Is Partridgeberry the same as lingonberry?

Partridgeberries are internationally known as lingonberries . This relative of the cranberry family is a low mat forming evergreen shrub with tiny rounded leaves. These berries grow in the dry, acidic soils of Newfoundland and Labrador's barrens and coastal headlands.

Can wine be made from cherries?

Cherries make the perfect summer snack, but they also make a fantastic summery fruit wine . If a deep, red wine with the characteristic floral, fruity, and tart flavor of a cherry sounds good to you — you're in luck. Cherry wine is hard to find at the store, but making it at home is surprisingly easy and delicious.

What is the English equivalent of lingonberry?

Vaccinium vitis-idaea, the lingonberry, partridgeberry, mountain cranberry or cowberry , is a small evergreen shrub in the heath family Ericaceae, that bears edible fruit.

What is another name for a partridgeberry?

The common name (Partridgeberry) is apparently a reference to the belief that the berries are relished by partridges. Partridgeberry is also known as Twinberry, Deer Berry, and Squaw Berry .

What fruit makes the best wine?

Grapes make for fast, clean fermentation, which at least partly explains why they're the top fruit for winemaking.

Do you need to pit cherries before making wine?

Cherry Wine. Many of our clients pick cherries with the intent of making wine. Each year, we have the opportunity to sample home made wines and have since discovered the joy of wine making. If you choose not to pit your cherries, be careful not to break the pits or it will make your wine bitter .

Can you make wine out of any berry?

Most wine is made from grapes, however wines from other berries and fruit are often made and enjoyed in climates where grapes do not grow . These wines are often called "country wines" and they can be made from just about any fruit or vegetable.

What berries are similar to lingonberries?

However, both lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) and cranberry (European Vaccinium oxycoccos or North American Vaccinium macrocarpon) are part of the Vaccinium family of plants, just like blueberries, huckleberries, and bilberries .

What is close to lingonberry?

Lingonberries are closely related to other members of the Vaccinium family, such as cranberries, bilberries, and huckleberries . The fruit is small and round, and ranges in color from a deep red to a bright purple-red.

What does partridgeberry taste like?

The taste can vary from bland to sour or cranberry-like . Native Americans made a tea from the leaves and berries that was used to ease childbirth. Partridgeberry's white to pinkish-white flowers have a funnel-shaped corolla that opens into four (rarely five) petals.

What are the different types of lingonberries?

There are two types of lingonberry: the wild or American lingonberry, and its cultivated cousin the European lingonberry . The American or wild lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea var. minus) generally produces one 1 crop per year in summer.

Partridgeberry Wine Recipe - Celebration Generation (2024)

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Homemade Partridgeberry Wine (AKA: Lingonberry Wine) is fantastic, and worth the effort to make it. Here's my partridgeberry wine recipe!

A month ago, I joined the Canadian Food Experience Project, writing about my memories of a uniquely Canadian food experience.

The Canadian Food Experience Project began on June 7 2013. Per the project:

“As we share our collective stories across the vastness of our Canadian landscape through our regional food experiences, we hope to bring global clarity to our Canadian culinary identity through the cadence of our concerted Canadian voice. Please join us.”

This month’s topic is “A Regional Canadian Food”.

My mind immediately went to the years I spent living in Newfoundland. Newfoundland has a unique culture - even within the Atlantic Canadian provinces alone! - and that really comes through in their food.

I was spoiled on some of the best seafood ANYWHERE, and was always trying new things.. rabbit stew. Flipper pie. Every manner of deep fried seafood imaginable. Unique preparations of fish and shellfish, and the most wonderful game meats.

I love moose stew, and I'm proud to say that I make the most wildly amazing moose stew ever.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get my hands on any moose in the past 7 years... and I'd be afraid to admit to just what depravity I'd agree to, just to get some at this point!

Part of what makes my moose stew ridiculously good is the inclusion of partridgeberry wine - a unique wine that is locally produced and readily available in Newfoundland.

