Big idea... maybe

[Ivywoods]

I love elderberries, but I only have a few young plants so I ordered an elderberry kit from Wine Experts. Has anyone had experience with it? Almost all of the elderberry wine I have tried is on the sweet side. I'm wondering if this will turn out sweeter than I like.

 

[winemaker81]

I ordered an elderberry kit from Wine Experts

Is it an Island Mist kit? If so, it's likely to be sweet.

 

[Ivywoods]

I just checked. It's Vintner's Best. The Wine Expert I was thinking of was my Gewurztraminer.

 

[winemaker81]

It's Vintner's Best

I made that Elderberry in 2018, and it came out very good.

You control the backsweetening. Ferment the wine dry, bulk age, then backsweeten to taste.

The concentrate dilutes to 5 gallons. I added a liter of grape concentrate and diluted to 5.75 gallons. My notes are here:

https://wine.bkfazekas.com/2018-elderberry-batch-1/

 

[BernardSmith]

As Winemaker81 suggests, you determine how sweet a wine will taste. And that applies just as much to a kit as to a winemaker who crushes and presses their own fruit. Of course, a kit may have been designed to finish very sweet, but if you know what you are doing you can do all kinds of things to control that, from increasing the amount of liquid in the must to pitching a different yeast, and from allowing the wine to ferment brut dry to back sweetening with less sugar. A wine is sweet or dry because the wine maker made it that way, either deliberately because they knew what they wanted and knew how to get there or they had little idea what they were doing and they got to where they got by accident.

 

[winemaker81]

A wine is sweet or dry because the wine maker made it that way, either deliberately because they knew what they wanted and knew how to get there or they had little idea what they were doing and they got to where they got by accident.

I laughed when I read this ... however, @BernardSmith is absolutely correct.