Blackberry taste

[KSmith3011]

My experience with fruit wines is very limited. I began this Black Raspberry wine on 8/10/11. After resting since 8/21 I gave it a taste test yesterday. I found it void of the original Raspberry flavor, slightly harsh (because it is so young?), bland on the palate and no real mouth feel. I added a hint of sugar to a sample, a berry taste became evident afterward. The hard part, we don't like sweet wine. If anyone has advice beside adding tons of sugar for taste, I would be very grateful.
8/10
8lb Black Raspberry
4.5 lb sugar (s.g. 1.080
2 Tsp Acid Blend (.6% TA)
1/2 Pectic Acid
1 Tsp Yeast Energized
1-Campden
7 quarts water
Red Star Pasteur Red Wine Yeast

Strong Ferment within 24 hours

8/14
1.002 SG moved to secondary got 2.5 Gallons

8/21
.996 SG 2-Campden & Sorbate

10/31
tested ph 3.6
taste bland

 

[Julie]

Not enough fruit, you should have had about 12 1/2#'s for 2 1/2 gallon. You should always use 5# of fruit per gallon of must. Lighter flavor fruits you would use more.

 

[docanddeb]

Did you mean 7 PINTS of water?? for a 1 gallon batch? The rest of the ingredients look like a 1 gallon recipe.
You can do an f-pack at the end to bring the fruit forward too.

Debbie

 

[SBWs]

Sweet fruit wines

Typically fruit wines are sweet. Here in PA I know of no winery that sells anything but semi-sweet to sweet fruit wines. I make almost all fruit wines and the only one I've found so far that is good dry/off dry is elderberry. I'm not saying there aren't more just I haven't found them yet. Also if you use real ripe fruit (lower in acid) and like Julie said more fruit than you normally get a better flavor and need to sweeten less.

 

[greyday]

I agree in general; however, I'm about to rack a marionberry that I fermented to almost completely dry and it's pretty fantastic; I have another two pounds of fruit (frozen) for backsweetening but I might just save that for another project as man, it's so good as is! Lots of white wine characteristics (I used montrachet) but with such a nice, if mildly acidic, flavor. VERY pleased, will do a much larger batch next year...