Lavender Wine

LAVENDER WINE

Lavender is one of those ingredients that lives in two worlds at once — it’s perfume and it’s food, spa day and Sunday dinner. Fermented slowly with a neutral white grape base, it becomes something genuinely surprising: floral without being cloying, dry enough to pair with food, and aromatic enough to fill a room the moment you pull the cork. Think of it as Provence in a bottle, built right in your kitchen with flowers you can grow in a window box or buy dried at a grocery store.

The beginner trap: Using too many flowers — more lavender does not mean more flavor, it means soap water with a cork in it.

Ingredients

• 1 to 1½ pints fresh lavender flowers (or ¾ to 1 cup dried culinary lavender)
• 1¾ lb granulated white sugar
• 1 can (10.5 oz) Welch’s 100% white grape juice frozen concentrate
• ½ tsp citric acid (or 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice)
• ⅛ tsp tannin powder (or 1 unsweetened black tea bag, steeped and cooled)
• 7½ pints water, divided
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 packet Champagne yeast (or any dry white wine yeast)

Method

1. Bring half a gallon of water to a boil, add the sugar, and stir until fully dissolved.
2. Stir in the frozen grape concentrate and bring the mixture back to a boil, then remove from heat.
3. Place the lavender flowers, citric acid, tannin powder, and yeast nutrient into your primary fermenter (a clean food-grade bucket works fine).
4. Pour the hot sugar-grape liquid over the dry ingredients in the fermenter — do not add yeast yet.
5. Let the must cool to lukewarm (around 70–75°F), then add the remaining water.
6. Sprinkle the yeast over the surface, cover the fermenter loosely with a clean cloth, and ferment at room temperature for 7 days.
7. Strain out all the flowers, transfer the liquid to a glass carboy or secondary fermenter, and seal with an airlock.
8. Let it ferment undisturbed for 60 days, then rack into a clean vessel, top up to reduce headspace, reseal with the airlock, and wait another 60 days.
9. Rack the cleared wine into bottles and age for at least one year before opening.

Why this works

Lavender’s aromatic punch comes from essential oils — mainly linalool and linalool acetate — that extract quickly into liquid. That’s why a short 7-day primary is enough contact time; leave the flowers in longer and those same compounds turn harsh and soapy. The frozen white grape concentrate does double duty: it adds fermentable sugar and brings a light body and mild acidity that give the finished wine structure without competing with the floral notes. Champagne yeast is a good match here because it ferments cleanly and doesn’t contribute fruity esters that would muddy the lavender character. The long aging time lets volatile compounds mellow and integrate — patience is doing real work in this recipe.

Notes

Dried culinary lavender (sold at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, or online) works well and is easier to measure than fresh; use about half the volume since drying concentrates the oils. If you grow your own, pick flowers just as they open for peak aroma and freeze extras in a zip-top bag for your next batch. Tannin powder is sold at homebrew shops, but a single steeped black tea bag is a perfectly functional substitute that most people already have on hand.