Looked around a couple of days ago, but neither prickly pears nor wild blackberries were ripe yet. So, today I bought a bunch of peaches for my next batch of wine. Cutting the fruit up is boring and kind of a pain, but that part is done now. It was a friend in college who made peach wine that got me back to this hobby. My process is a more refined, but I did like his peach wine.
Speaking of cutting up and pitting four or five pounds of fruit being a pain in the ass, I'm really not looking forward to doing prickly pear. Made some prickly pear jam, when I was a kid. I was unaware the fruit is coated with microscopic thorns you can't see as well as the ones you can. Inside of my hands itched for a week. Now, I know to burn them off over the stove, but then I gotta peel 'em and kinda core 'em to get the seeds. Doing that for five pounds - I'm guessing close to 20 prickly pears - won't be any fun. Having a gallon of prickly pear wine will be neat, though.