MichaelZ,
I finally got finished with to college classes I was taking and needed to get something in a carboy and fast, so I headed over to Wally World and decided to try exactly what you mentioned. I took a 1/2 gallon of Welch's concord and 1/2 gallon of Welch's niagara. Rather than sweeten with sugar, I opted to use 1 can each of the welches concord and niagara frozen concentrate. The SG was 1.098 with that combo, but I opted to water the must down to 1.080 as an experiment with a lower alcohol wine. I plan on sweetening with a mixture of the concentrates as well.
I think I used a package of Premier Cuvee yeast, but I can't find my log book at the moment, but I must say that was the fastest fermenting batch of wine I have ever made. I ended up transferring it at the end of the second day. Tomorrow is the one week point and it is all but clear! The temperature was a perfect 70 deg throughout the whole process. I was hoping for a blush, but I have a pretty dark red still. Not a Cab Sav, but still dark.
As far as spices, I have never added anything to a concord/niagara wine but oak. It sounds like it would be good delicious. Are you planning on fermenting the wine and aging it on spices, or fermenting with spice and removing the spice? I aged a gallon of peach wine (a Welch's wine) with a cinnimon stick for 6 months and made a port using peach brandy and it came out very good.
Keep us posted on what you decide to do and how it turns out. I'd be interested in this.Edited by: pkcook