> I was given quite a lot of SouthRidge Farms Montmorecy Tart Cherry
> Juice Concentrate. Does anyone have a recipe/procedure for making wine
I think you can approach this in one of two ways:
1) Reconstitute the juice and measure the volume, estimate the amount
of fruit required to produce that volume of juice, then use a recipe
scaled to that amount of fruit. If you don't know, use 15 lb/gallon as
an estimate. Jack's site has a recipe for making wine from Morello
cherries, which are also tart, called "Cherry Wine [Dry] (3)" on this
page:
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques61.asp
2) Another approach would be to decide on appropriate SG and TA levels,
reconstitute the juice, add sugar and acid to your target then pitch
the yeast.
An OG of 1.090 is a good starting point, but there has been some
discussion of making fruit wines to a lower alcohol level than
commercial grape wines. If you wanted to try that, then you might
consider an OG of 1.075-1.080, which would give you 10-11% alcohol.
White wine must normally has a TA of about 7-9 g/L. For red wine musts
it's a little lower, maybe 6-8 g/L. Most people think cherry wine ought
to be a red, but since you have juice you might want to make it as a
"white". You might also let the TA of your juice guide you; if it's
already at the high end, or higher than, the TA for white wine musts
you might make it as a "white" to minimize the amount of acid
reduction. If you decided to make a lower alcohol wine, then you may
want to lower your target acid as well.
If you decide to make your wine as a red, then you'll want to think
about tannin. You're using juice, so you wont have any skin contact.
The thing is, I really don't know how much to add. 1/4 tsp per gallon
is common, so you might start with that. I would think you'd need more
than that and I would probably use 1/2 tsp per gallon myself. Maybe
someone who knows more can chime in on this. On the other hand, if
you're making it as a "white", then you can just add a minimal amount
or skip the tannin altogether.
Good luck, and let us know how it turns out,
Erroll