6 DIFFERENT Bottles of Wine from 1 Gallon

[jamesbsmith]

"Making Award Winning Wines at Home" by Bill Smith is such a great wine making book.

I am currently making a gallon of the following base wine, which can then be used to make 6 different wines:

Base Wine (Chiltern Masters / Bill Smith) ~15.5%

1.5L White Grape Juice or 368ml White Grape Concentrate
1L Apple Juice
57ml Glycerol
907g Rhubarb
227g Clover Honey
113g Fresh (or 1 tin of) Strawberries
820g Sugar
154ml White Grape Concentrate (for sweetening)
54g Raspberries (for sweetening)
136g sugar (for sweetening)
Gervin no.6

(Note - Be careful not to add too much water at any stage, otherwise you will end up with over a gallon!)

Ferment the sugar, apple juice, rhubarb juice and grape juice for three weeks in bucket. Pasteurise the honey (and remove any foam), and add with the strawberries and glycerol to the bucket. Leave for two hours, then strain into demijohn.
Ferment to dryness, add one crushed campden and a teaspoon of potassium sorbate

Make up the following and balance with base wine, acid & water (800ml of each to allow tasting)

Sauternes Style (1 Bottle) ~15%
770ml Base Wine
31ml Grape Concentrate
44g sugar

Sweet Table (1 Bottle) ~14%
750ml Base Wine
50ml Grape Concentrate
33g Sugar

Sweet Fruit (1 Bottle) ~14%
727ml Base Wine
73ml Grape Concentrate
22g Sugar

Medium White (1 Bottle) ~11.5%
595ml Base Wine
108ml Grape Juice
97ml Water
21g Sugar

Medium Rose (1 Bottle) ~11.5%
595ml Base Wine
54g Raspberries
149ml Water
16g Sugar

Dry White (~2 Bottles) ~12.4%
Take remaining base wine and dilute at the following ratio:
4 Base Wine : 1 Water

Buy the book here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Award...+wines+at+home
Well worth the money, this is the best wine making book I own!

In addition to this, I was wondering whether it was possible to do the same with a red wine. As the alcohol and acid contents in the base wine are 1.44% more in the base wine, then they are in the dry wine, I was thinking of taking a couple of dry red recipes I have created and multiply the ingredients by 1.44X, and then dilute down with water / add grape juice & sugar to make various sweet to dry wines. My reservation here is whether a sweet red should have more dried fruit in its ingredients?

Elderberry Wine (Dry Red) ~13%
750ml Purple Grape Juice (Tesco) or 1Kg Purple Grapes
950g Sugar
GV2 Yeast
1.5 Teaspoons Pectic Enzyme
Ferment until expulsion of CO2 is slowing (e.g. 2 weeks)
1200g Elderberries (Maybe substitute 200g with 43g sloes)
650g Blackberries (Can substitute any 200g blackberries with 200g raspberries / cherries / plums / strawberries / 175g elderberries / 110g blackcurrants / 35g rosehips / 142g dates)

Extract juice from berry mix in steamer (or pasteurize) and add to demijohn (Can always bottle and add 1 campden per gallon and store in bottle until required).

Sweet version of this (~18.8%), multiply the above by 1.4444 and maybe use 250g raisins instead of 1L grape juice. Can create dry wine from it by adding 300ml water to 700ml wine. Use GV4 wine yeast (goes up to 21% and is a dessert style).

Blackberry Wine (Dry Red) ~13%
750ml Purple Grape Juice (Tesco) or 1Kg Purple Grapes
970g Sugar
GV2 Yeast
Ferment until expulsion of CO2 is slowing (e.g. 2 weeks)
1330g Blackberries (Can substitute any 200g blackberries with 200g raspberries / cherries / plums / strawberries / 175g elderberries / 110g blackcurrants / 35g rosehips / 142g dates)
585g Elderberries

Extract juice from berry mix in steamer (or pasteurize) and add to demijohn (Can always bottle and add 1 campden per gallon and store in bottle until required).

Sweet version of this (~18.8%), multiply the above by 1.4444 and maybe use 250g raisins instead of 1L grape juice. Can create dry wine from it by adding 300ml water to 700ml wine. Use GV4 wine yeast (goes up to 21% and is a dessert style).

