Old-Fashioned Dandelion, Grape, and Cherry Wine Recipes
Some recipes are more than instructions — they are small pieces of family history.
One afternoon while visiting my grandmother, we sat together at her kitchen table with coffee and her old wooden recipe box. Inside were hundreds of handwritten cards, many of them stained with fruit juice, flour, or sugar from decades of use.
Among the pickle recipes, Belgian pie instructions, homemade soap formulas, and jam recipes were several old-fashioned wine recipes — dandelion wine, grape wine, and cherry wine. Each one had clearly been used many times.
Those little stains told their own story.
In earlier generations, making wine from garden plants, orchard fruit, and wildflowers was simply part of seasonal living. When cherries ripened in the orchards, grapes ripened along the fence lines, or dandelions covered the spring fields, people used what the land provided.
Here in Wisconsin, that tradition still feels connected to the landscape — from the cherry orchards of Door County to wild plants growing along country roads and meadow edges.
The following recipes are copied exactly as they appeared in her recipe box.
Old-Fashioned Grape Wine
Wild grapes grow throughout much of the Midwest, often climbing fence rows and woodland edges. In late summer they ripen into deep purple clusters that have been used for generations in jams, jellies, and homemade wines.
(Copied exactly from my grandmother’s recipe card)
Grape Wine Recipe
For each gallon of grapes, use one gallon of water. Boil together until grapes fall apart. Pass the liquid through a cloth bag until all juice is out.
Measure the juice. For every gallon of juice, add 3 pounds of sugar. Put it in a stone jar. For about 5 gallons of juice, add 1/2 of a seven-cent bar of yeast.
Let it stand where it is warm until there are no more bubbles. Mix every day. After it is done rising, you can bottle it.
If you enjoy harvesting wild foods, you might also enjoy exploring more about foraging in the Midwest, where many traditional recipes like this began.
Cherry Wine
Cherries are one of the most famous crops grown in Wisconsin. Each summer, the orchards of Door County fill with visitors arriving to pick or purchase fresh fruit.
My grandmother received the following recipe from the Poehler family, who once owned a cherry orchard in Door County. It is a very simple cherry wine recipe that was often made in small batches.
Cherry Wine Recipe
2 quarts cherries
1 pint whiskey
2 cups sugar
Pour sugar and whiskey over the cherries. Let it stand for six weeks. Strain and bottle.
If you enjoy traditional cherry recipes, you might also like this old regional favorite: Door County Cherry Bounce Recipe.
Dandelion Wine
Dandelions are one of the most recognizable spring wildflowers across Wisconsin. To many people, they are simply lawn weeds — but for generations, they were gathered for teas, salads, and even wine.
Making dandelion wine is a tradition that appears in many old homestead recipe collections and reflects the creativity of using what grows naturally around us.
Dandelion Wine Recipe
2 quarts dandelion flower heads (remove greens on the back)
4 quarts water
4 pounds sugar
4 lemons
2 oranges
1 cake yeast (1″)
1 egg white
Add flower heads to water and boil. Cover and turn off the burner and let soak for 36 hours. Strain, reserving the juice.
Add sugar and juice of lemons and oranges. Let stand for 24 hours.
Add yeast. Place liquid in jugs and let rise. When scum rises to the top, add beaten egg white. Let stand three days. Strain and bottle.
These old wine recipes are simple reminders of how closely people once lived with the seasons. Whether it was cherries from a Door County orchard, grapes growing along a fence line, or dandelions gathered from a spring field, each recipe reflected the landscape around them.
Today they remain small pieces of history — passed from one kitchen table to another.