# Inspired Cherry Wine



## pgentile (Jul 25, 2017)

Inspired by another thread and loving cherries, I have decided to give it a try. Somewhat searched around the Philly area and couldn't find many sour/tart cherriy offerings. A frozen bag or two in supermarkets here and there, didn't hit Cosco or BJ's, but not much. Italian Market vendors and/or the wholesalers I called didn't have any fresh sour/tart cherries. 

So I ended up with 36 lbs of sweet dark cherries from a wholesaler for 1.78 per lb. Pitted these last Saturday they are in the freezer now. Took two of us 2 hours with a quad and single pitter. Only a couple bad cherries in the whole lot. After reading some more though, next time I won't pit the cherries.

Here's my recipe so far for this coming Saturday:

34 #'s pitted cherries(lost 2 #'s to stems and pits)
64 oz Sour Cherry Concentrate ($41.95)
6 gl water
6-7 +/- #'s sugar 1.090-1.100
3 tsp pectic enzyme
6 tsp yeast nutrient
1.5 tsp tannin
6 tsp acid blend
Montrachet


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## Forager (Jul 26, 2017)

Cherry lover here as well! There are a few sour cherry trees in my neighbourhood (that the owners let me pick from) that are loaded every year with beautiful bright red cherries. Got about 10 lbs in the freezer right now. I'll use some of that for cherry jam, and thinking the rest will be enough for a 1 gallon batch. Hope to start that in a week or two. It'll be the first time I've tried a sour cherry wine, so interested to see how it turns out. Pgentile good luck with yours!


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## pgentile (Jul 27, 2017)

Jealous of those trees. Stay friendly with those neighbors.

Thanks Forager, good luck to you as well with the wine.


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## Scooter68 (Jul 27, 2017)

Forager said:


> Cherry lover here as well! There are a few sour cherry trees in my neighbourhood (that the owners let me pick from) that are loaded every year with beautiful bright red cherries. Got about 10 lbs in the freezer right now. I'll use some of that for cherry jam, and thinking the rest will be enough for a 1 gallon batch. Hope to start that in a week or two. It'll be the first time I've tried a sour cherry wine, so interested to see how it turns out. Pgentile good luck with yours!



8-10 is about enough for a gallon of wine after pitting them.

Great to have that much. I planted 3 tart cherry trees this year and one tart cherry bush. My existing tart cherry tree had a very bad year looks enemic and I may lose it. Our 2 sweet cherry trees try but the birds steal everything. As soon as the fruit start to turn yellow (Before any red is showing) birds swoop in. At least with the tart cherries the birds aren't as interested.


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## Forager (Jul 27, 2017)

Yeah after reading a number of other threads about cherry wine I'm going to try my best to add as little water as possible. I'll have about 8 lbs to put towards that gallon, plus I've got around 1.5 liters of juice that I preserved from last season that I can use to top it up. The only problem with making one gallon is that it's just such a small amount, your lucky if you get 4 bottles out of it after all the racking is done. 

I'd love to have some of my own cherry trees to work with, but my backyard is tiny, plus it's got way too much shade. I'm hoping to move to a larger place next year. I'd love a few acres with a little hobby farm, but my wife isn't interested in that, haha. Gonna have to compromise on staying in suburbia with a larger backyard I guess. 

Good luck with your 3 new tart cherry trees Scooter68, jealous! I've heard the same thing from everyone about sweet cherry trees, never enough left after the birds get to it. I'll stick with tart cherries as I like them more anyway.


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## pgentile (Jul 29, 2017)

Cherries went from freezer to brute today. As well as 36lbs of blueberries in another brute for a blueberry wine. The blueberry wine recipe will be similar to the cherry but will use 64 oz malbec extract and a few other changes.

Will crush/bruise up after thawed tomorrow add pectic enzyme and kmeta.


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## Scooter68 (Jul 29, 2017)

Forager said:


> Yeah after reading a number of other threads about cherry wine I'm going to try my best to add as little water as possible. I'll have about 8 lbs to put towards that gallon, plus I've got around 1.5 liters of juice that I preserved from last season that I can use to top it up. The only problem with making one gallon is that it's just such a small amount, your lucky if you get 4 bottles out of it after all the racking is done.




Why would not top up to maintain a full gallon (5 Bottles)? Unless you use something to top up you are going to exposing that wine to oxidation. Find some wine or use water. Better a slightly thinner 5 bottle batch of wine than 4 bottles of oxidized wine.


