"Natural Wines"

[Obbnw]

When you make your fruit wines do you add sugar? I started making wine with Blackberries and was amazed at how much sugar was added. If I ever get a good crop again I may try blackberry wine without adding sugar (or greatly reduce the sugar added). I saw somewhere where you could freeze the juice and let it partially thaw to increase the sugar percentage.

But it's unlikely I'll get a good crop again. I have a very narrow lot with have the blackberries on the south side of my house but the neighbors yard (lot line 10' from my house) has turned into an overgrown mess with a whole line of weed siberian elm trees that significantly shade my yard. Plus the bugs have taken a toll.... Got 40-50lbs of blackberries 6 or so years ago and less then 10 last year with a pretty linear decline in production. So it goes.

On the plus side - the failure of my blackberries along with my neighbor on the north doing a huge addition which removed a huge tree (providing a sunny spot for grapes) inspired me to plant grapes for wine.

 

[Scooter68]

At the risk of Stirring an already well stirred pot but answering the question about sugar (and other additives) I make country wines as well and despite wanting to limit chemical intervention, I'm personally not willing to take the risk of going without Acid, and Sugar additions to insure that the wine must is acidic enough to keep and has a high enough sugar content to produce an ABV of at least 10-11%.
So yes, adding Sugar is necessary with most fruit to reach an adequate ABV for a good wine.
As to other additives much the same rule applies:
Acid to get the must into the range of a pH between 3.4 to 3.6.
Yeast nutrient to ensure the yeast thrives and does it thing
Pectic Enzyme - because without it that fruit may not fully yield its goodness and probably will not clear or clear very very slowly.

Of all the additives the Pectic Enzyme is about the only one that I believe I would consider skipping.

The other things commonly used like Bentonite (Or any clearing agents) and Tannin are up to user discretion. You can produce a very good wine without them as long as you accept the limitations that you might encounter. (Cloudy wine or lack of adequate astringency in the wine)

Back sugar - An example of alternatives to adding sugar to Apples is to stick with the amount of the naturally occurring sugar. The resulting fermented beverage is of course referred to as Hard Apple Cider/Apple Jack etc. with an ABV of somewhere in the 6-9 % range. But if you add sugar and aging/clearing time you can boost that ABV up to 10-14% and have an Apple wine.

Wine Varieties I regularly make now are: Black Currant, Wild Blackberry, Apple, Blueberry, Peach, and Tart Cherry.
Others I have dabbled in: Plum, Wild Black Raspberry, Peach Vanilla, Pineapple/Mango, Loquat, Red Raspberry, Apricot*, and Strawberry* The last two I was not pleased with and will not attempt again.

 

[Obbnw]

Thanks for the info.

 

[Rice_Guy]

A food industry point of view;
* All yeast were wild at some time, currently university types are playing with GMOs but they aren’t legal, , YET!
* Wild fermentations aren’t all bad, the division that did naturally fermented dill pickles in Australia is a successful business, old style cheeses cured on wood planks have been inoculated with Marshal labs cultures, but there is a lot of natural flavors that come from the wooden shelves in the cure room, likewise for lutefisk and Japanese fermented shark. Red grape wine is kinda like falling out of bed since the “preservatives” occure naturally in the grape. (pH, phenolics) I have seen acceptable organic red wine but haven’t found organic to do a good job on non grape feedstocks. To do a good job with country wines I am adding back the factors that make grapes easy to ferment.
* The earliest wine production is estimated to be about 7000 BC, from tartrates in clay amphora. The product was recognized as desirable much much earlier, I once read an anthro article that described chimpanzees gorging on naturally fermented fruit, my guess is Neanderthal did too.
* The industry job was to figure out the rules to make something marketing dreamed up safely (per FDA) and with 100% saleable product (usually breakdown/ oxidation etc issues). Science puts unnatural constraints on foods ie we create the environment where food poisoning can be really bad. , , Only a couple of times did I work on a food with less than a two year shelf life.
* ie Natural food doesn’t last! enjoy it while hunting/ gathering in the forest.

