First Time with Wine (sparkling peach/Apple wine)

[Whatsgoodmiley]

I'm in the process of brewing 3 batches of beer for my wedding and I decided to brew a 1 gal batch of sparkling peach wine (venue is a peach orchard). I've never made wine. After a few days of researching recipes, I dove into it. i juiced (didn't realize that was a no-no due to tannin leeching, however I may be safe: http://www.widomaker.com/~jnavia/tannins/tanngood.htm) a bunch of nectarines (no peaches to be found) and apples and, long story short, I ended up with a too low OG of 1.030, then beefed that up way too much to 1.160 with way too much sugar. I dumped almost all of that, juiced some frozen peaches, fresh nectarine, and fresh apples, and I currently have 1 gallon of this blend to which I've added Campden and pectic enzyme. I plan on pitching my D47 starter to the mix, which I've just adjusted to be at right over 1.100, hopefully leaving me with around %13 ABV. I also plan to add 1/2 tsp of pectic enzyme and 1 tsp yeast nutrient after allowing the Campden 24 hours to fizz out. I also plan to bottle carbonate (using thick glass wine bottles I'm scavenging from work) My actual questions are:

1) should I worry about tannins leeching from the blending of the fruit? If so, would bentonite help?
2) at bottling should I utilize a yeast with a higher abv tolerance than d47?
3) is there anything special that I should know regarding corking a sparkling wine (am considering wax-sealing them)?
4) do you have experience or advice you would care to share?

Thanks

 

[DoctorCAD]

When is the wedding? With that high SG, you are going to make alcohol, very hot and strong. It will take a year or more for it to mellow out and be able to taste the fruit.

 

[bernardsmith]

Tannins may be a problem for brewers but in wines you want tannins. Obviously you don't want there to be so much tannin that it puckers your lips with every sip but tannins add zip to a wine. In fact if fruit wines do not contain enough tannin wine makers will happily add tannins from grapes or from chestnuts to provide that missing quality. Cannot imagine that nectarines are tannin rich and unless you are using cider apples or crab apples the tannins in eating apples are pretty meagre. I would rest easy over any likely problems with excess tannins. I would however, agree with DoctorCad that with such a high potential ABV you may be looking for a year or two of aging to make this wine pleasantly drinkable.

 

[Whatsgoodmiley]

The wedding is August 14th... I know I'm really cutting it close here. The hope is that I'll have a good product that can be enjoyed young. Most peach wine recipes only require a few months of aging. So if there were a lot of tannins, I wouldn't be able to let it mellow for a year. I hadn't considered the alcohol content and time, though. The highest abv I have achieved before was around 9.5% with an imperial saison (yeast was beast). can anyone offer a suggestion for a more time-manageable ABV? I'm currently thinking 9%

 

[bernardsmith]

I am no expert but I might look for something more like a cider by way of ABV (around 6%) and that should be doable either from fermenting bottled peach nectar or by looking to buckets of peach concentrate that you dilute to a brix of about 10.5. But thinking outside that box you might want to think about something like elderflower wine (with an ABV of closer to 10% ). I routinely make a batch that uses about 1 oz of dried flowers to a gallon of water and enough sugar to raise the gravity to about 1.090 (about 2.25 lbs of sugar dissolved in a gallon of water).
Elderflower wine is traditionally made sparkling (so it is bottled before all the sugar has fermented dry ) and is then a poor man's "champagne". Elderflower wine is drunk without aging...

 

[DoctorCAD]

If you cut the SG to around 1.050 or 1.060, you might be able to drink it by August.

I wouldn't, but it might be OK if you backsweeten or add extra peach concentrate for flavor

 

[Whatsgoodmiley]

Thanks for your input, everyone. I did dilute the OG to 1.065. Now my only issue is that the airlock still isn't bubbling... I though maybe I added too much Campden but it definitely has that really acrid co2 smell you get when you sniff inside the bucket. Idk if people do that, but I do lol