Wild chokecherry wine

The S.G of the straight up juice is 1.035 which is pretty typical for most fruit. That would take me to around 5% so I added 1 Kg of sugar to bring it up to 1.080. I decided to add it before pitching the yeast because the alcohol present toward the end of the fermentation time on the skins has a part to play in extracting the color and flavor components.

I jacked my 1 year old chokecherry port by about 1/4 and when I did it dropped out a lot of sediment. I was surprised because it was pretty clear to start with. I'm wondering if the cold temps precipitated out something.

Anyway, I put it into a pail with some oak to age. It's taken on a lovely sweet, smooth consistency, and the aroma is still distinctly chokecherry. This is going to be a fantastic port in another year or two!

Bumper crop of chokecherries and wild plums this year (and acutally got time to harvest them).

Getting ready to run another couple batches of this excellent wine.

Ok - question about processing the chokecherries prior to primary fermentation.

Whats the best tool for the job to make sure the chokecherries are busted up without smashing the pits (dont want to release the bitterness/arsenic poison)?

What i have tried so far:
- Food Mill - Cant process enough berries fast enough. pits go flying across the room!
- Putting berries in the mesh bag without at least breaking the skin - miss out on a lot of juice and basically waste the chokecherry potential.

What i have heard about:
- Gently smashing with mortar/pestle - probably also time consuming
- Freeze/thaw till they naturally burst - might work, might not. probably should test to see how many iterations it takes
- Saw a picture of yooper's husband using a funnel and a wooden pestle to crush?

Looking for technique/best practice advice here to possibly minimize the time it takes to break the skins to allow the yeast in to do its job.

We just use a mortar and pestle and sort of smash them around.

Hey Yoop, one thing i noticed in the recipe is that it doesn't say when specifically to add the grape concentrate.

Fruit from second batch is currently in the primary.

Accidentally ordered white grape concentrate instead of red. Going to go with it, and see how it goes.

Should be more like a rose.

We're getting a ton of chokecherries, but this will be the first time we make actual wine with them. We usually make mead and we don't use anything but water, honey, fruit and/or spices and yeast. Is there any way to make chokecherry wine without all the additives?
Thanks!

Raygina said:

We're getting a ton of chokecherries, but this will be the first time we make actual wine with them. We usually make mead and we don't use anything but water, honey, fruit and/or spices and yeast. Is there any way to make chokecherry wine without all the additives?
Thanks!

Click to expand...

I just saw this- you never have to add anything at all to wine. The 'additives' are for flavor or for yeast health or to prevent spoilage.

We are making 15 gallons of this today; well, at least starting to by crushing the fruit that has been frozen.