Fruit Wine (From Scratch) is Incredible

Making fruit wine is fun, weird, and character-building as it requires patience and quiet focus. But you get a big reward when your tasty and unique wine is ready.

I still have plum wine that I aged over ten years ago and occasionally pop open for lucky friends. It tastes like heaven.

Here is a basic recipe that I use for making wine. I also sometimes screw up and do it all wrong and it turns out to be the best batch ever. So get creative. The downside is you will find out if it sucks over a year from now when it’s ready.

The essential fact to keep in mind is that alcohol needs sugar. Sugar turns fruit juice into wine.

An instructive and cautionary tale:

In the days of yore at my jam factory in Greenpoint, was gifted some gorgeous plums from a farmer. But we were busy and did not have time to use them right away. I told my team, “put them in a cambro [a large lidded bucket] and cover them in sugar.” They did this and we promtly forgot about them. We were lucky and they added just the right amount, because two months later I opened the cambro and there was a lava lamp bubbling vat of boozy plums. They tasted and smelled like heaven. We strained them and followed a number of the instructions below, but we never needed to add yeast because they used their own. They had already fermented.

That wine was the best I ever made. Un-recreatable.

Fruit wine recipe

Ingredients

  • 4 –6 pounds fresh fruit cut into small pieces

  • 2 pounds sugar

  • 3 quarts water boiled

  • Juice of 1 lemon

  • 6 drops liquid pectic enzyme

  • 1 can frozen white grape juice concentrate (optional)

  • 1 packet wine yeast champagne or Montrachet strains

Instructions

  • Place the fruit in a fermentation bag inside a sanitized primary fermenter. OR place fruit in a large clean container. Like a gallon jar. Combine the sugar with 2 quarts of the hot water and pour over the fruit. Add the lemon juice, pectic enzyme, and grape juice concentrate (if using), and additional boiled, cooled water to bring the water level up to 1½ gallons. When the temperature cools to 72°F (22°C), test the specific gravity or taste the liquid. It should taste quite sweet, as sweet as light syrup. Sprinkle on the yeast and cover the primary fermenter after providing a way for gases to escape, such as using an airlock or covering the container securely with several folds of cheesecloth or a clean towel (this is what I do).

  • At least once a day for 5 to 6 days, use clean hands to knead the fruit in the fermentation bag and turn it, so a different side floats to the top. The liquid will become cloudy and slightly fizzy; with some fruits, large bubbles form on the top.

  • Taste the liquid before you wash your hands. The sugar level should drop a lot by the fifth day.

After 7 to 9 days

  • When the fruit in the fermentation bag has become a gooey mess, lift it from the container and let the juice drip back into the wine. Spend a few minutes with this, but do not squeeze the bag. Compost the fermented fruit, and let the wine rest for a couple of days.

  • Without jiggling the wine, siphon the clear part into a clean glass bottle that can be fitted with an airlock. Allow about 4 inches of space between the top of the liquid and the bottom of the airlock. If needed, top off the wine with boiled, cooled water to bring the liquid to this level. Install the airlock.

  • Place the wine in a dark place where temperatures range between 60 and 70°F (16 and 21°C). Cover the bottle with a cloth sleeve to protect the wine from light, which can change its color. Old T-shirts make convenient wine covers for big bottles.

1month later

  • Siphon the wine again (this is called racking; shown below) into a clean bottle. Move the wine to a cool place, and check it monthly to make sure the airlock is clean and functioning properly. Rack again after 3 months.

  • If you do not use sulfites to kill any live yeasts remaining in the wine, you must wait for the wine to become “dry,” or without sugars, to consider bottling it. This takes about 6 months. During the last month, the wine should be moved to normal room temperatures, just in case higher temps stimulate activity by surviving yeast.

  • Wine is finished and ready to bottle when no air can be seen moving through the airlock for several days, and no bubbles are present around the top edge of the wine. When in doubt, wait. Wine that is bottled before it becomes still will pop its cork, which creates a nasty mess.

  • Allow the bottled wine to age for at least a year before tasting it. Wine that tastes too rough to swallow at bottling time often matures into amazing wine, but you must give it time. Two years is not too long to wait for naturally made wine from your organically grown fruits. Or 10 years if you are Laena.

  • The process of waiting, the patience, is really truly worth it. Your life will be different, things will be different and evolved when your wine is ready. How exciting is that?

Laena McCarthy