glad heart > wrote in message
om...
> Racked my crab apple, blueberry, and apricot off their secondary
> sediments for some quiet time before racking/clarifying later this
> winter.
>
> Blueberry is thin and very tart but hopeful (bouquet and taste-wise).
> TA: 6.5
>
> Crab apple / apple tastes like nothing and looks like contaminated
> water in a wine glass. TA: 7.5
>
> Apricot tastes nothing at all like apricots. TA: 5.5
>
> All are 60 days old. My first attempt at country wines. Grape wines
> are truly heavenly (relatively) at this stage.
>
> Is there any hope or am I just getting really good at washing bottles?

In my (very limited) experience - I only started making country wines this
year - they keep on changing in flavour! I had what I thought was going to
be a revolting rosehip - tasted of nothing very much except bitterness at
first racking, but a couple of weeks later and wow! - it's now like a full
bodied dry white - and it's still very young of course. I'm hoping the same
will happen to the still very bitter rowanberry, but I'm not convinced!

Just keep persevering - that's what I'm doing - every time I taste one of
the wines (and I currently have 22 different ones on the go - caught the bug
in a bad way!) it's changed. I'm planning to keep them for at least a year
before making up my mind - and I'll be happy if half of them turn out to be
worth the effort. The process of discovery is, for me, half the thrill -
after all, it's much easier to pop out to the shops and buy a bottle of
wine!

The only wine I've made which tasted remotely like the fruit it was made
from was a black cherry kit wine - and unfortunately I discovered that I'm
not that keen on black cherries in wine form!

Anyway, good luck with yours, and let us know how they progress!

Jo


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