Michigan Natives: Traverse Bay Spiced Cherry?

Hello all,

During the silly season, some friends of ours from Michigan introduced my wife and I to Traverse Bay's Spiced Cherry Wine. Ever since then she's been on me to find some sort of clone recipe for it. (And as we all know if the spouse is on board, we do it) Anyone have anything? According to the website: "This wine is a holiday tradition made from a blend of Cherry Wine with natural flavors of cinnamon, clove, orange, and lemon peel. Enjoy as a warm-up beverage during the cooler months."

Ideas?

-Ben

Uneducated guess.. Make a chery wine and in the secondary or later add a tea bag of spices. Test daily. When spiced the way you like it take out the spice bag. Test the store bought wine to see how sweet it is, the sg. Backsweeten to that level.

Try several one galleon batches. Keep records. Have your spouse do all the tast testing. Maybe you will get one even better then the store bought one!

Or buy a chery mist kit and spice that up. Depending on the tatget abv level and cherry avalibility.

Good luck!


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Two years ago I took the wife and a couple of her friends on a wine tour up the penninsula. Chateau Grand Traverse wasn't the highlight of the trip, if I recall correctly (I don't drink wine, I was only driving.) but it was a cool winery nonetheless.

I'd do as jensmith says, and add the flavorings in the secondary and track the flavor until it's where you like it. I doubt that if the winery was willing to offer information on their process that it could easily or successfully be scaled down the home winemaker. They have a very modern process and equipment.

I'd like to mention that even if we personally didn't appreciate the wine form this place as much as some others (The girls still prefer sweeter wines), the wine tour up the penninsula was very interesting, and this was one of the cool stops because you get a good look at the equipment and the information they give is very interesting, and they have a nice gift shop.

I also liked the places that distill and sell apple and cherry brandy and whatnot. It's also just a lovely place to spend a day.