Part 1. Selecting fruits for making wine
As I already said, you can make wine from almost any fruits and berries – even tomatoes. But it is desirable that the fruits be tasty, aromatic, and that there be a lot of them, that is, an excess - so that there is enough for all other preparations and left for wine. On the other hand, for example, you want to make red wine, but you can’t get it from apples, which are in abundance. And I’m tired of it – it’s all apples and apples.
We need to see what else is growing on the site? For example, there are red currants and chokeberries - but not much. And we don’t need much. We make a blend. For the base we take apple juice — 70%, add chokeberry juice to it - 20% and 10% red currant juice. Let's calculate the composition of the wort, add the required amount of sugar and water, and after fermentation we will get an excellent blended red wine with a unique smell and taste. But this is a virtual example, so to speak.
And from life: at one time, when I didn’t have much choice with berries, I made a good blended wine from a 50/50 mixture of yellow cherry plum (it bears fruit well and is very aromatic) and chokeberry rowan (it gives color). Interestingly, the taste, color and smell of the wine resembled cherries. Everyone took the wine — for cherry.
Now, if you want to give the wine a cherry aroma, I add chokeberry juice to the wort. Although chokeberry wine itself has its own color, taste and smell and cannot be confused with cherry wine.
Actually, I almost always planned wines in advance. What I mean? For example, I wanted to make blackcurrant wine. And the entire harvest goes to harvesting - it’s a very tasty and healthy berry. What to do? I am adding 10 more bushes to the existing currant bushes. And after a couple of years I started making wine from black currants.
When I was young, it was easy to do — whole life ahead. Thus, in my garden I also planted berries that were quite rare for us at that time: gumi, honeysuckle, sea buckthorn, dogwood, irgu. Now I’ve started working on white currant - good, productive and very sweet varieties have appeared. Although I had white currants before, I somehow didn’t pay attention to them. I plan to make a blend of white currants and gumi.
But not everything worked out that I planned. This was the case, for example, with irga. Having read in the literature that in terms of sugar content and the presence of acid, serviceberry berries are close to sweet grapes — I started looking for her. Found it with difficulty, propagated it, grew it - so what? The berry is really good and the plant looks beautiful, especially during flowering - it can be used as a hedge. And very productive — but all my harvest is eaten by birds. They won't even try. And everything I did was useless - they love her so much. I have already given up - let them eat.
By the way, birds are a scourge for winemakers. Especially blackbirds. As far as I know, in large vineyards there is a special staff that is responsible for scaring away and shooting these birds. I will not advise you to engage in shooting, but you will have to monitor the appearance of nests, at least in your own and neighboring areas. Otherwise, you will be left without a harvest.
And birds eat almost any berries. And the more birds there are, the less picky they become. And they reproduce very quickly. And those of them that were bred on your site will fly next year to make nests on your site, well, in extreme cases, on the neighboring one. There are clouds of them in autumn. In the spring, as the berries ripen, the birds begin with honeysuckle, which they feed the chicks, then strawberries, gumi, cherries, serviceberries, and so on. As a rule, the queue doesn’t reach black currants - unless there is absolutely nothing to eat. The only things they don’t eat from me are dogwood and sea buckthorn, and black currants.
And if we talk about what to make wine from and what not to use — I can share my experience, and you can decide. I will post recipes for these and other wines later, upon completion of the presentation of the school materials.
- As I already said, good wine is made from a mixture of cherry plum and chokeberry. The wine turns out cherry in color and tastes and smells like cherries.
- Good wine comes from cherries. It is desirable that the cherries be sweet. The resulting wine is a bright cherry color with a pleasant taste and aroma. It is not advisable that when preparing cherry wine — The cherry pits were infused in the wort for a long time. This wine can give you a headache.
- Good and very healthy wine is obtained from dogwood - but it is quite labor-intensive to collect the fruit. Dogwood berries ripen unevenly and fall off as they ripen. And we know that it is not advisable to pick berries from the ground - the wine may have an unpleasant odor. You have to put something in there. And it started to rain. A week later you arrive, and the berries are already moldy. It turned out that it is best to lay a fine construction synthetic mesh under the tree - it allows water to pass through and the berries do not touch the ground. Dogwood wine is bright red in color, aromatic and pleasant to the taste.
