Elderberry wine is perhaps more famous but wine can be made from the flowers too. One advantage to using the flowers is that the wine can be made earlier in the season but then, of course you will not have berries for wine later if you use up all your flowers. Pick the flowers on a hot dry day and use them immediately to make wine. My paternal grandmother, Helen S. Wright includes a recipe for elder flower wine along with others for elderberry wine in her book, Old Time Recipes for Home Made Wines, a collection of homemade brews that she collected from friends and acquaintances around 1900.
In Grandmother’s words:
“Take the flowers of elder, and be careful that you don’t let any stalks in; to every quart of flowers put one gallon of water, and three pounds of loaf sugar. Boil the water and sugar a quarter of an hour, then pour it on the flowers and let it work three days; then stain the wine through a hair sieve, and put it into a cask. To every ten gallons of wine add one ounce of isinglass dissolved in cider, and six whole eggs. Close it up and let it stand six months, and then bottle it.”
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Karen Meyers