Wine from black and red currants at home – 6 recipes

Winemakers love currants. Usually it gives good yields, the berry ferments well without cultural yeast and wine-making additives, and the wine turns out to be tasty and extraordinary. True, there are some difficulties with its processing, mainly associated with the extraction of juice. But the output pleases – from one liter of black currant you can get up to 2,5 liters of the finished product. In general, the fault of the currant be!

To date, blackcurrant wine is the best fruit and berry wine that I have ever tasted. This is a very expressive, pleasant, spicy, drinkable drink, and it doesn’t matter at all whether there is a lot of sugar in it or there is none at all. Very often, currants are used in combination with other berries and fruits. Homemade blackcurrant wine is very spicy and rich, but tart, so the berry is added to wines made from less aromatic wine material. Redcurrant, on the contrary, has an interesting, balanced taste, but the berry itself is not aromatic, therefore, when making redcurrant wine, more aromatic wine material is added to it, for example, the same blackcurrant.

Blackcurrant wine recipes

Blackcurrant wine has an outstanding, spicy aroma, but table wines from it turn out to be too tart (for an amateur, I am a fan), which is usually corrected by adding sugar. That is why dessert and liqueur wines are best obtained from blackcurrant. All varieties are suitable for winemaking, but it is better to pay attention to sweet ones: Loshitskaya, Centaur, Leah fertile, Baskopsky Giant, Belarusian sweet, etc. Blackcurrant juice is quite sour and has a very rich taste, so it can be safely diluted with plenty of water.

The most time-consuming step in making wine from this berry is the extraction of this very juice. Blackcurrant has a rather tough skin, in which the lion’s share of flavoring substances is imprisoned. The pulp is very slimy and gives the juice very reluctantly. Only two generally recognized wine-making technologies for obtaining juice will help save the situation: fermentation and Cahors technology. You can familiarize yourself with the cahors scheme in Don Pomazan’s article on cooking cahors, and we will touch on it from a completely different angle, using a pressure cooker. Fermentation, on the other hand, needs no introduction and is the best solution for obtaining juice from almost all types of fruit and berry raw materials, without affecting the freshness of the taste of the drink. Let’s go!

A simple blackcurrant wine recipe without yeast

It is very simple to make proportions for blackcurrant wine on savages: 2 parts of berries (it is more reliable to count by the volume of berry puree), 3 parts of water and 1-1,5 parts of sugar / glucose / fructose. For sugar: sucrose = 1 unit. “sweets”, fructose = 1,7 units. “Sweets”, glucose (dextrose) = 0,7 units. sweets. We combine, for example, like this:

How to cook:

1. Sort the berries, do not wash! (wild yeast lives on them, which should quickly start alcoholic fermentation), pour into a fermentation container with a wide neck and chop – with your hands, feet, blender (at low speed so as not to crush the bone), mixer (at low speed so as not to crush bone) or in any other suitable way. Add water and half of the sugar to the crushed berry (dissolve the sugar in warm water and then pour the berries with syrup that has cooled to 25 degrees). The fermentation tank can be filled no more than 2/3 – blackcurrant ferments very actively and foams a lot.
2. Cover the container with gauze in several layers and leave for 2-10 days in a dark place where the berries will ferment, giving off valuable juice (and tannins from the skins, which make the wine more resistant to disease). If after 24 hours there are no signs of fermentation, you can add cooked starter from any other berry or a couple of glasses of already fermenting wort to the fermenter. A couple of times a day, a hat of pulp, which will be collected on the surface, must be knocked down, stirring the wort with a clean hand or a wooden spatula. Currants will give up most of the juice and aromatic substances after two days of rapid fermentation, but it is better to wait longer until the pulp loses color and becomes light.
3. Filter the fermented wort from the pulp. To do this, the pulp can be carefully collected with a saucepan or colander, and the juice can be poured into fermentation containers with a narrow neck under a water seal. You can also use special wine presses, which are presented in a huge assortment in online wine shops. Be sure to taste the juice and sweeten it if necessary – add 50-100 g of sugar per 1 wort, dilute it in a small amount of wort and pour it back into the container.
4. Fill the fermentation tanks to 4/5 of the volume, install a water seal and leave to ferment in a dark room with a temperature of 18 to 25 degrees. Every 5-7 days the wort should be tasted and if it is sour, add sugar according to the scheme from the 3rd paragraph. We repeat the introduction of sugar 2-3 times until its amount according to the recipe is exhausted.
5. Rapid fermentation of wine lasts about 2-3 weeks. When the signs of fermentation disappear (the water seal stops bubbling, and a cloudy sediment appears at the bottom of the bottles), pour the wine into clean fermenters, on which also install a water seal and send it to a quiet fermentation in a cool place (12-18^оC), for example, in the cellar. There it should completely clear and form its final taste.
6. While the wine is on a quiet fermentation, it must be drained from the sediment every month and a half. After 2-3 months, when the drink is completely clarified and no sediment collects at the bottom of the fermenters, it can be sweetened to taste – left dry or made semi-sweet, dessert. Here, rely on your taste and preferences. After that, the blackcurrant wine needs to be kept under a water seal for a couple of weeks to make sure that the fermentation process has completed completely, and bottled. After 1 year of aging, you will get a truly amazing drink, but over time (3-4 years) it will only get better!