The tart, bright flavours of the wine work so beautifully with the gamey flavor of the meat... oh, it's a work of art. I really, really need to get some moose meat soon. (Sorry, I mean.. "Gotta get me moose, b'y!").

ANYWAY.

What Are Partridgeberries?

Partridgeberries are indigenous to Newfoundland, as well as Scandinavia. They're tart little red berries that taste like a cross between a cranberry and a blueberry... you may know them as "lingonberries", if you're a fan of IKEA!

They are one of a few amazing berries that grow wild in Newfoundland, and they're very popular in Newfoundland cuisine, appearing in jams, sauces, in candies, on cheesecake... and in wine.

You can buy partridgeberry wine in local wine stores back home, as there are several Newfoundland wineries that specialize in it.

Unfortunately, you can't buy it here in Minnesota, anywhere I've seen.

Homesick desperation is one of the mothers of invention in my kitchen, and a few years ago I created a recipe for lingonberry wine. We were able to buy a case of the berries from a local wholesaler.. And here we are!

This makes a very full bodied, gorgeous wine. It's a fairly sweet wine, with a great mouth feel .. very delicious, and very luxurious. Definitely worth the effort of finding a case of partridgeberries!

Partridgeberry Wine Ingredients

Bottled Spring Water

While using tap water can be an option, we opt to use jugs of spring water, for a couple of reasons..

First of all, life in Minneapolis opened our eyes to the fact that tap water doesn’t always taste good (or even potable, to be honest!).

While I’ve lived in areas where the tap water tastes fresh and clean (without a filter even!), we know that’s not the case for everyone. Bottled spring water won’t introduce any weird, undesirable flavours to your wine.

Additionally, there’s the convenience factor. Not only is it clean tasting, it’s pre-measured, sterile, and handy.

However, if your tap water is consistently tasty and safe, feel free to use that instead of bottled.

Fresh or Frozen Partridgeberries

This can be a tricky ingredient to find, but hey... there’s fun to be had in the hunt, right?

You can usually find the berries at Newfoundland stores. Depending on where you live, you may be lucky to have one in your area. I know there was one in Winnipeg, a few in Southern Ontario, etc.

Barring that, you can sometimes find them - usually under the “lingonberries” moniker - at Scandinavian grocers and specialty food stores, butchers, etc.

In Minneapolis, we buy them frozen - in smaller amounts - at Ingebretsen’s and at Hackenmueller’s Meats.

Can’t Find Partridgeberries?

Unable to get your hands on partridgeberries? I actually designed a "faux partridgeberry" wine recipe a while back.

It was pretty genius, if I do say so myself - balancing cranberries and blueberries to come up with a wine that tastes *exactly* like it was made from actual partridgeberries!

click here to go to the recipe for it!

Sugar

We prefer to use plain white granulated sugar for this lingonberry wine.

It’s a good neutral flavour, and I really think that brown sugar or maple syrup would overwhelm the lingonberry flavour.

Alcohol Content

Aside from sugar's flavour, there’s the matter of alcohol content.

Your wine’s final ABV will vary wildly dependent on a couple things: how much sugar you add, and what kind of yeast you use (more on that in a bit)

Any amount of sugar will result in a higher alcohol content than making the same wine without sugar added. Sugar - both in the base wine itself, and from the added sugars - is what feeds the yeast, the yeast eats up the sugars and gives off alcohol as the byproduct of that process.

More sugar = more food = more alcohol... to a point, anyway. About that...

Yeast

The type of yeast you use will impact the alcohol content of the final product.

Yeast organisms don’t have an *unlimited* capacity to process sugar into alcohol. At some point, the environment they’re living in - the brewing wine - becomes too high in alcohol for the yeast to survive. They die off, the fermentation stops.

Different types of yeast have different tolerances for alcohol in the environment. That is, some yeast will be able to survive higher amounts of alcohol in the wine, so they’ll continue producing it longer than some other types.

Some types of yeast will bring you to something like an 8% ABV, while others will let things run wild until close to 20% ABV.

