Drink: Mellow fruitfulness

EARLY each morning during the spring harvest, Ron Gillies wakes, pulls on his work clothes and makes his way down the stairs of his stone farmhouse at Cairn O'Mohr winery.

At this early hour, before the sun has risen above the rolling hills and woodland outside, the only sound is the soft clanking of an industrial-sized fruit boiler that Ron's wife Judith has already lit.

Without pausing, for time is of the essence, the winemaker slips outside and walks the short distance to the neighbouring Megginch Estate, where he starts to pluck leaves from the wizened branches of the oak trees that have grown here for hundreds of years, placing them in the bucket at his side. "You'd be surprised what can be turned into wine," Ron says with a laugh. "People think it's just grapes, but new varieties are being created all the time.

"The grape is not essential to wine-making, and yeast will produce alcohol if set to work on anything that contains natural sugars. If the ingredients are prepared in the right way they will taste good. Having said that, the way we are making fruit wine now is much more similar to the way grape wine is produced than it ever was before."

Cairn O'Mohr is in East Inchmichael, near Errol, in Perthshire. It produces 200,000 bottles of wine a year, including gooseberry, bramble, raspberry, elderberry, autumn oak leaf, non-alcoholic strawberry fizz, sparkling oak and elder varieties.

Gillies and his wife do everything here, from sourcing fruit from local growers, estates and hedgerows to supervising picking dates, collecting, de-stalking, fermenting, maturing, bottling and selling. They run a busy shop at Cairn O'Mohr, and in March they will open a caf for visitors. "It is a growing sector," Ron says. "But we try to focus on producing a better product and diversifying. This year I noticed there was a gap in the market for a Scottish country wine. I had to concede that none of our wines went with haggis, so I came up with a special blend for Burns night, called Gangs wi Haggis."

In previous years, it was the winery's elderberry blend – with its not insignificant 13.5 per cent alcohol content – that was the bestseller, but things have changed as the products have developed. "The raspberry wine has taken over recently," he says with delight. "I take pride in all of my wines but for me that is the slightly special one. It has a nice balance to it."

But while fruit wines are improving year by year, they are not a new concept. The ancient Britons may not have had the bountiful supply of vines that the Romans did, but they didn't go dry. Their brews relied on imaginative blends of fermented honey, herbs and fruit, and it is these recipes today's commercial fruit wines are based on.

Despite this rich history, contemporary wine akers are few and far between in Scotland. Other than Cairn O'Mohr, there is the Orkney Wine Company, which was started as a hobby by owner Emile van Schayk after he was given a recipe by a retired shepherdess in Stranraer in 1997. Two years later, the van Schayk family moved to Orkney, where Emile entered the local homebrew and wine competition, winning two years in a row. It was this and popular demand that encouraged him to turn his hobby into a successful business.

Cairn O'Mohr's efforts have also been recognised in the 28 years since Ron and Judith transformed their farm from a joinery business to a winery, as their favourite pastime became profitable. Most recently it was Ron's sparkling strawberry wine that received accolades, winning three gold medals at last year's Great Taste Awards.

For others, the transition from hobby to business has been less smooth. Moniack Castle Highland Winery was started in 1978 by Philippa Fraser and is now run by her son Rory. Over the years the business has had to adapt, and its products are now produced elsewhere in the UK.

The secret to Ron and Judith's success may be down to their straightforward attitude to making wine. "I've watched the way the grape wine industry markets itself, and it is very different to how we do things," says Ron. "Because of the competition in the field, producers sometimes make their wines sound more complicated than they actually are. Grape wines can be a mystery to drinkers. With us, it is all about what is real. Our fruit wines are about easy drinking. They are there to be enjoyed. You don't need to think about them too much."

But what does the future hold for Scotland's wine industry? Experts have predicted that global warming will destroy grape vineyards in southern France, shifting the best growing conditions to Scotland within 70 years.

Ron isn't ruling anything out. "Who knows?" he says. "I might have a go at a grape wine for laugh. I quite like the idea."

Cairn O'Mohr Winery, East Inchmichael, Errol (01821 642781, www.cairnomohr.homestead.com)

Ron's grapefruit wine

6 large grapefruits; 31/2lb sugar; 1 gallon water

yeast and nutrient

Clean the fruit and grate the skins finely. Put the water, gratings and juice in a bowl and add the yeast. Stand the bowl in a warm place (21C/70F is ideal), cover closely and leave for five or six days, stirring thoroughly twice a day. Strain off the liquor through a nylon sieve, or two or three thicknesses of muslin, and dissolve the sugar in it. Put into a fermenting jar and fit an airlock, then leave to ferment out. When this is done, rack into clean bottles and seal with corks.

• This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday, January 31, 2010