Dry & Crisp fruits?

[ofearthandbone]

Never made wine before...wanted to know what type of ordinary fruits other than grapes would make a dry and crisp white wine. Green apples? Grapefruit? Necterines? I do not like sweet wine...much more of a pi not griggio or sauvignon blanc. Is it all a matter of the sugar amount? What is the minimum amount of sugar needed for around 3 gallons of wine? I have a huge blueberry field at my doorstep...I'd like to try to make wine with these. Is it possible to make a dry crisp wine from these...lemon zesty?

 

[Rocky]

Of E & B, First, welcome to the forum. Glad to have you aboard.

As far as your questions are concerned, I suggest that you spend some time perusing the "Country Fruit" section on the main page. Basically, you can make a wine out of any fruit that has sugar (which converts to alcohol during the fermentation process). The more sugar, the better, but you can also enhance the sugar level of the fruit through a process termed chaptalization, which involves adding sugar to the juice either pre or during fermentation. As far as residual sweetness, you can control that by fermenting whatever fruit you are using to dry (i.e. essentially all sugar has been converted to alcohol), stabilize the wine with Potassium Sorbate and then back sweeten to your desired taste, if any.

As far as blueberries are concerned, many on the forum make blueberry wine. Again, you can ferment it to dry and sweeten it to your taste, as described above. If you like the lemon flavor in the background, try adding the zest of several lemons to the wine during the secondary stage of fermentation, i.e. when the Specific Gravity is at or below about 1.020. You will need an hydrometer for this which can be purchased on line or at a local brew shop.

 

[ofearthandbone]

thx! I'll be sure to check out the other threads here..

I didn't know you can adjust the taste during the process...this gives me more confidence on my first batch.

 

[olusteebus]

If you will, let me add to the question. To get a taste profile somewhat close to a sauvignon blanc, would apple come closest? If not, then what fruit?

 

[seth8530]

You know, perhaps you should cut your teeth on some cider. Ie, buy a few gallons of non perservative cider add some yeast and enough sugar to hit around 6%.
Let it ferment dry and then add priming sugar to get in bottle carbonation. ( use beer or champagne bottles).

It has a pretty quick turnaround and is not a bad way to learn about winemaking. You also of course want a hydromter and follow good winemaking procedure.

 

[BernardSmith]

I agree with Seth and given a question you posted about equipment you COULD (IMO) ferment your cider in the plastic jugs the apple juice is sold in (although you will need to remove about 1 cup of the juice to allow for some room for the froth that will be caused by the fermentation). The most important thing is not to buy juice that has added preservatives (sorbates). So, for 3 or 4 dollars you could make a gallon of cider.
You will, however, need to buy a drilled bung that fits the mouth and an airlock. I would think that this would be less than 6 dollars. The better quality the juice the better the cider. You could make the cider without any addition of sugar and the cider will have the same amount of alcohol as a beer - around 5 or 6 percent.
If obtaining glass bottles (wine or beer) is a challenge and you have some soda bottles you could add an ounce of sugar AFTER the fermentation has completed and bottle the cider in soda bottles and in a couple of weeks after bottling you will have carbonated the cider - sparkling cider. This will be dry cider, not sweet. If you don't have access to soda bottles (with caps) then you COULD cap the gallon container you fermented the cider in and use that.
You could also freeze and then thaw your blueberries and so extract the juice quite easily and add the juice to your cider before adding (pitching) the yeast to create an apple-blueberry drink. Cider is incredibly easy to make and it is something that I would suggest to someone who wants to get their feet wet without the need to spend money on either basic equipment or a great deal of fruit

 

[salcoco]

lemon grass or lemon zest would be taste predominate in sauvignon blanc

 

[Turock]

If you like Sauvignon blanc, then you can get a juice bucket of it and ferment your own. But if you want a crisp tasting wine, then white fruits would qualify for that. Also white grapes like the Niagara--that one turns out crisp and fruity-tasting. White wines can have a lower PH which contributes to the crispness.

However, when you sweeten wine, making it sweet is not the goal---well, SOME winemakers might do it if they have a real sweet-tooth. But backsweetening is more about adjusting the acid. So you can have a wine that is close to semi-sweet, but it can still retain the crispness you desire. That's another reason to adjust PH pre-ferment so that you have a nicely balanced wine.

Once you actually start making wine and have the experience, you'll understand it better. And most of us can say that our tastes in wine changes as we move forward in our winemaking. Crispness is nice on wines that have that profile. But the robust and smooth flavor of a Cab that you MLF and oak is also something that's totally delightful too!