K wrote:
"Cat(h)" writes

Mike Lyle wrote:
Cat(h) wrote:
[...]
When can I expect to harvest gooseberries, and am I naive to expect
they might get *just a little* sweeter???
[...]

It sounds as though you want them for dessert purposes, but of course
they don't need to be perfectly ripe for cooking. And if you want to
make wine, then IMO unripe ones give a much _better_ flavour than ripe.
If I had to choose only one fruit to grow in Britain for white wine, it
would be gooseberries without hesitation: a modest addition of grape
for quality, of course, but for most of us it's more convenient to pay
a foreigner to do the grape-growing.


I trust the foreigner and the grape *exclusively* when it comes to
wine. I have had to suffer wayyy too many samplings of Aunty Nora's
vile paint stripper home made from flowering scutch grass in this part
of the world...

Yorkshire Country Wines (I think they're called) do excellent fruit
wines. You couldn't get further away from paint stripper. Gooseberry,
elderberry, elderflower, damson, etc.

There's many a culinary sin committed behind closed doors, particularly
when the priority is to generate something home made and boozy... I
have no doubt very good alcoholic drinks can be made from fruit. It's
just not what I expect from wine.
But don't mind me :-)

Cat(h)