Wine from dried fruits at home: TOP-6 recipes

Fresh, juicy, full-bodied fruits are, of course, the best raw materials for fruit wines. But what to do if summer is still far away, but you really want to make delicious wine with your own hands? For our purposes, dried fruits are also quite suitable – sometimes wines from them are even better than from freshly picked fruits! So let’s get acquainted with exclusive wine recipes: from dried apples, dried apricots, prunes, figs, dates, cranberries – many of them in the entire runet are presented only on the “Rum Diary”!

Winter is a desert for the winemaker. Nothing grows here, nothing smells sweet, everything is dead or asleep. There is nothing to crush with your hands, pass through the presses, filter and filter. No juice, no wine. But dried fruits are an oasis in the middle of this desert!

Making wine from dried fruits at home, of course, is somewhat more difficult than from fresh fruits – you have to tinker a little. But, nevertheless, this sacrament is quite accessible even for inexperienced neophytes – no magic, only dried fruits, water, sugar, appropriate yeast and some additives, and – voila! – we will get a wonderful drink from purchased or dried fruits or berries with our own hands!

Dried fruit wines: theory, main problems

Of course, dried fruit is dried fruit. To make something digestible out of this raw material, you have to soak it – otherwise nothing. Therefore, almost all the recipes presented below include either boiling or processing with special substances – pectin enzymes.

It should be said right away that the heat treatment method is worse – if it is used, the fruits change their taste, the likelihood of getting fermented compote instead of wine increases. Therefore, if you have access to pectinase, it is better to use this convenient and safe enzyme, which will destroy fruit pectins, soften the peel and pulp, and allow you to extract more flavoring and coloring substances from dried fruits. You can buy pectolytic enzyme on special wine-making websites, it is relatively inexpensive.

Have you read the recipes and decided that dried fruit wines are too difficult for you? It will be much easier to make a tincture! There are recipes for tinctures and liquors made from figs, dates, dried apricots at Romovy, and prunes are indispensable for making imitations of cognac or whiskey – check it out!

The second annoying problem is the choice of yeast. Of course, purchased wine yeast from the same wine shop will be the best solution – each recipe for wine from dried fruits will separately say which CKDs are needed. This method is faster, more reliable, more efficient (more alcohol is fermented) and requires less labor. Yeast can always be replaced with homemade sourdough. In the case of dried fruit wines, it would be logical to make raisins – in this article you will find its recipe. There is also a recipe for wine made from dried grapes (raisins) and a mixture of dried apricots, raisins and dried elderberries, in addition to today’s.

And, finally, the third difficulty is acids and tannins, which are not enough in most dried fruits. It is best to buy specialized additives – a mixture of tartaric and tannic acids, as well as powdered tannin – in any place convenient for you. In some versions of wine, tartaric acid can be replaced with the juice of an ordinary lemon or, in the worst case, a store-bought lemon. But if the recipe says that the wine needs to be acidified, do not neglect this recommendation, otherwise the drink will ferment and store poorly, and it will taste a little like wine. Without tannin, in principle, you can do without. In general, enough demagoguery, let’s get down to specifics!

Dried Fruit Wine Recipes

For the convenience of presentation, I will first describe the proportions for compiling the must of various wines, and at the end I will detail the cooking process, which is almost identical for all recipes.

Dried apple wine

A simple but pretty good recipe. According to reviews, such wine is even tastier than regular wine made from fresh apples, and it is easier to make it, since apple pectin is destroyed during the drying process and subsequent boiling of the fruit. No one will forbid experimenters to replace some dried apples with other dried fruits similar in texture, such as quince, pears, including smoked ones, etc. In this case, cider yeast will not work for us – it is better to choose either special for apple wines or universal ones.

Recipe wine from dried apricots

Dried apricots are one of the most affordable dried fruits in our latitudes; the wine turns out to be a beautiful straw color, light, with a floral aroma. However, he also has problems – in fact, the same as for wine made from fresh apricots – a long, complex clarification and an insufficient content of acids, tannin, which will have to be artificially added to the must.

