The number nobody publishes.

High in acid and colour, low in sugar. Ferment on the pulp for four days for colour, then press; leave them longer and the seeds give up a hard tannin.

The most tannic and most deeply coloured of the hedgerow fruits, and the closest a country wine gets to a red. Never use them raw: the stems and unripe berries contain cyanogenic glycosides, so strip the berries and heat them.

Ferociously acidic, so much so that a blackcurrant wine is almost always diluted heavily and sweetened. The aroma survives all of that, which is why people persist.

Stone them. Plum kernels carry amygdalin, and a wine fermented on crushed stones picks up a bitter almond character along with something you do not want.

A small, astringent plum that makes a far better wine than it makes eating. Very high acid, so expect to dilute and to leave some sweetness.

Low acid and low tannin, so it needs a tartaric addition or it will taste flat and be microbially vulnerable at pH 3.8.

More acid than a peach and far more aroma. Dried apricots work as well as fresh and carry roughly six times the sugar per kilogram.

The colour and aroma both fade within months, so this is a wine to drink young. Fermenting cool and bottling early is the only thing that helps.

Very low in sugar and very high in acid, but the aroma is the strongest of any temperate fruit. A little goes a long way in a blend.

Stone them, for the same reason as plums. Sour varieties make better wine than sweet ones because sweet cherries have almost no acid.

Almost no sugar at all, so the alcohol comes entirely from what you add. Use the stalks only; the leaves are high in oxalic acid and are not food.

Not a wine on its own. Half a kilo simmered and strained into a country wine adds body and mouthfeel that nothing else supplies, which is why old recipes are full of them.

Dried grapes, so they bring the tannin, nutrient and vinous background a fruit wine otherwise lacks. Chop them or the sugar stays inside.

Astringent and high in acid, and the irritant hairs around the seeds have to be strained out thoroughly rather than casually.

Mouth-drying tannin and sharp acid. Traditionally frozen first to split the skins, which does the same job as waiting for a frost.

Sucrose, fully fermentable, and the standard chaptalisation sugar. It adds alcohol and nothing else, which is the point and also the limit.

About 80% fermentable sugar and 17% water. Do not boil it: everything you paid extra for is volatile. Honey carries almost no nitrogen, which is why mead needs staged nutrient more than any other ferment.

Sucrose with a little molasses. The molasses flavour does survive fermentation, unlike most things, so use it deliberately.

Two thirds fermentable sugar. Like maple in beer, most of the flavour ferments away, so treat it as a sugar with a faint woody memory.

Powdered grape or oak tannin. A quarter of a gram per litre gives a fruit wine the grip it otherwise lacks, and it also helps protein haze drop out.

Breaks down the pectin that makes fruit wine permanently hazy. Add it to the cold must and give it twelve hours before pitching yeast; hot must destroys it.

Fruit and honey musts are short of nitrogen in a way grape must is not. Add it in stages rather than all at once: at pitch, at 24 hours and at a third sugar depletion.

Cubes over chips: chips give up everything in a fortnight and taste like a plank, cubes take three months and taste like oak.