How to achieve a long finishing wine?

Sooooo..... im new to winemaking! I tried my hand at a cherry wine last summer and i think that it turned out to be a good wine. But, it doesnt have a strong finish. If i had to guess i where i went wrong i would say perhaps i didnt use enough cherries? For a 5 gallon batch i used roughly 23 pounds of cherries, or 4.5lbs per gallon. But i honestly have no clue as to how to go about fixing this or what the cause might be. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I would compare the recipe you used to some of Jack Keller's recipies.

Here is a website...

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/

You can make it stronger ( more fruit). Can add some oak, age the wine longer.

Skycarp said:

Sooooo..... im new to winemaking! I tried my hand at a cherry wine last summer and i think that it turned out to be a good wine. But, it doesnt have a strong finish. If i had to guess i where i went wrong i would say perhaps i didnt use enough cherries? For a 5 gallon batch i used roughly 23 pounds of cherries, or 4.5lbs per gallon. But i honestly have no clue as to how to go about fixing this or what the cause might be. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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First, welcome to the hobby and the forum!

I agree that Jack Keller has great recipes for cherry and all other kinds of wine. You can see how many #/gallon he used.

To fix it, one thought would be to add potassium sorbate and sweeten with simple syrup a bit. Maybe that would help the finish, Test with a small portion of your wine rather than the whole 5g.

You could add potassium sorbate, and then add cherry juice to add more flavor.

Otherwise you could make another super-loaded with cherries batch and blend the two together.

Good luck with it!

Thanks for the advice! I did use a Jack Keller recipe, my finished S.G. was 0.993, so it was a pretty dry wine. I bottled it in February and have drank a few bottles. I am planning on starting another batch in the next week or so and was hoping for some feedback/insight on the subject. I will add a few more Cherries per pound and hopefully be able to age it longer this time around...

On the first batch i used Montrachet yeast because that is what the recipe called for. Should i consider trying another yeast? I loved most everything about this wine except for the slightly dull finish...

Next time you open a bottle try adding a bit of sugar to the glass. See if that doesn't help it out. You could try it with a bit of honey also. Arne.

As @heatherd and @Arne mentioned, I think you needed to backsweeten it. In my experience, I have not found many fruit wines that tasty when completely dry. Backsweeten up to anywhere from 1.000 to 1.010 and I think you will be amazed at the difference.