Yeast should be chosen universal (multiflor or analogues) or for slow-fermenting white fruit wines. Like prunes, this wine sometimes needs forced clarification. Also successful results are obtained by fixing homemade wine from dried apricots with homemade apricot brandy – it turns out stronger and richer, perfectly stored and guaranteed to improve over time wine.

Homemade date wine recipe

Quite an interesting and unusual recipe. Wine made from dates does not have a very bright aroma, but it has an expressive and original taste, somewhat reminiscent of Madeira or Marsala. For a more beautiful, rich color, you can also add a couple of handfuls of blueberries to the dates.

In this case, the choice of yeast is not of fundamental importance – the author used CKD for Tokay wines. The content of lemon juice can be slightly increased if the wort is not sour enough to taste. This wine made from dried fruits needs a longer aging before drinking – over time, its bright taste is revealed much better.

Original fig wine with honey and citrus fruits

Not the cheapest, but very, very worthy drink! Dried figs give a much brighter result than their fresh counterpart – figs, without an unpleasant heavy “vegetable” aftertaste. The wine has a rich, interesting taste with hints of caramel, tobacco, scotch and oak.

The drink is acidified with lemon and orange, you can also use an acid mixture for wine. Yeast – universal for slow-fermenting fruit wines or for Malaga, Marsala.

Dried cranberry wine

Another example of a wine in which dried fruits “behave” much better than their fresh counterpart! The wine is somewhat reminiscent of red grape, has a balanced and – with proper exposure – a rather soft, pleasant taste. It goes well with poultry dishes, especially with turkey and game.

There is no need to acidify the wort – cranberries have enough of their own acids. The optimal yeast in this case is for full-bodied red wines a la Pinot Noir.

Homemade prune wine

Dense, beautiful, rather strong wine with a very rich blue-black color and bright taste. A combination of dried and smoked prunes gives particularly good results – the drink acquires light notes of whiskey, smoke, and tobacco. This wine is ideal for meat, game and smoked dishes. The classic recipe does not include pectolytic enzyme, however, using it will make it easier to make a drink, since all plums contain a lot of pectin and are reluctant to give juice.

There is enough acid and tannin in prunes, these additives are not required in this recipe. Like all plum wines, homemade prune wine may need to be forcibly clarified. Yeast should be chosen for dense, red wines – port, marsala or fruit wine. By the way, prunes make excellent mulled wine!

Step-by-step technology for making wines from dried fruits

First we need to choose the principle of setting the wort. Actually, you will have to choose from three options – either just chop and let the water and yeast extract all the substances we need from the fruits, or boil the dried fruits in boiling water, or process them with special enzymes. In the case of dried apricots, dates and figs, you should choose the first or third option, as they change their taste during heat treatment.

Apples, on the contrary, should be boiled, otherwise they will not give their taste, aroma and natural sugars to the wort. In other recipes, you can do at your own discretion. Dates, figs, dried apricots, cranberries do not hurt to rinse with running warm water before use.

Step one – soaking the fruit in a cold way

Everything is quite simple. We take dried fruits and grind them thoroughly – for example, using a meat grinder. To make grinding faster, you can also pre-soak the fruit in a small amount of water. The resulting gruel is simply poured with all the water indicated in the recipe, add the remaining ingredients and leave in a warm place until fermentation begins. In this case, it is advisable to use the “red” technology – to send both the liquid and the remains of the fruit to the fermenter, so that during the fermentation process, the yeast will draw out everything that is possible from the pulp. But an adjacent method is also used – the must ferments on the pulp for some time (2-5 days), after which it is squeezed out and only the juice is sent for fermentation. The choice is yours.

Or: step one – heat treatment of dried fruits

The easiest way is to cook “compote” from the selected dried fruits in all the water required by the recipe. You can also pre-grind our raw materials – it won’t hurt. Do not cook for a long time – 15-20 minutes will be enough. Next, cool the brew under the lid, filter, carefully squeeze the pulp. We add all the other ingredients, sugar and yeast to the resulting broth, wait until it ferments, and put it under a water seal.