It’s good to know what you have in mind, when you choose your yeast. For this wine, we’ll usually use Red Star’s “Montrachet” yeast.

Everything Else

Everything else in this recipe is technically optional, but contributes to it finishing as a well balanced wine. These ingredients include:

Acid Blend, Tannin - Balances and rounds out the flavours.

Pectic Enzyme - Breaks down fruit, especially as it relates to preventing “haze” from the pectins.

Yeast Nutrient - Gives a boost to the yeast.

Golden Raisins - Enhances the body and mouth feel of the wine.

Back Sweetening Your Homemade Partridgeberry Wine

Sometimes - usually, even - you’ll find that the yeast went a bit too far with their smorgasbord, and you end up with a peach wine that’s not as sweet as you’d like it.

... and that’s when you back sweeten it! You can read my How to Stabilize and Back Sweeten Wine post for information on how to back sweeten it.

How to Make Partridgeberry Wine

If you haven't attempted making wine before, don't be intimidated! Check out our primer to home brewing:

- Wine Making At Home, Part 1: Why?

- Wine Making at Home, Part 2: Equipment to Get Started

Scaling This Wine Recipe

Good news: you can easily scale this wine recipe up or down - in fact, there's a function inside the recipe card itself to do the math for you!

One note, though: You don't need to divide or multiply the yeast, but the software doesn't know that. We will use one pouch of yeast for anything from 1-5x gallons, and then 1 pouch for every 5x batches beyond that.

Also, for anything that scales to awkward measurements, it’s perfectly ok to round up or down to the nearest easy measurement (¼ tsp, etc).

As a related note: The recipe software is definitely geared towards cooking, not wine making. Therefore, you can pretty much ignore all of the info it gives you: The nutritional info is calculated on everything that goes into the wine.

It does not take into account how much sugar will be fermented out, how much volume is lost to racking, the fact that the fruit pulp is removed before the final product, etc.

Partridgeberry Wine Recipe - Celebration Generation (9)

This recipe is one of many fantastic Canadian recipes in my cookbook, "More Than Poutine: Favourite Foods from my Home and Native Land”. "More than Poutine" is a Canadian cookbook like no other - written by a Canadian living away, it includes both traditional home cooking recipes, as well as accurate homemade versions of many of the snacks, sauces, convenience foods, and other food items that are hard to come by outside of Canada! Order your copy here on this site, through Amazon, or through any major bookseller!

More Home Brewing Recipes!

While you've got your current homebrew fermenting away, why not consider putting a batch of something else on, to occupy your wait time? Here are a few of my other wine, cider, and mead recipes:

Wine Recipes

Banana Wine Recipe
Blackberry Wine Recipe
Blackcurrant Wine Recipe
Blueberry Wine Recipe
Cherry Wine Recipe
Cranberry Clementine Christmas Wine Recipe
Cranberry Wine Recipe
Faux Lingonberry Wine
Lychee Wine Recipe
Mango Strawberry Wine Recipe
Mango Wine Recipe
Mint Wine Recipe
Lychee Wine Recipe
Passionfruit Wine Recipe
Peach Wine Recipe
Stone Fruit Wine Recipe
Strawberry Wine Recipe
Ube Wine Recipe
Watermelon Wine Recipe

Mead Recipes

Black Cherry Mead Recipe
Blueberry-Clementine Mead Recipe
Blueberry Mead Recipe
Clementine Mead Recipe
Pumpkin Mead Recipe
Wildflower Mead Recipe

Cider & Miscellaneous Homebrew Recipes

Hard Apple Cider Recipe
Home Brew Hard Iced Tea Recipe
Maple Hard Apple Cider Recipe

Share the Love!

Before you drink up, be sure to take some pics of your handiwork! If you Instagram it, be sure to tag me - @CelebrationGenerationCA - or post it to My Facebook Page - so I can cheer you on!

Also, be sure to subscribe to my free monthly email newsletter, so you never miss out on any of my nonsense.

Well, the published nonsense, anyway!

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