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## Forager (Jul 29, 2017)

I always top up nowadays, learned that lesson the hard way when I didn't top up my first ever batch of hard cider and it ended up turning into hard cider vinegar. I do try to avoid using water though as it both lowers the alcohol % and messes with your ph. Personally I'd argue that a watery/thin wine is just as bad as an oxidized wine. 

I used marbles once to top up a batch of strawberry wine which is where my 'lucky if you get 4 bottles' comment came from I guess. It worked, but the hassle of sanitizing a bunch of marbles, then dropping them in one by one, hoping they don't crack your carboy, etc. isn't something I want to do again. Anyway I usually get about 4.5 bottles out of a gallon (even when toping off) when using my racking cane. There is always a bit of wine + sludge that gets left behind at the end, and which I don't want in my wine bottles anyway. Wasn't counting that half bottle as it just goes in the fridge and gets consumed the same day instead of to the wine rack where it can age a bit longer.


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## Scooter68 (Jul 30, 2017)

You might want to consider: 
- Increase your volume of must in the fermenter higher 1.5 gallons. 
- Use 4 liter carboys initially rather than 1 gallon. (That give you an additional 7 ozs) Then back down to a 1 gallon carboy from the 4 liter as the volume drops in additional rackings.
- Use some smaller bottles like 20 oz bottles with the same size cap as the gallon bottles so you ca airlock them and use them for topping off. That lets you start with a larger volume intially and have that topping off volume you need.
- Start with a higher concentration of fruit and a higher ABV, the addition of water doesn't lower the ABV below your actual target ABV or weaken the taste. The pH can be easily adjusted.
Don't give up on getting the full gallon. 
Marbles create an addition thing to clean and sanitize not to mention actually creating greater loss of volume if the lees don't cover all the marbles.

Loss of volume to lees is something you need to plan for in your recipe to permit "watering down" without actually watering down the finished wine.

Not making light of the issue but it can be dealt with without giving up on getting a full gallon/5 bottles at the end of a years worth of waiting. 

The same sort of issue occur with 3, 5 or 6 gallon batches. It's not unique to a one gallon batches. And you don't have to go out an purchase store bought wines or sacrifice a bottle from your previous batch.


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## PandemoniumWines (Jul 30, 2017)

I do what Scooter says - and I keep that carboy filled into the neck, and I get 5 bottles and a little bit left over to celebrate


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## Forager (Jul 30, 2017)

Some good points and things to consider in that list Scooter68, I appreciate it! Waffling now between sticking with the one gallon, or getting some more sour cherries from the store (sale on now) and doing 3 instead.


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## Scooter68 (Jul 30, 2017)

You might find some Tart Cherry concentrate. Most run about 16 oz to make 1 gallon of drink. I use them but I use 4 bottles for 3 gallons and next time I may push that to 5 to pump up the flavor. (Using only the concentrate) 

I started with 1 gallon batches for the first year and then pushed into 2 and 3 gallon batches using 2 or 3 of the 4 liter carboys (Actually empty 4 liter "Carlo Rossi" Wine bottles) bump the pounds per/gallon up about 1/2 to 1 lb and that extra volume is well covered.

Good luck and keep us posted on the progress!


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## pgentile (Jul 31, 2017)

Added yeast to both wines this morning @ 8:30. Blueberry has activity already, cherry is still quiet. 

Cherry:
pH: 3.57
sg 1.080
Montrachet

Blueberry:
pH 3.48
sg 1.090
71b


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## Scooter68 (Jul 31, 2017)

pgentile said:


> Added yeast to both wines this morning @ 8:30. Blueberry has activity already, cherry is still quiet. 71b



For me Blueberry has always been a fast fermenter. My first batch scared me - start to finish in 4 days 14% and dry to .990. I thought something was wrong but nope - just fast to the finish line.

Sounds great and keep us posted on the Cherry too.


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## pgentile (Aug 1, 2017)

Cherry must is now very very vigorous, going to take temp and possibly need to cool down.


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## pgentile (Aug 2, 2017)

Never seen anything foam quite like the cherry must is. It's 10 gl of volume in a 40gl container, so no chance of overflowing, but quite frothy. I haven't used Montrachet yeast in a very long time, don't recall it being like this when I did use it. Smells good so far.


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## pgentile (Aug 5, 2017)

This morning the cherry was 1.010 and the blueberry 1.030 at 6 days out. All is looking good.


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## pgentile (Aug 10, 2017)

Cherry wine is in secondary and looking good, pressed last Sunday. Ended up with 8+ gallons. Last 5 days looks like another gallon will be lost with the amount of lees that has dropped off. 

