Flowers and champagne!

I promised this post a couple of weeks ago, and its been in the pipeline forever (hey, fermentation requires patience) but this morning I curiously popped a cork, and we have bubbles!

So it started years ago after seeing a spring episode of River cottage, a funny british show about living in the country and growing your own. They made it, so I filled this away to try myself- Elderflower champagne.

It took me a little while to work out that Elderflower is sambucca in Italy, and yes, that black alcohol that I threw up everywhere on my 20th birthday comes from this plant.

We have it in abundance down near the river, looks like this:

There's a terribly creepy wooden shed down there that I hate to walk past, it makes me remember all the slasher/supernatural/vampire movies I've ever seen. Even in a big group of people it gives me chills. I half expected the photo to turn out with some ghostly shadow across it. Didn't happen.

So I took the flowers home and followed the recipe, soaking them in a (very clean) bucket with water, sugar and lemon juice. The flowers, it seems, bring their own yeast.

After a week I strained it, a week later bottled it, and then... nothing. Alas there was no fizz, which meant no champagne and therefore no blog post.
My four bottles of fizzlessness sat around for a couple more weeks, until this morning. I got bubbles!
So heres my elderflower champagne:

Problem now is, I can't stand the taste, after smelling it ferment for weeks. Aperitivo, anyone?