Making a wine with picked berries. A good idea? What about pectin and methanol?

I have just done a hard apple cider with apple juice and champagne yeast and it turned out wonderful. I want to go berry picking, such as for blackberries as they are prolific where I live, and ferment them into a drink.

I am unsure, however, about the methanol by-product that can come as a result of fermenting fruits high in pectins.

Would it be safe to ferment blackberries? i.e. make an alcoholic blackcurrant drink?

If anyone can point to me a thread or internet site that has a list of safe fruits to ferment, I would be most grateful. Also, if anyone has some successful ideas to put forward, I would love to hear.

Cheers

All fruits can be fermented and turned into wine.

I have some berry wines posted. Blackberry and chokecherry are two of my favorites. Methanol is not an issue, as you're not distilling this.

I also have lots of other wine recipes posted. You can make wine out of any non-poisonous fruit, vegetable, or flowers. I've made dandelion wine, lilac wine, rhubarb wine, carrot wine, crabapple wine, and so on.

I bottled 5 gallons of blackberry (picked and pressed last summer) around Christmas time. It turned out great!

Cranberries are extremely high in pectin and make fantastic wine (from raw fruit). The only pectin-related caution I might add for cranberry is that if you choose to heat the fruit be very careful or you will end up with a batch of jelly.

Go for it!