It was in the late 'forties when the sugar shortage eased, that my mother, Ivy, began to make cowslip wine. My two siblings and I picked buckets of cowslips in the field in front of our house. Petals were then plucked out (it took so long) and they were put into a basin with water to leach out the honey and pollen. After a few days the mash was strained through a pillow-case, sugar and bakers' yeast (it looked like putty) were added, then poured into bottles and loosely corked.

It was decided that I should make cider. My father, Geoffrey, had planted apple trees, Irish Peach, Bramley Seedling, Early Victoria, Charles Ross and James Grieve, but as our crop was minimal, some neighbours offered windfalls which I gladly accepted. My usual method of getting the juice out of the apples was to smash the apples with a wooden mallet on a timber board and scrape the pieces into a bucket. To each bucketful of apple mash I added one bucket of water. The mixture was put into Granny's old earthen crock for two weeks, stirred every day and covered with a tea towel to keep out the wine-fly. One year I became over-ambitious and filled Ivy's 1930 Thor washing machine (the one with the rollers on top) with the apple mash. It was handy for stirring, I just switched it on for a few minutes each day. To ferment and mature the cider I used a five-gallon Smithwicks wooden barrel or firkin (washed up on the seashore). I plugged the barrel with a piece of an old broken spade handle. After fermentation stopped I would hammer home the plug and leave it to mature and clear for five or six months. On one occasion when my cousin Eileen and her husband Ronnie came to stay with us, I decided to try out the cider in the barrel. With Ronnie's assistance we tapped out the bung only to hear a loud explosion accompanied by a geyser of cider which shot up and hit the ceiling showering us both with a deliciously clear and alcoholic liquid. We lost about one tenth of the barrel of cider. For a day or two we drank champagne cider until the fizz exhausted itself. Next day we invited some friends and neighbours in for a party to help us drink my 'Geranium juice' as some of my friends nicknamed it, probably beacuse of the effect it had on their stomachs after over-imbibing. By carefull siphoning the cider from the barrel I managed to have clear cider until it was nearly empty.

In later years after I married Ann, I suggested we should make cowslip wine. We had by now four children, so guess who was dispatched to pick the cowslip flowers on our front lawn. We all spent hours plucking the petals out and finally the wine was made. This episode is blamed for a scarcity of cowslips in Beachfield ever since. I have made wine from various fruit including rose hips, blackberries, elderberries, pears, plums, gooseberries, loganberries, black-, white-, and redcurrants and elderflowers. Now I use demijohns with air-traps to ferment the wine, add tannin, yeast nutrient and of course sugar. On one occasion I used golden syrup bought in Corn Market, but the wine did not taste so good. I still use baker's yeast but in the dried form.

I have had my ups and downs in wine-making. Some years are great, other years the brews are barely good enough for the cooking pot. Sometimes I empty a demijohn into bottles and put them away to mature. Ocasionally I forget to open a bottle for years. The discovery of a forgotten demijohn in the cellar can cause great excitement. On opening one some years ago I discovered that the contents had soured to a lovely wine vinegar. I strained and bottled it in vinegar bottles and to this day we still use it on our potato chips.

Wine-making is a very satisfying hobby. It is not expensive, as many of the ingredients are readily available in the garden, and one does not have to be an expert to produce delicious home-made wine. So let all you budding wine-makers enter the wine classes next show. After all you might win a trophy in our show or a bottle of sparkling wine if you gain first place in some of the other north Dublin Horticultural Societies.