Why do all fruit wine recipes add water?

[plum crazy]

Does anyone know? I've just started my very first batch of plum wine. I followed a recipe which called for adding both sugar and water to the crushed plums as well all the usual wine making ingreds. Since then, I've been reading more (ok a lot. . .but it is fascinating) about making wine and also compared a lot of fruit wine recipes. The latter always calls for h20, but no one adds water to grape-based wine. Why should it be added to fruit wines? Doesn't it just dilute the must?

 

[Luc]

In grapes normally everything is balanced.
The sugar the flavor and the acid is all in balance.

In fruit wines generally the balance is off.
Most fruits have way to much acid to taste good.
Therefore the juice is dilluted, but then there will be a shortage
of sugars, so sugar is added.

That is it basically.

Have you read the free books on internet from Lum Eisenman etc ?
If not take a look at :

http://www.geocities.com/lumeisenman/contents.html
http://www.geocities.com/mipeman/
http://wineserver.ucdavis.edu/content.php?category=Winemaking

And ther is a lot more on the net available.

Luc