Wine tastes sour after primary fermentation

[MrWrong]

Hello folks,

I made 3 gallons cherry wine from recipe number 3 found at JackKeller*com. See below.


Cherry Wine [Dry] (3)

8 lbs morello cherries
2-1/2 lbs sugar
1/2 tsp tannin
1 tsp pectic enzyme
7-1/4 pts water
1 tsp yeast nutrient
Port wine yeast

Bring water to boil. Meanwhile, destem, wash and crush the cherries in the primary without breaking any stones. Pour sugar over cherries. Pour the boilling water over the sugar and cherries and stir well to dissolve. Cover and set aside until cool. Add remaining ingredients and ferment 5 days. Strain juice into dark secondary and discard pulp and stones. Rack after 30 days and again when wine clears. After two additional months rack into bottles and store in dark place. [Adapted from Leo Zanelli's Home Winemaking from A to Z]

END QUOTE.

I froze my fruit first and sterilized using campden tablets instead of boiling water.

Today was day 5 so I moved wine to secondary. S.G. at start was 1.100 and today was 0.098 (I added only 2 pounds sugar per gallon and ended up over sweetening). The cherries I used are called Evan's Cherry they are sour and said to be similar to Morello Cherries (not 100% sure that this comparison is accurate).

I noticed a sour smell when transferring the wine. I tasted it and it had a sour taste. Though the cherries are sour tasting even when fresh this taste seemed to be a different kind of sour, almost like the wine has started going bad. I did punch the fruit down once a day for the 5 days in primary fermentation.

Can anyone shed some light on this? Is my wine a goner?

Your insight would be appreciated.

 

[Julie]

Your wine has fermented to dry, the taste may just be that of a very young dry cherry wine.

I would adise you to never follow a recipe exactly, use it as a guidance. The amount of sugar you used was quite a lot, the sg was higher than it should have been for a fruit wine. The ABV will be around 13%, fruits are best when ABV is approx. 10%

 

[mrpoland]

Looks like your wine is fine. The yeasts used all sugar and you have dry young wine. I would start second fermentation wait till wine will be clear then stabilize and add sugar to make wine I am looking for [half sweet, sweet]. The second fermentation will take at least 1-2 months so you have time to read more. When I am adding sugar at the end I prepare few same samples of wine [like 5] and put some sugar to each checking what sweetness will be the best for me. I calculate amount of sugar to add to the wine based on the sample I like the most. Then I put wine into the bottles. The wine with the sugar in the bottle will become smoother with the time. You just have to be 150% sure that yeasts are dead and gone from the wine before adding sugar. You don’t want fermentation start over in the bottle!!!

 

[MrWrong]

I'll cross my fingers that it is OK, those cherries were hard to find. Thx for the help Julie and MrPoland.