 

[BernardSmith]

Hi Rice_Guy, What you say is, in my opinion both interesting and important. the one thing that you did not mention (and I know zilch about marketing or business) is that if "consumers" are thought to want certain kinds of "consistency" (think Coke or Bud Lite to name two non wine examples) then the use of indigenous yeast is a near certain failure. Consistency there means every single batch no matter when or where made tastes exactly - exactly the same year in, year out and "consumers" know what to expect and they get exactly what they expect.

Not so with natural wines. You grow what you get and not what you need for that kind of consistency. And if your market is based on folk whose view of consistency is rather more nuanced than the folk who hand out money for Coke or Bud Lite; folk who are looking for the consistency of consistently top quality wines and are happy to embrace (or at least happily try) new and unique flavors each season then "natural wines" may not be a marketing nightmare. But for home wine makers making natural wines would seem me to be a marriage made in heaven. We are not in the business of selling product. We are engaged in making wine for our own and the pleasure of others.

But that said, you wrote:
"I have seen acceptable organic red wine but haven’t found organic to do a good job on non grape feedstocks. To do a good job with country wines I am adding back the factors that make grapes easy to ferment." I wonder if you could elaborate on that point. What factors make grapes "easy to ferment" and what is it that you add to non grape substrates to improve the quality of country wines?

 

[Rice_Guy]

Hi Rice_Guy, What you say is, in my opinion both interesting and important.
." I wonder if you could elaborate on that point. What factors make grapes "easy to ferment" and what is it that you add to non grape substrates to improve the quality of country wines?

I lived in the world where every crop year was different and the crop matured as it aged, ex apple baby food in September has more Malic acid so it needs more thickener in September than it will in November.
* TA this adds depth or length to flavor, less than .5 one would call it weak and balance it with no back sweetening. .8 needs backsweetening for balance and scores better for afternotes. I am wierd and use TA for flavor depth control with peach or cranberry or even grape
* antioxidant- tannins/ phenolics in reds naturally give a minimum expected shelf life. Tannins improveshelf life, soft tannin can do it without a big flavor impact
* pH is a preservative which excludes classes of microbes, pH in sulphite treated wine is part of the ionization formula for how much SO2 is free, as a standard I try to put everything (except red grape) at pH 3.2 to 3.4
* oxygen, guess this is an other, 2 ethyl alcohol oxidizes to acetaldehyde which produces a burn sensation going down. A fresh wine will not burn so what can we do to keep oxygen out? Again antioxidants as phenolics and industrial tricks as adding vitamin C. Historically red wine was preferred since it survived better, , without measured/ added SO2.
* sugar creates osmotic pressure which limits some microbes. When turned into alcohol it again is a preservative, a typical 11 or 13% abv has better shelf life than a 6 or 8% beer/ cider. Warning though more alcohol pushes the oxidation reaction to produce More acetaldehyde.
* scooter points out that some crops are nutrient deficient, DAP is always good and complex nutrients help if the juice doesn’t have a lot of dirt in it (ok call it mineral matter)
*****************************************
I didn’t go to UC Davis, I am on the research curve yet

 

[Americanhooch]

Glad to see this thread revived! I recently dug up an older kit I had lying around and I'm giving it a try without adding anything other than yeast (since there's no wild yeast in concentrate!) and not doing much other than occasional racking. Since I'm still pretty new to winemaking (only one non-kit/frozen season under my belt) I want to figure out what my boundaries of intervention/nonintervention are. Doing closer to one end of the spectrum with a cheaper kit and keeping a more conservative approach with whatever I get after harvest seems like a safe path. If the no-additive kit approach doesn't fall on its face, maybe I'll take a more hands off approach with the real stuff.

I'm still a big fan of a lot of natural/low-intervention wines (but not a fan of sour wines). From what I've been able to pick up as an observer, it takes careful farming practices and good cellar discipline to be able to make good wine without the aid of chemicals or filtration. Since I'm neither a farmer and am operating out of the basement, I'm not sure I could get there myself.