Blueberry Port Style Wine?

I had a 5 gal batch of Blueberry wine and I wanted to split it up to get some different flavors out of it, and one of the things I wanted to try was a fortified wine. The orginal recipe for the Blueberry wine was 20lbs of blueberries, 2 lbs of raisins, and I think about 3.5 lbs of sugar. The wine is about 7 months old and stabilized.

For 1 Gal, I plan on backsweetening it to like 6-7% residual sugar, and then adding 1 750ml bottle of brandy, and adding about 2oz of american oak chips (heavy toast). After looking at some of the recipes which used more like 5-6 lbs of fruit per gallon, I was thinking that maybe I should add 2 lbs of frozen blueberries to the wine to let it get some additional body and fruit flavor while aging with the oak, possibly some additional tannin?

Sounds delicious! I know that's not the technical response you were hoping for but I am not not an experienced wine maker but I have been making a "mulled" blueberry wine for the past 4 years that we usually open around the holidays. I used to brew beer years ago and got away from it because of lifes complexities but I never quit playing with fruit wines though. I think blueberries are a perfect pick to add multiple layers of flavor to, they have such a pronounced berry flavor but finish fairly sweet and dry. Your pairing sounds great by the way. I usually use a smidgen of clove, toasted pecan & whiskey, orange peel and honey. I also use raisins but opted for natural, frozen, apple juice concentrate instead of frozen blueberries.
I haven't been very precise in the past as far as measurements or proper in my procedures but I hope to learn, which is why I joined HBT and I hope to hear how this turns out for.

Hi,

Did you ever do this? I have a blueberry mead that I made way too sweet. Was thinking about fortifying it with some brandy. The tannin and extra blueberries sounds like a good idea for sure.
I recently had a late harvest malbec fortified and it was amazing...which has me now looking up foritfy wine recipes.

I say go for it.

I think commercial brandymakers use uncut brandy, so the hugher the abv the better. Ive seen lots of port posts on here that reccomend everclear, but it is pretty tasteless imho. I'm going to use some good uncut apple shine in my cherry port

I did go ahead with the recipe and in my opinion it turned out fantastic, wish I would have made more. I've got a six pack of beer bottles and 1 wine bottle to last me through the winter!

I don't have my notes, but I don't think I added any addtional juice or fruit like I had originally thought about doing. It didn't need any additional tannin, I guess the oak added some (used Heavy toasted I think). I think I mixed 1 750ml of brandy to the 1 gal batch of wine, I used store bought brandy mostly because I didn't have any other options and since it had been aged somewhat in oak it worked with the profile I was going for.

I might have soaked the chips in brandy as well for sanitizing purposes, or maybe I had some cheap port sitting around that I used, not sure.

I have a bottle of brandy and nothing to do with it..as I don't really care for brandy on its own. Mixing it with the blueberry mead could be just the thing to do!

ErinRae...you can also play with making flavored brandies which can be used to further engance your wines. For example, toast pecans in ovwn then place in glass jar, cover wirh same amount brown sugar and twice the amount of brandy. Seal and allow to age for at least 90 days. Shake jar daily for the first two weeks. This makes an awesome praline like brandy and the nuts are awesome on ice cream or in baked goods.
Sliced fresh bananas covered in brandy, dried fruit plus sugar covered in brandy. The options are endless! Currently making a banana flavored brandy as I plan to fortify some banana wine with it. Have used cherry and raspberry brandy in chocolate fruit wines and simple fruit wines...plus the fruit enhanced brandy is great to sooth cold symptoms.

For fortifying just remember that brandy is lower proof, usually, than pure grain alcohols...so you can usually use far less of pure grain whwn fortifying,,plus pure grain is neutral in flavor and you will not lose the flavor of your wine. You can also make flavor infused pure grain if you want to, and add a bit more flavor to your final product wgen fortifying. I do the exact same thing wirh pure grain as I do with brandy when making flavor enhancements...I just do not use the pure grain to sooth a cold, but you could.

Mmmm praline brandy sounds great!! Maybe I'll try that and also try using half my blueberry mead with brandy and then pack more blueberries in.

Thanks!