The Cherry Experiment

[pkm925]

Last spring I decided to try an experiment with some Chilean Pinot Noir juice. Although in the past I have made some nice table wines from Chilean juice, I have been disappointed by the lack of varietal characteristics. My thought then was to augment one of the flavors typically found in Pinot. So I added 2lbs. of dried cherries (rinsed, soaked, rinsed and chopped) to the primary fermentation of 24 gallons of Pinot Noir juice. It's been bulk aging for 6 months and everything seemed fine but yesterday I tasted the wine and was surprised to find that the wine now had a VERY strong cherry taste and aroma. No nuance here, just plenty of cherry. I actually like the wine (PH is 3.45 and the T/A is 7.10) but it wasn't what I was expecting.

Now I'm wondering if this wine is just going through a 'phase' and the cherry taste will calm down and everything will be happy. I'm also wondering if I should take steps now to counteract the cherry and maybe offsetting it with other flavors (oak, black pepper, etc.). Finally, I think I could pass this off as a dry cherry wine if I wanted to and people would think it was good.

Any thoughts on this wine would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[sour_grapes]

I, too, was going down the lines of "Just say it is cherry" in the event that it, wellll, tastes like cherry. I think that is preferable to monkeying around with it too much.