1st time wine maker, muscadine wine turned out wrong, help

[billyrb]

I made my first batch of muscadine wine last august, and just popped open the first bottle. It is definitely alcohol, and quite strong at that. Unfortunately, in addition to the strong alcohol taste, the flavor is not sweet at all. Is there any way to recover this wine? Or does it all need to be poured out?

 

[Julie]

Well without knowing what you did, I believe the problem is you did not backsweeten. The high alcohol is do to the fact that you added to much sugar in the beginning. Keep you sg around 1.080 - 1.090.

You don't need to dump the wine. You can do one of two things. You can just add sugar to the bottle as you drink it or you can open them all up, put them back into the primary, add k-meta and sorbate, then sweeten to taste, then re-bottle.

And Welcome to winemakingtalk

 

[Arne]

You can blend it with another wine, but you will porbably have to sweeten it anyway. Do a bench test and sweeten a little at a time, when you find out where you like it, you can sweeten more of it if you like. Take a s.g. reading when you get it where you like it. that will let you bring the rest up to the same sweetness. Arne.

 

[Sammyk]

Another idea is to keep back some muscadines and freeze them. Simmer them down with a bit of sugar to make an f-pack. Muscadines are sweet to begin with but the wine uses the sugar to make the alcohol so there is no sweetness left.

Because we have our own muscadine, it is the only all grape wine we make.

 

[jswordy]

I agree that it is probably a dry wine. Sugar will bring back the flavor. To prevent dilution, I add granular sugar while in a carboy, stir and let it set a week or so under airlock to completely dissolve.

You can still make a very dry wine, just off-dry, but the added bit of sugar will help a lot with flavor.

Don't worry about the strong alcohol taste. Age it well (minimum 7 months) and the alcohol will begin to mellow out as far as flavor. The kick will still be there, though.

I'd keep back a bottle or two as-is for a whole year or more, and just open them up to see what aging did for you.

 

[jamesngalveston]

my uncles (moonshiners) would throw sugar and muscadines in a big bucket and about 3 mos later they were drunk as a coot after drinking it. when i snuck in the barn and drang a bunch, i just threw up.