A Question About Fruit Wines From Scratch

billc68 · 06-09-2010, 09:15 PM

I have been looking at a few recipes for fruit wines, specifically plums and all of them include water and sugar in the recipe. Is there any reason why if I get a high enough specific gravity, I could use pure juice and yeast, and nothing else?
I am hoping to juice out enough plums this fall to get 5 gallons of pure juice, I want to add ZERO sugar, however I am willing to add bottled juice if I do not get enough from my trees. Maybe blueberry, grape or apple juice.

Is there even enough sugar in damson plums to do this? They are damn sweet in early fall.

EoinMag · 06-09-2010, 11:16 PM

I've only ever used about ten kilos of plum juice and pulp for 6 gallons, the rest I topped up with sugar and water. Try it out, measure the OG then top it up with sugar if it's not sufficient, it'd definitely be a tasty wine.

boo boo · 06-09-2010, 11:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by billc68

Is there even enough sugar in damson plums to do this? They are damn sweet in early fall.

I have a Damson tree and last year wanted to make a wine out of them. My wife nixed the idea. She loves them too much.

A pure fruit wine sans sugar would IMO have a lot of flavour. A lot better than with adding sugar like I do to my Blueberry wine. I guess it would depend on what style of wine you wanted... how dry you need to go.

billc68 · 06-10-2010, 12:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boo boo

I have a Damson tree and last year wanted to make a wine out of them. My wife nixed the idea. She loves them too much.

About 7 or 8 years ago, I dug up a bunch from my uncle's yard and stuffed them in a compact station wagon, I already had one tree doing quite well and now I have about 10 of which 5 are over 15 ft high and produce at least 10 gallons of fruit every second year, on the off years I get about 1/3 of that. It looks promising for this year.
I can only imagine when the other 5 or so trees are producing, what the yields will be like.

2ndGenBrewer · 06-10-2010, 01:02 AM

I'd say you would have great success doing the batch from scratch. Plum's are #3 on the list of fermentable fruit sugars just below grapes and apples. My very fist batch of fruit wine was just plums and apple juice (50/50) and it taste great. It turned out semi-sweet and even naturally carbed in the bottle.

billc68 · 06-10-2010, 01:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 2ndGenBrewer

I'd say you would have great success doing the batch from scratch. Plum's are #3 on the list of fermentable fruit sugars just below grapes and apples. My very fist batch of fruit wine was just plums and apple juice (50/50) and it taste great. It turned out semi-sweet and even naturally carbed in the bottle.

What's number 4 and 5?
Around here Strawberries can be had pretty cheap depending on the season, I have a source for blueberries (or can just harvest wild ones) And I am willing toplant anything.

Pear must be relatively close to apple? I have two trees but nothing yet, doesn't look like any of the blossoms took this year either.