We make lots of fruit wine---never MLF'd any of them. If you ever drank Cardonney, it was likely MLF'd. Pinot Noir is,typically, MLF'd.
What you're doing in an MLF is converting malic acid to lactic acid. So you can't do it on non-malic fruits. MLF makes a wine less acidic, raising the PH. Many fruit wines would taste kind of flabby with the high PH. I would say the best fruit to do this on would be blackberry. We've never done it on blackberry so I don't know how it tastes. MLF'd wines have a buttery flavor to them because of the lactic acid. It also smooths out the wine--makes it more complex and robust.
If you're having fruit wine problems, I'd be glad to help you as would others here. Seems there's a fair number of fruit wine makers on here who are finding the benefits of using little water on fruit wines. All of our fruit wine tastes like the fruit it's made from. It seems that's what you're complaining about. Just start eliminating water and you'll be surprised how much better your wine becomes.
The thing about making great fruit wines is to add no water. I know--the recipes always say use water. That's because when you use no water, you don't have a guide to go by--you have to estimate all the chemical additions. This isn't something a new winemaker can do very well because they have no experience. A recipe is designed to make a drinkable product. Wine recipes are like cooking recipes--ANYONE can do it and have something palatable. But experienced cooks won't need to use recipes--they know what goes together and what won't.
So once you make wine a while and understand what you're doing and WHY you're doing it, you can go "off recipe" and your wines will be excellent.
