Wine from freeze-concentrated juice

[Pataka]

I've been wondering about something for a while, and there doesn't seem to be a whole lot on the web about it.

I have a Loquat tree that has been a prolific fruiter for a few years now. in fact, it's the reason I got started in winemaking to begin with. I've picked a lot of fruit from it, and made a lot of wine. I also had a lot stored in the freezer, and as it was taking up space while my fermenters were full, I decided to try and reduce the space it occupied.

I juiced the fruit, then froze the juice. I later thawed the frozen juice, keeping only the coloured liquid that contained sugar, refroze that. I did that a couple of times. I'm now at the stage where I have about 2L of quite highly concentrated juice - so high that it maxes out the brix scale on my hydrometer. At a guess, it's probably around 30 brix.

it got me thinking, what if I made wine with that stuff only, perhaps using a yeast that won't convert all sugars into alcohol. Would it be the fruit wine equivalent of an ice wine/late harvest/dessert wine, or would it just be plain awful?

Has anyone tried this?

 

[9226356]

Im about to try something similar to this. My buddy dropped off two 5 gallon buckets of "apple cider" for me to turn into wine/hard cider ( a combination of apples, maple syrup and elderberries)
When I tasted it it was good and very drinkable but the flavor seemed a little watered down.
I am going to try to transfer it to 5 gallon carboys and freeze. then tip the carboys upside down into the primary and let it thaw and drip concentrated juice behind.


I would be hesitant to try to ferment anything that high of a gravity. One, the yeast may not start at all due to osmotic pressure. Two, your yeast may surpass their tolerance threshold and you may end up with something beyond the ABV that you are looking for.

My reccomendation would be to reserve some of the concentrate. dilute to your desired ABV then backsweeten with concentrate.

 

[Pataka]

That's true. Another thought I had after I posted that was that the acidity is likely to be too high if using nothing but concentrate. I think backsweetening is probably way to go as it gives more control over the end result.

The only issue with backsweetening using concentrate is that you're introducing another period of time for the wine to clear, as the concentrate will be cloudy.

 

[9226356]

while true that using the original concentrate after fermentation is complete will add to the time required for clearing. The sweetness will be more integrated and will bring back the original flavor and aroma of the fruit that may have been driven out during fermentation.

I am not familiar with loquats as far as acid content.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Pataka, Have never made wine from loquats and like 9226356 above, I don't know the pH of their juice but assuming that you can ensure that the pH of the must won't drop below about 3.5 - 3.2 then simply concentrating the juice will provide you with a far more flavor rich wine. I have frozen apple juice (cider) to double the gravity and so all the sugars are coming from the apples and the flavor and aromatic molecules are increased too. (to double the gravity (say, from 1.045 to 1.090 you need to collect the first 1/3 of the thawing juice - so the "loss" of volume is not insignificant (3 gallons of juice produces 1 gallon of must). That said:
I think that this is similar to an ice wine but the key difference is that with true ice wines the fruit itself ripens as the temperature touches freezing. The amount of juice produced by the fruit is itself less - so this mechanical version of an ice wine uses regularly ripened fruit. The character of the juice will be different. BUT I don't know that loquats ripen in the winter the way that some
grapes do so your idea may be the only way to create an ice-wine loquat wine.