How to Know if Wine Went Bad?

[vbkid]

I'll try to keep this short!
I've made maybe a dozen fruit/tea wines over the past few years. Apple, pear, green tea & ginger, etc.
About 3 months ago, I started 2 1 gallon batches of Kiwi Wine and Prickley Pear wine, both from about 6 pounds of fresh fruit. Fermented in primary about a week, strained into secondary and they were rapidly bubbling away for weeks. Tonight, I decided to transfer them. I sampled each. Neither tastes "bad", but they also don't really taste like their original fruit. Both are pretty dry, not much sugar content left.
Should I be at all concerned? Should I backsweeten them perhaps? Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks,
Kyle

 

[ShadesManna]

What else did you use for the recipes? Sometimes, a recipe with one flavor (all kiwi, nothing else) can taste drastically different once the yeast ferments out most or all of the sugars. What does a kiwi taste like when it's not sweet? What does prickly pear taste like without any sugars?

It's also possible that a faster ferment led to more loss of flavor. Sometimes when the ferment is too quick and violent, the bubbles coming out of the vapor lock smell amazing! This could mean that a lot of the fruit flavors literally are gone with the wind.

Once the wines are finished, you could try stabilizing, and back sweetening, to see if it helps restore some of the fruit flavors you were seeking. Every batch is an experiment - especially when recipes involve fruits that are not often used in wine making.

 

[Dinadan]

I sometimes make beer with apple juice. Basically I make it just as if the apple juice were malt extract. Mine tends to be very dry, and if I did not know it were made with apple I probably would not guess from the taste, though the taste is quite distinct from malt beer. It sounds like you have something kind of like what I make. I guess that if you do not like it then it is bad, but that is the way I like it so for me it would be good. It does not sound bad in the sense of being spoiled.

 

[Bocochoco]

When I did a prickly pear last year the d47 yeast left a tremendous amount of flavor at 9.5%abv with yeast nutrient added fermented at 70F.
Dry wine tends to not taste that great when young but gets better with age.
There's quite a few factors to consider to preserve flavor. Perhaps write up all your notes here and we can help more.
Actual bad wine will be BAD! As in, tastes like vinegar or like someone added acetone to it.
I suppose it wouldnt be possible to be able to taste botulinium toxin but idk anyone outside of a jailcell who's gotten sick from homemade wine unless it was racked in non-food grade plastic.