Wine Has Too Much Flavor. Help Me Blend

[roadwarriorsvt]

OK, it may be a little too early to judge, but I racked my lilikoi (passion fruit) wine off the gross lees and sampled a little. Since I made it with almost pure passion fruit juice, it has ALOT of flavor. Natural passion fruit juice is tart. I sweetened my sample with a little inverted sugar but it still has a strong fruit flavor. I realize not alot of people have experience with passion fruit but I'm thinking of blending, at least some of it, with another wine. The passion fruit wine will be golden in color. Is there a somewhat neutral tasting wine I could experiment with? A cheap chardonnay or sauvinanc blanc? Again, the wine is not bad, but I think if I could tame it, maybe a 70/30 blend, it wouldn't be so bold flavored. At least I know my next batch can be diluted down a little bit more in the primary. Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[Julie]

I would use chardonnay or a niagara.

 

[Turock]

Yes, I agree with Julie--especially Niagara. Most Chards have an MLF done on them and it could be problematic to blend with it. If you found a fruit forward Chard (without the MLF) that would work well. Another neutral wine is Reisling.

 

[JohnT]

Yup,

Agree with above. Chardonnay would make a great base for your passionfruit wine.

 

[dralarms]

Get some welches grape frozen concentrate, make wine with it and use it to blend. It taste good on its own also.

 

[roadwarriorsvt]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I may just try a small bottle of each and do some bench testing!

 

[deboard]

I use a riesling for my passion fruit base, it turns out good, so people tell me. I think it's good for a white wine, but I'm partial to reds. I'm actually down to the last bottle, I need to make some more. Where do you get your lilikoi? Is it syrup or do you start with fruit?

 

[roadwarriorsvt]

I hire neighborhood kids to go out and pick so I use fresh fruit which I freeze then steam juice. I threw in a pound of golden raisins and 5 Welches White grape concentrate cans (5 gal batch) to give a little body and raise the SG. I used a lilikoi syrup (similar to Aunty Lilikoi's) to bring up the SG to about 1.082. I had to add about a gallon of water to get the acid level under control. I'll try a riesling, niagara and chardanay that has fruit tones to cut down on the strong flavor.

 

[deboard]

Ahh, should have looked at your location! I used Aunty Lilikoi's syrup for mine, but I had to bring it back with me! Next time I'll have to order it online.