Blueberry down to .998 today, going to press it tomorrow.

Photos of cherry wine from last Sunday:


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## pgentile (Aug 11, 2017)

Pressed the blueberry this morning. Ended up with about 8 gallons.

Here is the cherry after 5 days in secondary:


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## pgentile (Aug 12, 2017)

Tasted the cherry today, not too hot, not too tart, nice flavor, but a little light on body. I'll have 7+ gallons after I eventually rack off lees, thinking of back-sweetening a gallon. Leaving a gallon alone and then light oaking the remaining 5 gallons and bulk age.


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## Forager (Aug 16, 2017)

hey nice pics pgentile. 

So I finally started my gallon of tart cherry wine today. 8.5 lbs of tart cherries with a half liter of cherry juice that I canned last year, and a tiny bit of water just to bring up the volume a bit over a gallon, one Campden tablet and 1/2 tsp of pectic enzyme. Will give it around 36 hours before I pitch the yeast and add sugar.

Any rough estimates on how much sugar to add to one gallon to get the SG up to around 1.090? It was a very wet summer and the cherries are unusually tart and low on sugar.


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## pgentile (Aug 16, 2017)

Thanks, my guess without a hydrometer, and not knowing the sugars in your juice, roughly would be around 2 to 2.5 lbs of sugar to get in your range.

I would get pre-fermentation volume closer to 1.5 gallons. After primary fermentation and removing wine from cherries, you'll be closer to a gallon with maybe a little extra.

Good luck, will be curious how it turns out.


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## Scooter68 (Aug 16, 2017)

pgentile said:


> I would get pre-fermentation volume closer to 1.5 gallons. After primary fermentation and removing wine from cherries, you'll be closer to a gallon with maybe a little extra.
> 
> Good luck, will be curious how it turns out.



*VERY much agree with this.* If you are using whole or crushed cherries with pits still in there you will need at* least 1.5 gallons to start.* Best way to check this is to pull out your fruit bag and check your volume with out the fruit in the bucket. (Assuming you are using fruit bag AND that you have crushed the cherries. ) Without the fruit you should have not less than 3/4 gallon of volume even though some of the cherry pulp will release liquid you will have the pulp and yeast residue to account for.


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## Forager (Aug 16, 2017)

Yup all good, fruit bag pulled up, and still a bit over a gallon. I also still have a couple more jars of cherry juice from last year that I can use to top up when I transfer to secondary. 
Also pitted all the cherries right after I picked them. Most people and online posts that I found seemed to agree that not including the pits produces a better quality wine.


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## pgentile (Sep 11, 2017)

I back-sweetened 1 gl of the cherry with the product in the photo. 2oz to 1 gl. Never back-sweetened anything I've made before. Nice cherry flavor and not too sweet. I typically like dry wine, but this isn't bad at all.


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## pgentile (Sep 12, 2017)

After tasting a little more last night it is too sweet. Will try 1oz to a gallon later this week.


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## Scooter68 (Sep 12, 2017)

I would not use 1 gallon quantities for bench trials of back-sweetening unless you are dealing in 20 gallons of wine or more for your batch.

If you have several gallons I would suggest you blend *1 cup* of the already sweetened wine with *1 cup* of unsweetened wine. That would give you a chance to test a 1 oz per gallon mix. When back sweetening as you are doing I normally us one cup quantities for testing the amount I need. Then use appropriate quantities of the sweetener for that 1 cup.

For my backsweetening I normally work with simple syrup (2:1) and start with 1/4 oz per cup. If that is too sweet I dilute that original 1 cup with a second cup and the gives me a chance to test 1/8 oz per cup. Once you find the amount that works, scale up the quantities based on the amount of wine you have left to back-sweeten. Using a one gallon batch quantity that would mean after a 2 cup test I would have 14 cups of wine left to back-sweeten. At 1/8 oz per cup I need to add 1 3/4 ozs of sweetner to the remaining 14 cups.


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## pgentile (Sep 12, 2017)

Yeah I learned my lesson on that one. Will do a series of small 1 cup tests before any large changes to any of the 7+ gls remaining.


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## Scooter68 (Sep 13, 2017)

pgentile said:


> Yeah I learned my lesson on that one. Will do a series of small 1 cup tests before any large changes to any of the 7+ gls remaining.



I've made a few choice mistakes along the way. One resulted in about a quart of wine on the floor. ARRRGH! And others - I do learn from them.

I just don't want to be like that young military officer - In his evaluation report his commander wrote: Lt Jones never makes the same mistake twice, however, he has made just about every mistake once...."


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