish but will help maintain the subtler flavors and esters of flower wines. It has a low alcohol tolerance (especially when fermented at lower temperatures) leading to more residual sugars and a sweeter wine. Alcohol tolerance to 12% to 14% and temperature range of 64°F to 86°F.
Lalvin D47 adds a stronger fruity and floral character to wines with complex spicy aromas. It’s a moderately vigorous fermenter and can start slowly. Alcohol tolerance to 15% and preferred temperature range of 59°F to 86°F.
Lalvin K1-V1116 works incredibly well in difficult fermenting conditions and contributes lots of fruity and floral esters. Typically used to add more complexity to less interesting ingredients, it can perk up so-called “boring wines.” Alcohol tolerance is up to 18% and suitable temperature ranges from 50°F to 95°F.

Besides these winemaking additives and ingredients, some equipment will also be needed. For violet wine, you will need:

One Gallon Glass Carboy (often sold as a kit with a rubber stopper and water lock together)
Rubber Stopper and Water Lock (if not included above)
Brewing Siphon
Wine Bottles or Flip-top Grolsch bottles
Bottle Corker and clean, new corks for bottling the wine
Brewing Sanitizer

Additionally, sometimes with flower wines, it’s easier to use a wide-mouth fermenter for primary and a narrow-neck carboy for secondary, as the flowers can be quite the mess to clean.

Violet Wine

Making Violet Wine

To make violet wine, you’ll want to turn your attention to your flowers. Only use blossoms collected from safe, unsprayed environments — you don’t want nasty chemicals in your wine or any other recipes. And, of course, be sure you’ve positively identified the right flowers if wild foraging. (Here’s an identification guide for wild violets.)

Once collected, you can go right to makeing the wine. With dandelion and lilac wines, the green parts are bitter, but that’s not true with violets. You can leave the green flower bases in the mix and that saves you a step.

For fermenting, a wide-mouth carboy is nice and easy to clean, as you’ll want to keep the flowers in for your primary ferment so they can impart all their colors and essences to your wine.

A narrow-neck fermenter can be used as well, but will require a more intensive cleaning later on.

After placing your flowers in your primary fermentation vessel, bring a few cups of water to boil on the stovetop and stir in the sugar. You can also toss a few blueberries in for color here, to give your violet wine a little bit of that amethyst hue.

Violet Infusion

When sugar is dissolved, let cool and pour the mixture into your vessel on top of the violets.

Next, add your lemon juice (or acid blend), white grape juice, tannin powder and yeast nutrient. The yeast must be added last when the mixture is at room temperature.

The lemon juice will turn the mixture a bright pink, as wild violets act like natural pH strips. It’s kinda fun to watch!

Violet Infusion

Rehydrate the yeast before adding it to the wine mixture by placing it in some room temperature water for 10 minutes. This will allow the yeast to bloom.

Add the yeast and top with enough water to bring the water level up to leave 2 inches of headspace in your wide-mouth carboy (or to the neck or a narrow-neck carboy). You want to expose as little of the wine to the air as possible.

Seal with a water lock and let ferment in primary for 7 to 10 days. In a day or two, the active fermentation should begin to appear and you’ll see a good deal of bubbling. Your wine is on the way!

Once the active fermentation has died out in a week to 10 days, you should see the bubbling has mostly stopped. Now it’s time to rack the wine into secondary.

Siphon the wine to a clean fermentation vessel, leaving the sediment behind and straining out the flowers. Top up the carboy with enough water to bring the level up to the neck of the carboy and seal with a water lock.

Ferment in secondary for at least 2 to 3 months. For mead, the time will be longer (more like 4 to 6 months) as honey is less digestible for yeast than regular sugar is. If needed, you can rack the wine again during this period to discard any sediment and improve clarity.

At the end of secondary, sample your wine. If it’s too dry for your tastes you have the option to backsweeten it. Do so by making a simple syrup with equal parts sugar and water, and adding it to your wine before putting it back into ferment.

Be sure to rack to a clean fermentation vessel first. If you’re worried about the sugar reactivating the yeast, you can stabilize the wine by adding 1 Campden tablet and ½ teaspoon potassium sorbate 24 to 48 hours before adding any sugar.

If you’ve stabilized, put the wine back into ferment for about a week to ensure the yeast has completely died off before bottling. If you’d rather not stabilize, put the wine back into ferment for another month and bottle it when all signs of fermentation have died out.

After bottling, let the wine mature for 6 months or longer if you can wait. As with most wines, violet wine improves with age!