Peach Wine problem - starting SG?

[GrandpasFootsteps]

I am doing a single gallon batch of peach wine from scratch. I thawed my sliced peaches and I have a little over a gallon of pure juice. But when I checked it today, it had started fermenting by itself. It was sitting there for 2 days. I don't know how far along it is. I tasted it and it tastes sweet, barely wine-ish. The SG is 1.040. I'm planning to add simple syrup and throw in the EC1118 I bought for this batch.

Do you think I'm okay? Or do I need to do anything to the peach juice first to handle the active natural fermentation?

If I just let it go without adding any yeast (but raising SG to 1.085), what would happen and how strong might it be? Just curious...

 

[Deezil]

It's a crap-shoot if you rely on the natural yeast, although i've done it with blackberries & ended up with 12% ABV..

I'd do the natural yeast over the 1118, unless you have something more fragile.. 1118 is just gonna blow all your aromatics right out of the wine, but something like 1122 or 1116 would help hold onto some of that

If you do go with the natural yeast, step feed the sugar (add more when it gets to about 1.020) just incase it quits early on you, you wont end up with an overly-sweet wine.. Just keep good track of your SG movements & you can calculate your ABV when you add up all the sugar additions

 

[saramc]

Had your peaches been treated with k-meta/Campden at any point?
Out of curiousity---how many pounds of peaches were you thawing?

 

[GrandpasFootsteps]

I thawed 10 pounds of peaches for 1 gallon. I treated them with k-meta. Since my first post, I went ahead and did what I said I'd do - added my own yeast on top of the natural yeast. I tossed in some golden raisins and a couple of bananas. It is bubbling along happily. I'm going to check it after work today to see if it is ready to rack to the secondary. It smells great.