# Best wine recipe and/or kit made?



## TwistedVines (Mar 1, 2019)

Hello all, I am new to making wine. I have two kits in primaries right now (wine expert California moscato and Niagara Mist black cheery). However I would like to know what is the best wine you have made so far. If it is a kit, please post which one and if it is a recipe, please post your recipe. I know everyone’s taste is different however what do you think is the best one you have made?

Thank you for any response. I can’t wait to start some different kinds!
~ Jessica


----------



## mainshipfred (Mar 1, 2019)

Welcome to the forum! I'm not much of a kit maker but it seems you like wines on the lighter side. Try Vintner's Best fruit wines. I made a peach once that turned out very nice.


----------



## skyfire322 (Mar 1, 2019)

The best kit I made was the RJS Sangiovese Merlot, which funnily enough was the first kit wine I ever made. I used D80 yeast, then added medium toast French oak cubes when I started bulk aging. I let it sit for seven months, then dropped a M+ French oak spiral for the last month.

I was a little worried that it would come out tasting like campfire ash, but after about six months in the bottle, it turned out really well!


----------



## TwistedVines (Mar 1, 2019)

mainshipfred said:


> Welcome to the forum! I'm not much of a kit maker but it seems you like wines on the lighter side. Try Vintner's Best fruit wines. I made a peach once that turned out very nice.



I like any kind of wine dry, off dry, sweet. However with the hot summer days coming up (in Texas) I figured I would start with sweet. And all of my family prefer sweet


----------



## TwistedVines (Mar 1, 2019)

skyfire322 said:


> The best kit I made was the RJS Sangiovese Merlot, which funnily enough was the first kit wine I ever made. I used D80 yeast, then added medium toast French oak cubes when I started bulk aging. I let it sit for seven months, then dropped a M+ French oak spiral for the last month.
> 
> I was a little worried that it would come out tasting like campfire ash, but after about six months in the bottle, it turned out really well!



That sounds really tasty!


----------



## heatherd (Mar 2, 2019)

I liked the various super Tuscan kits and mosti modiali amarone with skins and raisins.


----------



## WinoDave (Mar 3, 2019)

TwistedVines said:


> I like any kind of wine dry, off dry, sweet. However with the hot summer days coming up (in Texas) I figured I would start with sweet. And all of my family prefer sweet


For sweet fruity wines I make the Island Mist kits, I add a 4-5 pound bag of sugar to primary to up the alcohol % and they turn out great for a $60 kit. For red and whites I make the Winexpert Eclipse Kits or RJS Premiere Kits. They all have turned out great,get them from Label Peelers for around $130 with shipping. They are more expensive but have oak and grapeskibs with them so well worth the extra $$


----------



## bstnh1 (Mar 3, 2019)

The best kit I ever made was in 2012, a Winexpert French Cabernet from the Selection International Series. They don't offer it any more, but I believe they have it in the cheaper kits. It was absolutely fantastic after 5 years.


----------



## Bts (Mar 4, 2019)

The best wine I ever made was my first all grape batch. Niagra/white concord I think(got the grapes from a friend's grandparents back yard) . Had no clue what I was doing so I fermented them on skins. Made a sparkling white that tasted kind of like a sparkling unoaked chardonay, but the really interesting about it was the smell. For the first year or so, it smelled like you had just crushed a double handful of grapes right under your nose. It smelled so great you almost didn't want to drink it, just sit there and smell it. 2nd best was an Itialian juice bucket of vermentino. It had this unusual almost oily thing going on that kind of coated the inside of your mouth, and this really nice mildly bitter finish that lasted forever. Again, best within the first year, as 1.5 years later thats all mostly faded away and it's a fairly generic white.


----------



## JustJoe (Mar 4, 2019)

I make most of my wine from wild fruit gathered from the woods. I have access to an abundance of elderberries, some wild grapes, mulberries and chokecherries. With a bit of experimenting, I found that mixing any fruit with elderberries makes the wine much better. My favorite is our first batch of chokecherry/elderberry wine from the recipe below.

Cherries and mulberries were picked in early summer and frozen until process time when elderberries were ripening. Processing was started 8/12 There were not enough cherries so we added mulberries and elderberries

13 ¼ pounds of chokecherries (frozen)
4 ¼ pounds mulberries (frozen)
8 ¼ pounds elderberries
Montrachet yeast
Pectic enzyme

Put all fruit into enameled pot and added enough water to cover. Heated to 165 degrees while crushing fruit. Poured into mesh bag in primary fermenter with enough icewater to make 6 gallons. When temperature dropped to 80 degrees, added ¼ teaspoon potassium metabisulfate. Brix was 4.5 - added 10.5 pounds of sugar and reached brix reading 19. Next morning brix was 20.5. Added pectic enzyme and 4 hours later added yeast.

Next day fermentation is active. After three days of active fermentation, removed the fruit and moved the wine to a secondary fermenter 8/19.

The only bad thing was that we only made 6 gallons. The next year we made 20 gallons and that was still not enough.
Most people who tried loved it and said it was definitely a grape wine but they couldn't identify the grape. They were shocked when they found out that there were no grapes in it.


----------



## TwistedVines (Mar 4, 2019)

JustJoe that sounds great!


----------



## Michael Roberts (Mar 7, 2019)

TwistedVines said:


> Hello all, I am new to making wine. I have two kits in primaries right now (wine expert California moscato and Niagara Mist black cheery). However I would like to know what is the best wine you have made so far. If it is a kit, please post which one and if it is a recipe, please post your recipe. I know everyone’s taste is different however what do you think is the best one you have made?
> 
> Thank you for any response. I can’t wait to start some different kinds!
> ~ Jessica


Try the Island Mist Pineapple Pear Pinot Grigio. It turns out really well as a light fruity wine good for a hot summer afternoon.


----------



## John Pichnic (Mar 14, 2019)

I've only made 8-9 batches, but my best tasting one so far is this....

2 cases (480 oz) Welch's blackberry-strawberry drink





add sugar to 1.10 s.g.
5 campden tablets, powdered
3/4 tsp DI-ammonium phosphate
cover with cloth for 24 hours
add yeast ( Lalvin EC-1118)
1 tsp acid blend

open ferment for 9 days @ 72 deg, rack to carboy
bottled 19 days after bubbling stopped.
1 month later I opened the first bottle
It had a smooth "wine" flavor with a buttery mouth feel.
I want to let it age longer, but I keep opening another bottle.
It's 3 months old now and the flavors don't seem to be changing.


----------



## Rbarts (Mar 15, 2019)

Our favorite kit we've tried has been a Raspberry Merlot from Winexpert. It more on the semisweet side and very smooth. It was so good!


----------



## winojoe (Mar 15, 2019)

I made the RJ Spagnols Winemakers Trio Red using BM4x4 yeast. Performed a rehydration with GoFerm, and nutrient additions with Fermaid-O. 

OMG, what a great freakin' wine!


----------



## mewg (Mar 17, 2019)

Rbarts said:


> Our favorite kit we've tried has been a Raspberry Merlot from Winexpert. It more on the semisweet side and very smooth. It was so good!


We've made this several times. Even the name is smooth.


----------

