Blending elderberry and muscadine wine need advice

[garymc]

I am going to blend some elderberry wine with some muscadine wine. Does anyone have experience with this? I have dry elderberry, dry muscadine, and sweet (sg 1.040) muscadine. I can figure out how much sweet to put in the dry for what I'm looking for. What I need to know is how much elderberry to muscadine. I don't want to waste the elderberry by putting too little of it in so that it doesn't have an influence on the taste. I was thinking one gallon of elderberry with three gallons of muscadine. Should I go 50/50 elderberry to muscadine?

 

[Julie]

Do some experimenting in a glass. Start with a 25 - 75 and then go from there. Personally I think a 60/40 ratio would probably be good.

 

[toddrod]

I like 25% blackberry/elderberry - 75% red muscadine when I blend mine. You can tell that there is something in the muscadine but it does not cover the muscadine flavor.

 

[garymc]

Looks like I'll be taste testing. Somewhere between 25/75 and 60/40. All of these wines are at least 15%, and may be as high as 18%, so that will probably have an input. The elderberry was made from a 96 ounce can of concentrate that was supposed to be able to make a 3 or 5 gallon batch. I made 3 gallons with it. I'll be crawling around under the table before I finish tasting a few admixtures.

 

[Arne]

When you get done and decide how you like it, make sure you try that again the next day and see if it is still as good as you thought. Your taster can get a bit turned around after a few trys. Go ahead, ask me how I know. LOL, Arne.

 

[toddrod]

Any progress as to how the blending came out?

 

[garymc]

On 5-7-13I blended 1.5 gal of strong flavored 15.6% abv elderberry with 1 gal ofalmost white sg 1.040 muscadine that was stuck from a very high, but unknown original sg, and 2.5 gal of about 18% abv red muscadine. It is strong in flavor, high in alcohol, and a little sweet at 1.002 sg. When bottled on 6-12-13. It's dark purple. Small sips are the best way I've found to drink it. If the word sip connotes drawing in air as with a hot beverage, then it's the wrong word. That will choke you.

 

[garymc]

I still have 1.5 gallons of the elderberry to blend or sweeten, dilute and bottle as elderberry wine. More recently I picked some elderberries and have started 12 gallons of elderberry wine. The new stuff is red, apparently because the recipe I used has a very small proportion of elderberries.

 

[garymc]

The muscadine/elderberry blend I made, described in post #7 above, won 2nd place in a local wine tasting contest in November. There was a category for "other semi sweet." That means it contains fruit other than grape (the elderberry.) In the sweet grape category I won first place with a white muscadine and second place with a red muscadine. I had given wine to some friends and relatives. I had been getting compliments ont it. But when they say it's good, what else would they say? This was confirmation for me that I've learned how to make wine.