Thoughts?!

 

[Runningwolf]

It sounds like someone had a lot of time on their hands. We all have made some crazy wines we probably would never do again. I think Julie made one out of roadkill one time.

 

[Julie]

I think you were the one who did roadkill!

 

[Julie]

Sorry James but this is more work than needs to be. If you are looking at trying different wines, do a gallon of each one you want to try.

 

[Runningwolf]

You're right Julie. It was called Candy Cane wine from over stock after Christmas. Worse wine I ever made.

 

[BernardSmith]

The author, Bill Smith wouldn't share a birthday and a home with the fellow jamesbsmith who posted the ad for the book, would he?

 

[jamesbsmith]

Haha! No, unfortunately I am not Bill Smith posing as an intruder, its just a great book which any wine maker would really benefit from - maybe I didn't share the right part it is not at all as complicated as I have made it sound here!

What I was trying to do was show how any recipe can be made to be versatile and how different wines are interlinked but I guess I didn't word it correctly and may have been stating the obvious!

I thought this site was for people who are wine making geeks anyway and surely some serious thought on winemaking may help make some seriously good wines! I am all for simplicity too, Ive been making a really nice wine which consists of the following:

750g Rhubarb (Frozen and thawed to extract juice)
1L Juice Passion Fruit Rubicon
1L White Grape Juice
700g Sugar

You could just use a litre of peach, mango or grape juice if you didn't have rhubarb.

I also really like orange wine:

500ml Orange Juice
1L White Grape Juice
1.75 teaspoons of tartaric acid
750g Sugar
General Purpose Wine Yeast
When bubbling away add:
Juice and zest (no white) of 6 oranges

It does come out really zesty which some people don't like, but I love the flavour!

Ill have to try putting some roadkill in it next time - sounds like a good call!

 

[vernsgal]

You're right Julie. It was called Candy Cane wine from over stock after Christmas. Worse wine I ever made.

Hahahaha! mine was done with beets .May I never make anything to surpass that one!

 

[jamesbsmith]

Tasted the base wine yesterday, and it is tasting amazing! Ill add pot sorb, a campden and make up the 6 different wines in a couple more weeks I think.

Dan - worth the time, and I would defo make it again!

Julie - I have 20 different gallons on at the mo (including a road kill), as well as this one. I love trying different methods as well as wines though! You have an impressive list of wines made yourself (apart from the road kill)!

 

[dking193]

Beet wine, road kill, and candy cane wine... well my onion and potato wine would probably be a good compliment to that list. Took a while for the laboratory to stop smelling of onions as did my hands from pressing. Most friends that have tried say something is missing... steak. If I could get that in the wine, it would be a full course dinner. Made 3 gal almost a year ago, still have 9 bottles gracefully aging in the cellar.

James, back to the book. Now when you say award winning wines, did the author actually win some awards with these recipes, or in his opinion, does he think he could with the recipes?

 

[jamesbsmith]

Hi Dave, absolutely! He was a member of the NAWB over here in the UK and was a frequent winner, very good winemaker and brought a lot to winemaking building on work by CCJ Berry and Gerry Fowles. The recipes I shared are from the wine circle Chiltern Masters who he credits and gives the recipes for in the book.

 

[jamesbsmith]

An update to how this versatile wine turned out:

To recap, the book gives the recipe for a base wine, which can then be diluted with varying degrees of grape concentrate, sugar, water and raspberries to make 6 different style wines.

I made up all 6 wines, for which the three sweet wines came out oustandingly!

Unfortunately the medium white, medium rose and dry white did not come out well at all. In fact I poured them down the sink! What I think the issue was, was that I added the glycerol during fermentation (as stated in the recipe). Quite a lot of glycerol goes in, which does smooth the wine, but also sweetens it incredibly. This means that when the base wine is diluted with water to make the medium and dry wines, it remains too sweet to really make a satisfactory wine of those styles. I think that if the glycerol was added to just the three sweet wines and not to the dry and medium wines, they may have all come out OK.