Since we prepared the wine according to the “organic” scheme, without the use of preservatives and pure culture of yeast (hereinafter referred to as PKD), it must be stored in a cool place, following the recommendations for storing homemade wines, and every 3-6 months one bottle should be uncorked for quality control . For longer storage and aging, it is recommended to treat the drink with sulfur.

This was the easiest recipe for blackcurrant wine. You can cook according to another, more sophisticated technology: ferment the must for 2-3 days, squeeze out the juice, and then pour the pulp again with water (that is, it turns out that for the first time we add only half the water and a quarter of the sugar). The pulp with water needs to be fermented for 1-2 days, and then drained and mixed with the first drain, then put the wine under a water seal and cook further, as described above. To more accurately compose the must for a specific type of wine, you can use the table below:

Table for compiling 10 liters of must for making 8 liters of blackcurrant wine (acidity – 2,8%, sugar content – 11,2%)

Do not forget that blackcurrant can ennoble other wines. It fits very well into cherry wine (the berry is not fragrant, so you can add 1 part blackcurrant juice to 3 parts cherry juice), cherry wine (1 part black and red currant juice to 1 part cherry juice) and in gooseberry wine (equal parts).

Blackcurrant wine with pure yeast culture

If you want to get a drink with guaranteed characteristics and long-term aging from year to year, be sure to prepare it according to the classic winemaking technology with CKD. For blackcurrant wine, most red wine yeasts are suitable, but it is better to look for those that have a fairly high alcohol tolerance and a clean, fruity flavor profile. These yeasts include all CKD for port wine, strains Lalvin RC212 (Bourgovin), Lalvin ICV K1V-1116 (Montpellier), Lalvin 71B-1122, Montrachet, the usual Vitilevure Multiflor, etc. You can use the proportions from the previous recipe or try the following (for a full-bodied wine):

Sort currants, remove cuttings and other debris. Rinse the berries thoroughly under running water, transfer to a container with a wide neck and grind into puree in any suitable way. Dissolve half of the sugar in hot water, let the syrup cool to 21-24 degrees and pour over the puree. Add yeast, yeast nutrition, cover the container with a clean cloth and leave to ferment in a warm place for 5-7 days, not forgetting to knock off the pulp hat every day. Strain the wort, squeeze out the pulp, pour everything into a clean container, add the second half of the sugar, mix well and install a water seal. Then you can operate with the first recipe starting from the 5th paragraph.

Wine made from dried blackcurrants

One of the options for harvesting blackcurrants for the winter involves its dehydrogenation (dehydration, drying). What can this give the winemaker? The opportunity to do what you love at any time of the year!

Boil 1 liter of water and dissolve sugar in it. Remove from heat, add currants and cover. After 30 minutes, pour the syrup with berries into a fermentation container, add the remaining ingredients and cover the container with a clean cloth (if you use pectin enzyme, you do not need to add yeast right away, but wait 12 hours and only then add the starter prepared from them according to the instructions). Leave the fermenter for 7 days in a dark, warm place, stirring the wort daily. Then strain the must through several layers of gauze and pour into a clean fermenter, install a water seal and transfer the wine to a cool place (15-18^оC) one month.

Remove from the sediment, pour into a clean fermenter, install a water seal and again in a cool place. Repeat the procedure after two months, and then again after the complete clarification of the drink. Sweeten to taste, stabilize with sulfur if desired, and bottle, waiting a couple of weeks to ensure that the wine does not ferment. Drinking dried blackcurrant wine is recommended not earlier than after 6 months of aging in bottles, but it is better to wait 1-1,5 years. Store in a dark cool place!

Blackcurrant wine in a pressure cooker

Do you want to cook something that will be radically different from the traditional blackcurrant wine? Then this recipe is for you. Using a pressure cooker is perhaps the easiest way to get blackcurrant juice, but everything comes with a price. As a result of heat treatment, the taste of the drink changes slightly, acquiring port wine tones (however, this is another reason to pay attention to this recipe for port wine lovers).

With this recipe, we’re trying to make a dense, sweet, port-like wine using the popular yeast strain Lalvin K1V-1116 (Montpellier), capable of fermenting as much as 20% alcohol. Bananas and raisins in the recipe are needed to increase the body, the density of taste sensations (by the way, they also make excellent wines: raisin and banana). One of the benefits of using a pressure cooker is that we need far fewer berries without sacrificing flavor!

