Can I use canned peaches for wine??

Just started making wines and I usually buy frozen but right now berries, cherries, and peaches around the stores are about $3.50/lb and I don't feel like spending $60 on making something I'm not totally sure will turn out. Small batches are great, but waiting a year to find out you did a few gallons right or wrong? I'm just too impatient for that, I know, wrong hobby.
So aside from making sure there are no preservatives, do canned peaches make a good peach wine? Should I increase the amount to make up for a better peach flavor? Is generic ok or better to stick with a brand?

It will make a wine that's for sure, wether or not it is good is all in the eyes of the beholder. I made up a few batches of canned peach and pear wine last fall and they don't taste half bad! I'm sure they'll mellow with a few more months aging. Check out http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques21.asp for a canned recipe and buy Terry Garey's book, The Joy of Home Winemaking (Its a great book for cheap, delicious country wines!)

Oddly, in Garey's book, the amount of canned fruit vs fresh/frozen fruit is lower. Meaning, in a recipe calling for 3 lbs of fruit, it would be more like 2 cans, which is nowhere near 3 lbs.

As for brand vs. generic, I would just taste them and see what you think. If it (either one) is horrible, then making wine out of it really can't improve it. Its like trying to build a house out of rotten lumber. If you have good lumber, well then, here's hoping you are good at building houses to end up with a good house.

One question, if I even decide to try this, why don't they list a dry weight for canned fruits? If I'm looking at a can that is 29oz how much of that is syrup? I guess since you can use the syrup it's ok, but it seems like there is almost as much syrup in a can as there is peach. I was thinking of maybe going with the canned product and then adding some Peach nectar (found some in the organic section of the store, also different brand near Mexican food) to add color and hopefully more flavor. What I've heard the most is canned fruit will have little to no aroma and mild flavor.
So, according to the referred book, instead of 15lbs of fruit I could use like 12 cans? Any harm in over doing it with fruit, like 16 cans for that same amount?

You are suppose to use the syrup, hence the reasons it doesn't give dry weights.

Making wine is not an exact science, but an art. At the end of Garey's first recipe for a really simple apple wine, there are tons of suggestions like increasing the apple juice concentrate, adding more sugar instead, etc. I know an old man who manages not to add any water to make peach wine. You are just going to have experiment. And experiment. And experiment some more!

CandleWineProject said:

You are just going to have experiment. And experiment. And experiment some more!

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This is such a tedious hobby, I mean I have to drink, and drink, and drink in the name of research and development Seems like all the more reason to keep trying new stuff.