Marmalade wine

[Richard Jones]

I discovered "Ma Made prepared Seville oranges" in the local supermarket. As it was so cheap I bought 2 of them and decided to make up a 1 gall batch to see how this would go. About 4 lbs of the marmalade concentrate, 3 lbs of sugar, water, pectolase, yeast and tannin. Starting gravity was 1.09 (14%).
It's a week later and I've racked it off the fruit skins to secondary, and the taste is ... sour and "pithy". The initial taste is not too bad, but it has a very enduring sourness I think from the pith. That after taste goes on and on, for about an hour!
Anyhow it's still fermenting and I'm going to leave it for a while. Has anyone been mad enough to try this? Any tips for counterbalancing the sour aftertaste or do you think it'll naturally go away or is there just no hope?
I'll try to update this thread to let you know how it turns out.

 

[bernardsmith]

Short answer is that I have never tried to make a wine from marmalade (as a jam. marmalade is too bitter for me) but if that had been jam I would not have added sugar (fermentable , OK but no added flavor) but would simply have added enough marmalade to get me to the SG of about 1.090

 

[Richard Jones]

This isn't quite marmalade, it's a kind of marmalade concentrate that you make up yourself with sugar (presumably for someone who loves marmalade so much they need to make 8 lbs of the stuff for £2.30 - no idea who would be in the market for this). I tasted it before using it and it was not sweet at all. I believe it's just shredded Seville oranges with citric acid as a preservative. SG after adding sugar was 1.090.

 

[Richard Jones]

I'm on to the second racking already to try and get it off the remaining orange bits. The taste is still bitter from the pith, but maybe not quite so bitter as last week? It's also starting to taste more like marmalade. It's as unpleasant as you can imagine. I'm an eternal optimist though, so let's see how this goes!

 

[Richard Jones]

Quick update October (about 3 months in): Because of the pith it's still incredibly bitter. I've also lost probably 1/3rd of the volume because what drops out doesn't cake well so it requires careful and frequent racking. Not a success! Haven't thrown it down the drain yet.

 

[madscientist451]

The orange wine would probably be best used as an ingredient in a cocktail or to add some flavor to a sour beer or mead. I'd let it age for a while, maybe a year or so and come back to it and see what you can do with it.