Thinking of adding cherry to nebbiolo kit

[Regmata]

I have the WE Eclipse Nebbiolo kit and was thinking of playing around a bit. I am hoping to add some cherry to the mix and do an extended maceration. What is the proper way to do this? Am I better off getting some dried cherries or getting fresh cherries and cooking them down in some red wine prior to adding? I was planning on adding for fermentation and leaving throughout extended maceration. Will this be a problem?

Any other advice for tweaking this kit would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

J

 

[salcoco]

I would use fresh cherries just pitted and added directly to juice prefermentation. also add some pectic enzyme to help break down fruit. fruit can stay throughout fermentation and press at end .

 

[kyle5434]

Frozen cherries (no sugar added) would work quite nicely, as well (after thawing, of course). I recently used 24 oz. of dark sweet cherries (along with 1/2 cup dried elderberries and 3/4 cup zante currants) in a Cru International Pino Noir kit that I'd picked up last spring but hadn't gotten to yet, and going into bulk aging after 3 weeks of fermentation, it was perhaps the best tasting wine (at this stage) that I've done so far. I also added 24 oz. tart cherries to some Chambourcin juice that went into fermentation last Friday, and it's smelling pretty good so far.