How can I make a sweet wine out of muscadine grapes?

[mcfire12]

Well my girlfriends sister and brother in law purchased an old farm house that came with fruit trees and grape vines in northwestern Ohio. The grapes have been identified by her family as muscadine grapes.

I'm looking to make a batch of wine for everyone and I'm looking for a pretty sweet wine. Nothing even remotely dry, has to be sweet. From what I can tell, these are sweet grapes? They have some frozen, but I'm sure I could go pick as many as needed this year when they're fresh.

This is going to be my first attempt at this, I make beer not wine. I thought about doing a wine kit first, but really want to make a kick ass wine out of her grapes. The other family members have tried and apparently failed to make a good wine that everyone likes from them.

Help?

 

[DoctorCAD]

The easiest method is to ferment to dry and stabilize and then sweeten to taste.

If you had the professional winery money, you could stop the fermentation (at the sweetness level you wanted) with quick chilling to a very cold temperature and then sterile filter to remove any yeast cells. Thousands of dollars worth of equipment would be needed.

Since I have never had a muscidine wine that I could stand, I'd say start with a "mist" kit, follow the directions exactly and you will have a sweet "kick-ass" wine.

You could always add 5 pounds of frozen muscidines during primary fermentation to enhance the kit, but that requires knowing how to adjust the grape must to the correct pH and TA and brix. That way, you would be using the family grapes and still end up with something drinkable (possibly).

 

[Yooper]

Oh, I like muscadine wine. I even like it dry, with that tart "bite" that it has.

DoctorCAD steered you right. Make a muscadine recipe, stabilize it with sorbate and campden, and sweeten to taste.

We don't have muscadines up north, but I visit Texas each winter, and try to get my friends to share their muscadine (and Mustang grape) wines.

They do require some special handling, with acid reduction. Here's a good link with the whys and hows that will really help: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques15.asp