Question about fruit and wine (blueberry-merlot)

Hi all,

I am a longtime member, but I don't post much. Thanks to all of you guys, I can search and find most of my answers.

I want to make a fruit wine blend. Something like blueberry-merlot, raspberry-cab, pomagranate-merlot, etc.. I am not sure of the combination yet. My question is, should I add the fruit(concentrate, purée, fruit) to the primary and ferment it together, or should a make a fruit wine and then blend it with a red wine?

Thanks for your opinions.
Rick

Hi Rick,

I would make them separate and then blend later, this way you can do bench trails until you have the combination you like.

Thanks Julie.
I was thinking that was the answer. I was hoping to combine home winery.com concentrates, 1 fruit and 1 red wine, and ferment dry, then back sweeten. I have heard that 1 pack of the red concentrate comes out thin in a 5 gallon batch. So I thought if I added a fruit, it would give me a unique flavor, and come out stronger. Would this yield horrible results?

Rick, I do fruit grape blends all the time. Some are Home winery concentrates, Blackberry/Cab is one off our favorites. Also blueberry/cab. We had a small crop of Merlot grapes from our own vines so I fermented them with home winery's cab which made a nice wine. I usually use 3 pints of their concentrates to make 5 gals. We like the body better. Also added a qt of blueberries to a 5 gal batch of Cab. (Should have been heavier on the blueberries ) The choices are endless. Roy. Ps I also do bench tests & blend finished wines prior to bottling.

Thanks Roy. I am thinking I will give it a try. Pomegranate-Beaujolais here we come!