montmorency cherry dessert wine from concentrate
my notes are awful. I'll try to expand them from memory as I sip the wine. A larger batch I did in a 3G better bottle and 2x 1G glass carboys. final yield was about 4G and some drinking during bottling by me and helper/bystanders.
I used the 64oz bottles of welches white grape peach (1055 SG) from walmart because they were on sale and tasted really good. I also had 2 cans of welches white grape. skip the white grape conc or use it exclusively if you like, I used it because of a freezer cleanout at the time. the WG peach juice was a good flavor combo with the cherry. I'll definitely do it again.
I planned to add cherry concentrate until I got to 1090. but I overshot by quite a bit (doh!) and had to pour some into 1G carboys and top all up with white grape peach juice and cherry concentrate - more slowly that time. They were all 1090 or a bit above when I started ferment. No sugar added. I started the 3G better bottle fermenting, then used the fermenting wine to start the 1G carboys. there was a small amount of blowout in the 3G.
I aimed for 1090 at first but fed it with cherry conc during secondary ferment to up the alcohol. No quantities on that or an explanation of why I fed the secondary fermentation. I seem to remember a conversation (lecture?) about 1090 OG not being high enough for a true dessert wine, maybe that was my motivation there.
I also drank a fair amount of the cherry juice outright. so its hard for me to say how much cherry concentrate I fermented / wasted by drinking / used to backsweeten.
alcohol taste was strong/forward when secondary fermentation settled down. I let it sit for a while to make sure it was done, I stabilized and sweetened with more concentrate. I didnt record a gravity after sweetening. It was to taste, without measure. I let it sit to clear (didnt record how long), got impatient and used super kleer KC, more settling and then bottled. I did two rackings - at 10 days and 60 days. At fist racking one of the 1G carboys was used to top up the other two and it went away. On first rackings I bring some sediment over. On second racking I try to leave it all behind. When I bottled, there was a fair amount of sediment that had dropped during clearing. I racked all carboys into one 6.5G carboy and siphoned into bottles from there. Just because it was easier to bottle that way.
Start to finish this was a 4 month wine. I bottled it in splits (375ml). I found some shrink caps that almost matched the color of the wine.
I wanted a dessert wine - strong flavor and higher alcohol, then masked with sweetness and more flavor.
to make a recipe for yourself, I would proceed by testing the single strength juice. Test taste, gravity, acidity. standard drill on sulfites and pectic enzyme and use your acid of choice when doing adjustments. I am too lazy it seems recently to take good notes on the must mixing. Maybe too headstrong? I should work on better notes. Most of the text is about racking and bottling state.
Feel free to use cane sugar if you want, to get a wine with a flavor that is where you want it as far as strength goes. With cherry, I'm paranoid of making cough syrup so I really up the fruit flavor. you can finish the flavor during backsweetening. The aroma survived the ferment but the flavor weakened somewhat.
I have blueberry concentrate, and I'll do a 1G batch from single strength juice, then sugar to 1080 adjust acid etc, and see how it turns out. I'll probably try a blueberry dessert wine.
so my notes are poor quality from this years work. but when I drink the wines, I recall the process. Does that happen to anyone else?
