"Thin" cherry wine

[M38A1]

A bit ago I tried a 32oz can of sweet cherry and one of tart cherry together in a batch, and followed the Dragons Blood recipe. The end product came out looking great, a very slight cherry flavor to the profile but it's thin, like drinking lightly flavored water. It goes over the tongue and there's nothing there. ABV is 11% that comes in on the backend with the cherry.

Is there anything that can generally be done to thicken this up, better mouthfeel? I was tossing around adding some glycerin to do that as well as sweeten it a bit. Product is sitting clear now in a 5gal carboy so I'm open to suggestions...

Any ideas?

 

[Rice_Guy]

You can increase flavor by adding cherry concentrate.

Another option for thickness (viscosity) is gum arabic

 

[Arne]

See if you can find frozen cherry concentrate at your grocery store. Mix it in about a gal. of your wine. It will probably cloud it back up but should add a bunch of flavor and sweeten it some too. If you don't want it to start fermenting again you should stabalize it before adding. Good luck with it, Arne.

 

[M38A1]

Thank you both! I'll look into those two options.
~m

 

[tradowsk]

You could also add a bit of tannin to add some mouthfeel and complexity.

But I would start with some cherry concentrate (not juice). Doing fruit wines, I regularly add fruit in primary and secondary, as they contribute different flavors and characteristics.

 

[user 36973]

You could use cherries (and no water) rather than concentrate. Or use more of the concentrate if that's not an option.

There's a frozen food wholesaler 100 miles from me that sells frozen fruit as well as concentrate. I've made several batches of cherry wine with their tart cherries. Fermenting the actual fruit pulls out tannin and body into the wine.