Or: step one – the use of pectolytic enzymes

The essence of the action of the pectinase enzyme is the destruction of protein compounds inside the fruit. The fibers of the fetus are destroyed, flavoring substances are released from them, which immediately pass into the water. Usually, dried fruits are poured with all the water indicated in the recipe (sometimes even boiling), the whole mass is heated (the optimum temperature for most pectolytic enzymes is 37-40 °, but they work at lower temperatures), the enzyme is added.

Everything must be thoroughly mixed and left under the lid for 4-12 hours. Next, heat the mass again to 70 degrees to neutralize the remaining enzymes. Cool, squeeze – done! If you decide to experiment with pectinase, read the instructions on its packaging, different types of enzyme have different features and nuances of use.

Step two – primary fermentation

1. First of all, we need to decide on the yeast. If you use raisin starter, it should be prepared in advance in order to avoid unpleasant surprises. Purchased wine yeast is also desirable to ferment in warm water with sugar ahead of time to make sure that they are not expired and workable.
2. Yeast medium and yeast nutrition should be added to the must prepared according to one or another wine recipe from dried fruits. Remember that for this the temperature of the liquid should not exceed 30 degrees. We wait several hours (and sometimes up to a day and a half) until the entire must is covered by obvious fermentation – bubbling, a kvass aroma will appear, and the cake (if you are making wine using red technology) will exfoliate and float up.
3. The must can and should even be tasted. It is also possible to carry out measurements with a vinometer and special acid tests. If necessary, the drink should be acidified or sweetened so that it ferments normally.

An important point – if you have chosen raisin starter, it is better to add the sugar indicated in the recipe not immediately, but in three equal batches. The first part is added to the wort before the addition of yeast, the second – on the third day of fermentation, the third – on the seventh. Wild yeast is weaker than pure factory yeast and can simply “not digest” too sweet wort, it’s all about constipation.

4. Pour the finished wort into the fermenter (bottle) and put it under a water seal or, in extreme cases, under a glove. We transfer to a warm dark place and leave until complete fermentation.
5. Depending on the type of yeast chosen, the primary fermentation of wine from dried fruits at home – that is, at room temperature – will last from 7-15 days (wine yeast) to 2-3 months (“savages”). The end of this process can be identified by the precipitation of a dense sediment and the damping of the hydraulic seal.
6. Now the young wine from dried fruits must be decanted – drained with a straw. If the drink turned out to be cloudy, which often happens, for example, with homemade wine from prunes, dried apricots, figs, it can be clarified using one of the methods described in this article.

Step three – secondary fermentation, stabilization, bottling

Pour the prepared partially clarified wort into a small fermenter. The liquid should occupy at least 90-95% of the bottle space. We transfer the container to a cool dark place – a basement or a warm cellar, again cover it with a shutter or glove.

The duration of the process depends on many factors – temperature, type of raw material, etc. Wine from dried apples and cranberries ferments the fastest (2-3 months), prunes and figs the longest (up to 4-5). A dense yeast sediment will fall out in the bottle – when its layer is clearly visible at the bottom, the drink should be drained through a straw. If necessary, repeat this procedure 3-4 times.

When the sediment no longer forms, the wine has become light and absolutely dry in taste – it’s time to “finish” it and prepare it for storage. For these purposes, you can use sugar or fructose (if you want to get a semi-sweet or dessert drink), you can also fix the wine (how and with what – read in a special article) or stabilize it with sulfur dioxide.

When all the manipulations are done, the container must be moved to a warm place and make sure that the wine does not ferment again. Only after that it needs to be bottled and transferred to a cool place.

The period of storage and aging in the “cellar” home conditions of dried fruit wine depends, first of all, on its strength and the raw materials used. Apple, dried apricot and cranberry wine will ripen the fastest – you can try it in six months, and it is recommended to store it for no more than a year and a half.

If you take on prunes, dates, figs, you will have to wait longer for tasting, up to 9-12 months, for another year or two the wine will gradually improve its characteristics. In any case, you should not rush – time, within reasonable limits, affects the taste and aroma of dried fruit wine exclusively for the better!