Although each of the three sweet wines came out very well indeed, the only difference in making each of them from the base wine, was that varying degrees of sugar and grape concentrate ratios are added until an SG of 1.030 is achieved. I therefore dont really see the wine being versatile in being able to make six different wines at all, rather an excellent recipe for making ONE sweet wine, with the wine makers preferred ratio of sugar and grape concentrate being added until an SG of 1.030 is achieved (i.e. typical of all sweet wines).

Maybe if the glycerol was not added, the medium and dry wines might have come out well. I will definately make this wine again, but with the view of making just the one style of wine in the future. For dry and medium wines, I would follow relevant recipes for those wines.

To simplify things, I am therefore going to give the single recipe for the sweet wine, to make a UK and a US gallon.

UK Gallon:
Sauternes (Chiltern Masters / Bill Smith) ~15%
Acidity 0.83%
Tannin 0.04%
1.5L White Grape Juice (or 368ml White Grape Concentrate)
1L Apple Juice
907g Rhubarb (Extract Juice)
227g Clear Honey
820g Sugar
113g Strawberries (or 1 tin strawberries and syrup)
57ml Glycerol
White Grape Concentrate (For Sweetening)
Sugar (for sweetening)
Gervin no.6 or another sweet wine yeast, nutrient and pectic enzyme

Ferment the sugar, apple juice, rhubarb juice and grape juice for three weeks in bucket,
Add the honey and add with, the mashed strawberries and glycerol,
leave for two hours and strain,
Ferment to dryness, add one crushed campden and half teaspoon of potassium sorbate,

Add sugar / grape concentrate / grape juice to SG 1.030.

US Gallon:
Sauternes (Chiltern Masters / Bill Smith) ~15%
Acidity 0.83%
Tannin 0.04%
1.25L White Grape Juice (or 305ml White Grape Concentrate)
830mL Apple Juice
750g Rhubarb (Extract Juice)
188g Clear Honey
680g Sugar
94g Strawberries (or 1 tin strawberries and syrup)
47ml Glycerol
White Grape Concentrate (For Sweetening)
Sugar (for sweetening)
Gervin no.6 or another sweet wine yeast, nutrient and pectic enzyme

Ferment the sugar, apple juice, rhubarb juice and grape juice for three weeks in bucket,
Add the honey and add with, the mashed strawberries and glycerol,
leave for two hours and strain,
Ferment to dryness, add one crushed campden and half teaspoon of potassium sorbate,

Add sugar / grape concentrate / grape juice to SG 1.030.

The book does contain some other good recipes and processes, and I would still recommend it!

 

[Elmer]

Add to the list of bad made wines:

Skittles
&
Green Tea!

 

[BernardSmith]

Whoa Nelly! Some wines are all but undrinkable after a few months, but a year or three later they grow up and mature and they taste entirely different. I made a coffee wine that I had hoped would be really interesting. It was interesting but not at all pleasant to drink and then about a year or so after I bottled it I tasted it again and it was leagues better. Not sure who here has the tag that just because some things are fermentable does not mean that they ought to be fermented. That goes without saying. But somethings that are undrinkable today may be quite delicious if you wait long enough. Which is not to say that green tea wine or skittle wine will be on my list of wines to make...

 

[jamesbsmith]

Hi Elmer,

Dont add it to your wines not to make list at all! Add the dry and medium blends to that list indeed, but the sweet ones come out just like a sauternes and very well, so add it to the "to make list" as well (if you like sweet whites)!!

I tried to give an unbiased account of this "versatile" wine, which I think I have done - great sweet white recipe, but it is not versatile!

 

[Noontime]

It's definitely a valid idea to make different versions of a wine at the same time, and there's really no quicker way to identify what works and what you like.

That being said, I'm not sure I agree with the nomenclature of the finished wines. Sauternes is a particular blend of grapes that have been infected with Botrytis so they have a very distinctive flavor. A rose is usually either a red grape made like a white wine, or a white and red wine blended. I'm sure most of the wines will be delicious and it is a great experiment, but it's really just different concentrations of back sweetening. I'm not sure diluting any wine with water is a good idea (unless a mistake was made and it's being corrected).

The same philosophy can be applied with different yeasts (although not as easy since they require different fermentation vessels), and the same base wine with different fruits added, etc.

It's certainly an interesting topic and thanks for posting.