blueberry wine.. dry, or sweet?

[benchmstr]

I have 7 gallons of blueberry wine in the secondary right now. I cant decide on leaving it dry or semi-sweet. I have never actually had a dry blueberry wine before so I have no reference point.

what do you guys think?

the bench

 

[cmason1957]

Most fruit wines are a little bit better if they are sweetened at least some. It helps to bring out the fruit flavors.

 

[dralarms]

Have to agree. Needs a little backsweetening

 

[Stressbaby]

I was thinking about this the other day.

Why is it that almost universally we backsweeten fruit wines while on the other hand we rarely backsweeten red grape wines? Or to put it another way, why is it that we can make good dry wines from grapes but not from any other fruit?

I sent a bottle of dry elderberry to the KC Cellarmasters wine competition last year. One judge commented "Kudos for sending a dry elderberry" as if that never happens. He then went on to give me a 13.

My hunch on this: we expect red grape wine not to taste like grapes but to taste like red wine. We expect blueberry wine not to taste like blueberry wine but to taste like blueberries.

 

[Arne]

Just remember you are making this for yourself. Draw a small glass and taste it. Do the same and add a measured amount of sugar, stir it in and taste. When you find how you like it, that is how you want to sweeten or not. Arne.

 

[pgentile]

I have done blueberry wine dry, semi-sweet and sweet. I prefer it dry after about 10 months or so of aging. But then again I like everything dry.

With 7 gallons you can experiment with a little and decide which way to go with the whole or partial batch.

I have a blueberry aging right now with oak has about another 5 months to go. Also just bottled a cherry wine from this past summer, back-sweetened half of the batch. A few in my household like semi-sweet wines.

 

[wineforfun]

I do mine between and off dry and semi sweet. As Arne mentions, it is your wine so make it how you like it.
If I know my wife will be drinking some, then I make about a third of it sweet for her.
If I had 7 gal. I would be making it 3 gal. off dry SG 1.005. 2 gal. semi sweet SG 1.010 and 2 gal. sweet SG 1.018

 

[MJD]

With seven gallons you have the luxury of both.

I'd invite you to try a bit of medium toast French oak in some of the dry batch. It really adds a depth of character to the wine. That said, plain dry blueberry has always been a hit at gatherings.

Nothing philosophically wrong with backsweetening fruit wines, but I do believe fruit wines can be quite excellent when left dry. Habit or tradition leads many to sweeten, or perhaps personal taste - and there is nothing wrong with that. But with a big batch like you have going, you could take advantage of it and figure out what is to your preferred taste.

 

[ceeaton]

If you are going to age it for quite some time, dry can work, just takes a while for the flavors to start coming through with blueberry. If you want to drink it sometime soon, I'd at least make some of it off dry. I've done a few at 1.010 that I thought were too sweet, but my wife liked. I aimed for 1.005 on the last one and we both like it. I'd personally stay at 1.000 or higher, the sweetness helps the blueberry flavor come though, if lower I think it is a bit bland (unless aged a decent amount of time, like 18 to 24 months). You need to decide what you like. Just remember if you back sweeten it, as it ages the perceived sweetness level seems to increase a bit (ie. aim a bit low, get it to where you say "could just use a tad more sugar" and stop there).