Please allow me to beat my apple wine dead horse once again:

This is my first time to try apple wine. The wine has now clarified
and willl likely be bottled after a few more weeks of cold
stabilization. Problem is there doesn't seem to be much apple
character at this point in the process. I can barely detect any hint
of apple in the aroma or taste. Is this temporary or par for the
course with apple wine?

Thanks,
Charles

Apple wine, especially if you've fined and filtered it, doesn't have a
strong apple aroma or taste. All that clarification and racking will leave
you with a white wine that tastes, well, pretty much like a white wine.

Back in my early winemaking days in the 1990's, we had a big ole winesap
apple tree in the back yard which had lots of apples. I picked up the
windfalls, actually cut them by hand and ran them through a juicing machine
skins and all (it was a lot of work), bumped the sugar way up, and made a
fairly dry wine (a little residual sugar) that I racked only twice and added
no finings. This made a moderately oxidized, rough wine ... but you know,
we enjoyed it, and it definitely had some "apple character."

In 2003, on the other hand, we made some wine from cider, fined it with
PVPP, and ended up with something very much like a nice german white wine
.... very nice chilled, you'd never know an apple had been involved. It was
particularly good because the cider was from a produce stand where they had
made it from a blend of a bunch of different apples.

One thing you can do to give your wine a bit more "apple" character is bump
up the malic acid content (malic acid tastes a bit "appley") ... acid blend
is generally one third malic acid. To preserve the apple flavor, fine less,
rack less, and definitely avoid a MLF. You could add some apple flavoring
at the end, but in my opinion that's cheating ). Better is to reserve
some of the unfermented apple juice, let it settle/clarify in the fridge if
it's cloudy, and add that to the wine prior to bottling (make sure to add
potassium sorbate to prevent fermentation for restarting in the bottle).

The final thing you should ask yourself is if you'd rather be drinking hard
cider, and if that's the case, look into making that instead of apple wine.

Jon
[Check out my winemaking homepage
http://users.rcn.com/jcgilliam/Southeast_PA_Winemaker/!]



"Charles E" > wrote in message
...
> Please allow me to beat my apple wine dead horse once again:
>
> This is my first time to try apple wine. The wine has now clarified
> and willl likely be bottled after a few more weeks of cold
> stabilization. Problem is there doesn't seem to be much apple
> character at this point in the process. I can barely detect any hint
> of apple in the aroma or taste. Is this temporary or par for the
> course with apple wine?
>
> Thanks,
> Charles

I sweetened mine a little at bottling..brought back a little apple
taste.

And you have a point about hard cider.

Higher alcohol can really detract from fruit flavor. Keep the alcohol
content down.

You are exactly right. Apple is famous for this. Dry apple wine tastes
like white wine. Sweeten it a bit and the apple comes back.

A lot of people are surprised at this but do you expect a dry red wine to
taste like fresh grapes?

Ray

"tessamess" > wrote in message
oups.com...
>I sweetened mine a little at bottling..brought back a little apple
> taste.
>

I am also doing Apple Cider Wine - when you say sweeten, how much did
you use per gallon? I assume you inverted sugar (2/3'rds sugar to 1/3
water) or did you?
DAve

tessamess wrote:
> I sweetened mine a little at bottling..brought back a little apple
> taste.
>

Not to nitpick, but the ratio of sugar to water does not matter.

"invert" sugar is just sucrose that has been cleaved into its
monosaccarides glucose and fructose through heating. This process is
acid catalyzed so it helps to add a pinch of acid to the water,
although it will work without it...it just takes longer, (since all
water has some free H+ in it)

I just added a fourth cup of regular table sugar( boiled in a small
amount of water) for a gallon of apple wine.

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 06:35:50 -0500, "Jon Gilliam" >
wrote:

>Apple wine, especially if you've fined and filtered it, doesn't have a
>strong apple aroma or taste. All that clarification and racking will leave
>you with a white wine that tastes, well, pretty much like a white wine.

I did fine with bentonite.

>In 2003, on the other hand, we made some wine from cider, fined it with
>PVPP, and ended up with something very much like a nice german white wine
>... very nice chilled, you'd never know an apple had been involved. It was
>particularly good because the cider was from a produce stand where they had
>made it from a blend of a bunch of different apples.

I've heard that the best apple wine and apple juice comes from a
combination of different types of apples. Apparently you get a better
flavor, acid, and sugar blend. I actually used 4 different types of
apples in my wine with varying acidity and tastes. I'm hoping my
finished wine tastes something like a german white wine. I stopped
fermentation at 3 BRIX to keep some sugar and keep alcohol around
11.5%.
>
>One thing you can do to give your wine a bit more "apple" character is bump
>up the malic acid content (malic acid tastes a bit "appley") ... acid blend
>is generally one third malic acid. To preserve the apple flavor, fine less,
>rack less, and definitely avoid a MLF.

I did some acid trials and found the Malic to be a bit harsh. However,
it definitely does represent apple character better than others. On a
suggestion from a professional apple winemaker friend, I used a dash
of citric acid instead. Even though apple has little or no native
citric, a dash gives the wine a crisp taste that I really liked.
>

>
>"Charles E" > wrote in message
.. .
>> Please allow me to beat my apple wine dead horse once again:
>>
>> This is my first time to try apple wine. The wine has now clarified
>> and willl likely be bottled after a few more weeks of cold
>> stabilization. Problem is there doesn't seem to be much apple
>> character at this point in the process. I can barely detect any hint
>> of apple in the aroma or taste. Is this temporary or par for the
>> course with apple wine?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Charles
>

>A lot of people are surprised at this but do you expect a dry red wine to
>taste like fresh grapes?

Good point!

It does not take much. Maybe as little as a couple of tablespoons. Do it
to taste. You might want to try using a good honey instead of sugar. It
will add an interesting aroma. If you read any ancient literature you read
about "honied wine".

Ray

"DAve Allison" > wrote in message
...
>I am also doing Apple Cider Wine - when you say sweeten, how much did you
>use per gallon? I assume you inverted sugar (2/3'rds sugar to 1/3 water) or
>did you?
> DAve
>
> tessamess wrote:
>> I sweetened mine a little at bottling..brought back a little apple
>> taste.
>>

You can always add a bottle 4 oz of apple flavoring. I do it when I
make hard cider because it's usually dry and the cider taste is very
weak.