Fruit Wine
 

I was reading an article on fruit wine and it said that you need to drink it
young. What is young in this regard and if any of you had made fruit wine
was that your experience?

Seems to me that my grandfather made fruit wine and was drinking it for over
10 years out of a huge cask in the basement.

Fruit Wine
 

In article >, "Tom Kunich" > wrote:
>I was reading an article on fruit wine and it said that you need to drink it
>young. What is young in this regard and if any of you had made fruit wine
>was that your experience?

I've drunk apricot wine as much as ten years after making it, and cherry wine
six years -- both of which made me wish I'd made much more of it ten and six
years previously.

Fruit Wine
 

On Thu, 17 Feb 2011 06:27:18 -0800, Tom Kunich wrote:

> I was reading an article on fruit wine and it said that you need to
> drink it young. What is young in this regard and if any of you had made
> fruit wine was that your experience?
>
> Seems to me that my grandfather made fruit wine and was drinking it for
> over 10 years out of a huge cask in the basement.

Fruit wine is much better at 1.5 years after starting than it is after 1
year after starting. I suppose it gets even better if you can wait longer
but I have read that you should not let it go much more than 3 years or
it starts to go bad. I wouldn't know since I've never saved any of my
wine for that long.

Fruit Wine
 

I've been making fruit wines - without sulfites- for over 30 years.
The darker fruit wines with natural antioxidants last for many years.
Over seven years ago, I started making enough wine each year to put
some aside for testing. There is a myth that fruit wines don't last
as long. There is also a MYTH that wines can not be made without
sulfites. NEITHER IS TRUE!

Lighter, more delicate wines such as peach may be better young. It is
true, they may not last as long. Neither do some white wines which
also have much more sulfites than reds.

There are many variables - the natural antioxident content of the
wine, the quality of the fruit, the yeast you use for fermentation,
the alcohol content, conditions of storage: light and temperature.
Cherry, blackberry, cranberry, elderberry and plum have an excellent
shelf-life.

I am a wine myth-buster. For sulfite free winemaking, see my
website Natural-Winemaking.com.
Anine


On Feb 17, 6:27*am, "Tom Kunich" > wrote:
> I was reading an article on fruit wine and it said that you need to drink it
> young. What is young in this regard and if any of you had made fruit wine
> was that your experience?
>
> Seems to me that my grandfather made fruit wine and was drinking it for over
> 10 years out of a huge cask in the basement.

Fruit Wine
 

In article
>,
Gammagal > wrote:

> I've been making fruit wines - without sulfites- for over 30 years.
> The darker fruit wines with natural antioxidants last for many years.
> Over seven years ago, I started making enough wine each year to put
> some aside for testing. There is a myth that fruit wines don't last
> as long. There is also a MYTH that wines can not be made without
> sulfites. NEITHER IS TRUE!

Wines below a pH of 3.0, may not need SO2 as a preservative for aging.
Otherwise, with SO2 a sweet wine can age for decades. Grape wine, and I
presume with other fruit, begin with the smell (aroma) and taste of the
grape. As the wine ages, the acids and alcohols form esters (bouquet).
As the bouquet develops, the aroma diminishes. Wines made with out SO2
tend to lack fruit, and will brown to some extent. I suppose a wine made
under argon, in steel or glass, and sterile filtered could be made, but
it would be a pain in the butt.

Early wine makers would burn elemental sulfur to make SO2 in an amphora
or barrel (SO2 is heavier than air and will rest on the bottom of the
container), and then fill the container with wine. The Greeks, and
probably the Romans, would then heat their amphora in a smoke house to
pasturise the wine before it was buried in the earth for aging.
--
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw>