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Obviously, fruit or berry wine is also made from grapes. However, wine made from it is always called grape wine, while wines made from other fruits and berries are called fruit or berry wines, often without specifying which particular berry or fruit they are made from.
Over the centuries of grape cultivation, people have greatly improved the quality of the original wild grapes and bred a lot of different varieties that give wines of various qualities. Therefore, grapes have taken a special place among other fruit plants.
Fruit wine can be made from all kinds of fruits, and even some garden plants, for example: watermelons, melons, rhubarb, parsnips, beets and some other plants.
Fundamentals of fruit winemaking
Fruit wine is prepared in exactly the same ways that are used in grape winemaking, but since this business is relatively young, gardeners have not yet bred enough varieties of fruits and berries that, like grapes, would be suitable for making wine of any quality. Therefore, the production of fruit wines is somewhat more complicated than grape winemaking and has a number of features and differences.
List of all stages of fruit wine making
Preparation of fruits and berries for processing
Extraction of juice from fruits and berries
Juice research
Flavoring, improving juice and making wort from it
Setting for fermentation
Infection of wort with yeast fungi
violent fermentation
First transfusion
Silent fermentation and care
Second and subsequent transfusions of wine
Maturation and aging of wine
Cleaning, clarification and preparation of wine for bottling
Bottling wine
Wine preservation and bottle aging
Treatment of diseases and defects of wine
The difference between regular and fruit wine
When preparing many fruits and berries for extracting juice from them, it is often necessary to remove large grains, stones (from cherries, plums, apricots, peaches) and crush or crush the fruits into smaller pieces – all this does not have to be done in grape winemaking.
The extraction of juice is carried out in the same way as in grape winemaking, however, in fruit winemaking, it is almost always necessary to improve the resulting juice, flavor it with certain substances, in order to subsequently obtain a wine of the desired strength and taste.
Almost all fruits and berries contain very little sugar and a lot of acid, so their pure juice gives a weak wine, not strong, but too sour. This lack of juice of berries and fruits has to be eliminated in different ways.
So, for example, to reduce acidity, you have to dilute the juice with water, flavor it with lime and other salts, mix the juices of different fruits and berries to get wine of the desired strength – you have to add sugar, honey, etc., also add protein substances to increase food for yeasts, etc.
All this has to be done only because so far there are few varieties of fruits and berries that would give juice containing enough sugar and acid to produce wine of the desired taste.
In grape winemaking, this has to be done less frequently, only when producing certain varieties of wines (sweetened, strong, semi-vintage, etc.).
In all other respects, fruit wine is prepared in exactly the same way as grape wine, without any differences whatsoever.
When preparing fruit wine, the following rules must be observed:
All utensils, tools and implements, as well as the hands of the worker, must always be immaculately clean, at the end of work everything must be thoroughly washed with soap (preferably baking soda), and rinsed with clean water before starting work.
Iron or copper utensils, untinned or tinned with lead, should be avoided, because from it the wine is enriched with harmful impurities and can be spoiled.
If there are no other dishes, then, using iron (tin) dishes, you should work quickly so that the juice does not remain in it for more than 15–30 minutes, rinse more often and do not leave juice in it for a long time.
It is better to use enameled, glass, earthenware or wooden utensils, also cleanly washed. Food-grade plastic is not recommended due to its unpredictable result, and the correct labeling in this case does not give a 100% guarantee.
A selection of fruit wine recipes from Vzboltay
Apricot wine
Cherry plum wine
Wine made from orange
Cowberry wine
blueberry wine
Blackberry wine
Wine made from strawberries
Fig wine
Wine from irgi
Wine from Kalina
Dogwood wine
Strawberry wine
Wine from red ashberry
Sea buckthorn wine
Wine from rhubarb
Persimmon wine
Cherry wine
blueberry wine
Wine from aronia
Mulberry wine
Wine from apples
Elderberry wine
Pomegranate wine
Raspberry wine
peach wine
Plum wine
Currant wine
Relevance: 29.12.2019
Tags: wine and vermouth