Blackcurrant Cordial

Blackcurrants are a brief, serious fruit. They arrive in late July, peak in August, and are gone almost before you've worked out what to do with them. If you have a bush in the garden, you know the feeling of walking out one morning and finding the branches sagging under the weight of them. If you don't, the market has them for a fortnight and then the stall holders shrug at you and say wait till next year.

So you make cordial. It's the most sensible thing to do with a large quantity of blackcurrants, and one of the few ways to pin their flavour down before it escapes you. The taste is unlike anything else: sharp, smoky, almost resinous, with a depth the supermarket cordials can't begin to reach. Diluted with cold water on a hot afternoon, or with hot water on a cold one, or a splash in a glass of something stronger on the sort of evening that needs it. There are few better feelings than opening a bottle in February and tasting August.

The method is as simple as these things get. Crush the fruit, cover it with water, warm it through, let it sit overnight, strain, sweeten, bottle. That's the whole recipe. The only real skill is not rushing any of the steps, and that's less a skill than a decision.

I wrote it down in the notebook the first year I made it: 'Blackcurrants. Water. Sugar. Patience. Enough for winter, if you ration properly.' I haven't changed it since.