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I was wondering if anybody has tips about making fruit wines. I am planning on making a cherry wine and was thinking about oaking the juice. What is the ideal way to make a sweet cherry wine with some flavor and what type of cherries are the best for use?

I am planning on making a white peach wine, i also would like some help in knowing if there is any good recipes for it.

thank you
 
visit winemaking.jackkeller.net for many fruit recipes.
to make a sweet wine first ferment dry than add sugar syrup to taste protect with potassium sorbate. oaking a fruit wine is not normally done as the oak will take away from fruit flavor. possibly elderberry and blackberry maybe two exceptions.
for the white peach wine buy some whit grape juice from say Walmart add canned peaches and ferment.
best read recommended web site above for details on fermenting wine and equipment required .
 
Check out the Country Fruit Winemaking forum area

Have to disagree with salcoco about Jack Keller fruit wine recipes. He goes way too light on flavor and heavy on Alcohol. For peach wine you need at least 6-7 lbs per gallon. On a number of recipes he recommends 2-4 lbs of fruit and then kicks in raisins. I make all my wines with at least 4 1/2 to 7 lbs of fruit per gallon. Many folks on the Country Fruit Winemaking area try to go all fruit with NO water added. I don't go that far but definintely much more fruit than Keller recommends.

As to oaking - i would suggest forgoing that on the first batch. Some Fruit wines are fine with a little oaking (Blackberry, Blueberry and Black Raspberry) others will find you tasting the oak more than the fruit.

Also remember that most Fruit wines are going to need a little sweetening after they ferment dry - Always ferment dry.

Be aware that some people find that a sweet cherry wine ends up tasting like a cough drop. I just bottled a very tart - Tart Cherry wine and even though it's really pretty sweet (SG 1.018) you don't taste the sweetness. And this tart cherry wine (definitely does NOT taste like cough syrup or cough drops.) is a 3 Gallon Batch. Made from 3 bottles (16oz) concentrate Tart Cherry and 1 (16oz) Black Cherry (sweet) You can see my thread on the Country Fruit Forum.
 
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Hi Francisco Farmiento - and welcome. I gotta agree with Scooter. IMO, Jack Keller likes his wines more like water in terms of flavor and more like rocket fuel when it comes to alcohol. So add more fruit and treat water more as a cleaning product than a key addition when it comes fruit wines. And I would second Scooter's point about cherries. Look for tart cherries rather than sweet ones. I see that my supermarket now carries bottles of tart cherry juice and I may buy some to see how well this ferments. I may but I may not...Too many other wonderful fruits that make delicious wines. Cherry is always a risk in my book.
You have to do a great deal of work to make sweet cherries taste anything other than cough medicine. The major problem (I think) is high alcohol, sweetness, and low acidity . And I may be mistaken , (not a chemist) but aren't many cough medicines phenolic based and so if your wine is full of phenols AND is cherry flavored - the first thought that will come to anyone's mind is cough syrup. And if you use municipal water (don't) it may contain chloramines (that doesn't evaporate off like chlorine ) then you may produce chlorophenols and that is essentially cough medicine
 
Thank you all for the advice I am looking forward to making wine this summer with my family and friends.
i will keep you all updated on this thread of our progress!

Thank you!
 
Welcome to the forum. You say that you plan to make some wine THIS SUMMER. Meanwhile, why not go to the library and check out a couple of books on the subject. I have a couple of books that might help familiarize your self with the processes. One is "The Joy of Home winemaking by Terry Garey" and anther is Winemaking. Recipes, equipment, and technics for making wine at home by Stanley and Dorothy Anderson.
My first wine was Welch's Concord Grape juice 100% juice. 96 oz. made a gallon of decent wine for little investment.
 
Welcome to the forum
I agree with bernardsmith about jack kellers site. There is soilid info there but the recipes are repetitive seem to be little more than foundations to build on.
Research, read and ask questions. Find the common thread make a few small batches and find what works for you
Cherry is a wild card. In an effort to avoid cough syrup I ended up with tasteless.
Peach is tough to carry the flavor. I had opportunity to ask a local with years of experience.
He siad to make a good peach start and finish a solid mead add sorbate then the juice from canned peachess to my sweetness and flavor preference.
My research on the web has me asking my mother and mother in law, as well as some other fine ladies I know that can peaches , to freese the skins untill I can pick them up. im thinking a couple gallons of skins and only the juice that freely separates from peaches after freezing and thawing. I make almost exclusively mead and use fruit for flavor changes so havent nailed down percentage per gallon yet.
 
A peach wine is a fantastic way to start but not without challenges. I've made 4 batches and there a couple of issues to deal with. First is the initial mass of peaches tends to become almost like a pudding . That happens normally when you are using the right amount of peaches per gallon - You need at least 6 lbs per gallon - weight after de-stoning. Second is a pectic haze which delays clearing of the wine. Both issues can be solved if you let the prepared must sit about 48-72 hours before starting the yeast. You hit it with the pectic enzyme as soon as the peaches are cut up and mashed. Don't forget to put any fruit into a bag in your fermenter. You can get paint strainer bags inexpensively at the big box home improvement stores.

For a first wine that you can start on early you can go three different routes:
1) As Donatelo mentions, cans of froze grape juice concentrate, (You don't dilute with water fully using perhaps 3 cans of water if they say to use 4 to make normal grape juice)
2) Bottled fruit juices The only issue is that they can be made of multiple fruits and not just the fruit on the bottle label (Typically a lot of apple juice or white grape juice)
3) Blackberries are one of the first fruits that ripen in the spring (Wild blackberries are the best if you can find them) I would recommend.

I make those 3 suggestions because they tend to clear faster that way. Blackberry normally clears without any help of fining agents.

BUT back to your first wine choice - Cherry - Hit Amazon or the web and look for Cherry Juice Concentrates. I would recommend a mix of both tart and sweet cherries for your first wine. If your first batch is going to be a one gallon batch you can use 1 bottle of your sweet cherry concentrate and 1/2 to 3.4 bottle of tart cherry concentrate. The concentrates I use are 16 oz bottles that are supposed to make 1 gallon of drink but again you want a bit stronger mix than that for flavor.

Again you should look over on the Country Fruit Winemaking section of this site - LOTS of threads about what people have done, their mistakes and fixes etc. Good way to pass the time until you finish reading all the books recommended to you and the weather warms up.

One last question for you - Do you already have all your equipment in hand? If not, you should start ASAP. One option is a winemakers kit - NOT one with the juice in it, but rather one with the majority of the basic tools and supplies. I started out with one and added quickly to it to get the complete set of hardware needed. This kit (Listed below) will help AND it has a book with some basic recipes as well. BUT that's the start point not the complete set of equipment you need. I also did a quick comparison of two starter kits - you do NOT want the Vintners Best kit. It lacks a lot of the basic supplies in terms of chemicals you will be using.

MASTER VINTNER® FRESH HARVEST® FRUIT WINEMAKING KIT (Sells as low a $40.00 and has supplies enought (Chemicals) for about 15 gallons of wine.

https://www.midwestsupplies.com/mas...E7gyeTmBty7e7AAUZdEIquj2R_22SV9IaAkHuEALw_wcB
 
Thank you all once again for the advice!

I have some experience i have worked for a couple wineries already, and i am currently in school studying Viticulture and Enology. I am about to graduate as well and thought it was time to start making wine as a hobby this summer and see where this project goes. I have an internship lined up working outside because I personally want to be more on the farming aspect of the industry. I love to drink wine and thought it was time to make my own and grow that because who doesn't like drinking something they made? lol
 

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