- Very good white wine with a unique taste and aroma is obtained from gumi berries. This beautiful plant from the Far East, with its decorative appearance, pleases the eye at any time of the year, with or without leaves, and in the spring, during flowering, it also emits a unique delicate aroma. True, in our climatic conditions, gumi bushes freeze to the roots approximately once every 5 years. After a couple of years, the bushes grow to the fruiting stage, but we are wasting time. Gumi berries are red in color, juicy, moderately tart, sour-sweet in taste and very beautiful to look at. Interestingly, red gumi berries produce white wine with a light beige tint.
For those who want to make wine from gumi, I will immediately give advice: the must from gumi berries has a very violent first stage of fermentation. Well, very... Therefore, first fill the bottle with wort no more than two-thirds of the volume, otherwise it will overflow. Well, one more thing - wine from gumi is very delicate, easily gets sick and turns into vinegar. To prevent this from happening, it is necessary, first of all, to ensure the tightness of the “water seal”. Do not allow air to enter the wort. When the “water seal” operates correctly, the released carbon dioxide protects the wine from spoilage. - Good white wine, golden in color and with an extraordinary taste and aroma, is made from sea buckthorn. But wine is very labor-intensive in picking berries.
- Good wine is made from strawberries. Only the berries must be clean, without soil and not rotten. It is advisable to make wine from sweet varieties of strawberries. The wine turns out to be a rich red color with the aroma and taste of strawberries. The wine matures quickly (September-October) and can be drunk young — in the year of fruiting. Like grape French Beaujolais Nouveau or Italian Novello.
- Good wine is also made from red currants. The bright red rich color and pleasant sour taste make this wine a good addition for blends with wine materials that are weak in acidity (from apples or pears). This wine can also be consumed in its pure form.
- Excellent wine is made from raspberries, especially sweet ones. A wonderful women's drink. The wine turns out to be a rich red color, with the taste and smell of raspberries. Also a good additive for blends.
- Viburnum wine is original in taste and very beautiful in color. True, I didn’t make special wine from viburnum, but prepared a blend from unused preparations for the winter, ground with sugar: viburnum (70%), sea buckthorn (20%) and Japanese quince (10%). The wine turned out amazing. The aroma, taste and color are extraordinary. Moreover, after fermentation, the specific smell of viburnum, which not everyone likes, disappears. Can you imagine how many vitamins are in such wine?
- I suspect that very good wine can be made from the earliest berries — honeysuckle It begins to bear fruit here in May and is a desirable berry not only for us, but also for birds that try to build a nest right in the middle of the bush. Unfortunately, it has not yet been possible to make wine due to a lack of berries. But I ground them with sugar and froze them for the winter for my children and grandchildren. Amazing taste - especially in winter. By this time, the slight bitterness of the berries disappears and a piquant aftertaste remains. By the way, this is a very good method for assessing future wine - if you want to know what kind of wine will come from some berries, grind them with sugar and evaluate the taste and smell - approximately the same wine will be.
- Grapes, no words, make excellent wine. Moreover, from dark varieties - red, from light - white, and from pink - pink. And if the grapes are also sweet, there are no problems at all for making wine: they squeezed out the juice and set it to “ferment.” At the end of fermentation we will obtain natural grape wine. Drink to your health.
What to do if the grapes are sweet and sour or even sour. Here you need to do as usual when we make fruit wine - add water and sugar to the juice. How many? Calculate, and we already know how. The only advice for those who will make wine from Isabella varieties is to extract juice from the berries only by pressing. No boiling, no fermenting. Throw away the pulp immediately. In this way you will reduce the content of excess acid in the juice and harmful substances found in the skin of the berries. - Well, my favorite berry is black currant. I believe that if grapes have no rivals in making natural wine, then for fruit and berry wines, the No. 1 berry is definitely black currant.
Black currant berries produce a thick, rich red wine, dark ruby or garnet color, with a pleasant aroma and taste. When properly prepared, blackcurrant wine is not inferior to grape wines in color, taste and aroma.
Blackcurrant juice ferments well, is resistant to diseases and blends well. An excellent women's wine is made from a mixture of black currants and raspberries.
In addition, black currant berries are not susceptible to bird attacks.
There are many varieties of black currants. There are early varieties, and there are also late ones, the berries from which do not fall off for a long time. This makes harvesting easier.
Since I had the opportunity to make wine from black currants, I have practically stopped making wines from other fruits - it still doesn’t work out better.
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