Boil 3 liters of water. Peel bananas and cut across into 1-1,5 cm pieces. Place bananas, raisins and sorted blackcurrants in a pressure cooker. Add boiling water, install the lid and put the pressure cooker on fire. Bring the pressure to 1.03 bar (0.98 atm) for 3 minutes, then remove from heat and allow the contents to cool naturally to zero pressure. Pour the resulting juice, along with the solid residue, into the primary fermenter, pre-filled with half the sugar. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved, add the rest of the cold water, mix again and wait until the wort cools to room temperature. Add acid, tannin, crushed Campden tablets and half of yeast nutrition. Wait 12 hours, add pectin enzyme, mix and wait another 12 hours. Add yeast, transfer the fermenter to a warm place and cover with a clean cloth.

To increase the yield, improve extraction and accelerate the clarification of the must of many fruit and berry wines, pectolytic enzymes (pectinase, etc.) are used that break down pectin substances. If you decide not to use the pectin enzyme in the process of making currant wines and for some reason they do not clear for a very long time, try pasting the wine with bentonite, gelatin or any other additive suitable for this.

After the start of fermentation, stir the wort 2 times a day for 3 days. Then strain the wort into a clean fermenter through several layers of gauze, without squeezing out the solid residue. Add half of the remaining sugar and yeast nutrition, mix thoroughly, install a water seal and send to a warm place for fermentation. When the specific gravity of the must drops to 1.010 (2,6 °Bx), add the rest of the sugar and top dressing, mix, under the water seal and in a cool place. Skim the wine from the sediment every 30 days until it is completely clear and the sediment has not accumulated over a 30 day period. Stabilize the wine with sulfur and send for 5 days in the refrigerator. Sweeten to SG 1.030 (7,6 °Bx), install a water seal and keep for 4-6 months in a cool place before bottling. This wine continues to improve in bottles up to 6 years old!

Red Currant Wine Recipes

Redcurrants make good wines, more tart than blackcurrants, but there is also a fan. But not everyone can put up with a faded aroma, so think about what aromatic juice you can add to such a wine (below you will find several recommendations for such mixes). Another unpleasant condition for obtaining high-quality redcurrant wine is the lack of haste: it will take about 12 months to prepare, and then control yourself for at least another two years before the drink softens and turns into an outstanding product.

Redcurrant wine with wild yeast

All varieties of red currant are suitable for winemaking, but the most fertile ones are usually used: Fairy, Caucasian, Cherry, Dutch, etc. Table and strong wines are best obtained from these berries – dessert and liquor finally lose their subtle aroma. The drink turns pink-red and over time acquires a reddish tint. The technology for making wine is no different from the technology for making almost all fruit and berry wines, and you can cook it according to the first recipe from this article. But without haste! It will be necessary to allocate about 9 months for quiet fermentation (stormy fermentation – removal from the sediment – quiet fermentation 6 months – removal from the sediment – stabilization 3 months – bottling). Two years of aging of such a wine is a prerequisite for a good result!

Table for compiling 10 liters of must for making 8 liters of redcurrant wine (acidity – 2,4%, sugar content – 7,3%)

Redcurrant juice can be used to improve the quality and reduce the cost of wines from (the ratio in brackets is given for mixing juices, the first value is the juice of the main raw material, the second is redcurrant juice): blackcurrant (1:2), gooseberries (1:1 and 1 part blackcurrant), apples (2:2 and 1 part blueberry juice), raspberries (1:5), cherries (3:1 and 1 part blackcurrant juice), black cherries (1:1), etc.

Redcurrant wine with pure yeast culture

For making redcurrant wine, CKD strains are suitable for most red wines and sherry. Try Pasteur Red strains, Bordeaux, Montrachet, Champagne yeast, etc. You can get juice using the fermentation technology, but for a change, I suggest trying a certain subspecies of the Cahors technology, when the berry is first poured with boiling water, and then filtered and pressed after a few hours. This technique allows you to quickly get rid of the pulp and increase the chances of wine for rapid clarification.

Sort currants, remove cuttings and other debris, rinse thoroughly under running water. Place the berries in a container with a wide mouth and crush with your hands or in any other suitable way. Pour the berry with boiling water, cover the container with a clean cloth and leave overnight in a cool place. Strain the juice through several layers of gauze and carefully squeeze out the cake. Add sugar and mix well until completely dissolved. Add pectin enzyme and yeast nutrition, place and wait 12 hours. Add the yeast prepared according to the instructions, cover with a clean cloth and wait for the first signs of fermentation. Install a water seal and put in a dark warm place to ferment.

When vigorous fermentation is over (a yeast sediment has appeared, the water seal has ceased to actively blow bubbles), remove the young wine from the sediment, pour it into a clean fermenter under a water seal and put it in a cool place. Remove from the sediment after 6 months of quiet fermentation (or periodically remove as sediment appears), and then repeat the procedure after 3 months. Sweeten if necessary, stabilize with sulfur and bottle. CKD homemade redcurrant wine should be stored in a dark place for at least 2 years to achieve optimum smoothness and overall quality. Good luck!