FERMENT IT

Fig Wine
Skip the vineyards and make a rich, tasty wine you
can’t buy at the store. BY ALASTAIR BLAND

Photography by Sam Murphy

Grape wine is fine and good, but for something you’ll
never find at the grocery store, sip this: fig wine.
The thing is, you’ve got to make it yourself.

I’ve made wine from several varieties of figs, fresh and dried, but I’ve made it best from dried organic Calimyrna figs, tawny brown fruits that come crusted in a thick layer of natural sugar. (Turkish Smyrna figs are a fine, if not local, stand-in.) The wine these figs produce — of rich amber shades and whiskey, caramel, and tobacco flavors — can be drunk in just 2 or 3 months, and the word on the web says that fig wine has the potential to improve in the bottle for years.