How do you make wine?

[Kayts]

I have used 2 kits now but before them was using the wild fruits available to try..like Pin Cherry...Rhubarb..Apple..Raspberry..and now Mtn. Ash Berry...sampling this last one could be unusual and the best...I do sometimes freeze my fruits till I get enough and helps with the juice.
I want to mix some but am leery of which ones to use together and keep looking up recipes.

 

[gratus_fermentatio]

When it comes to wine, I make fruit wine (non-grape) and mead. I've never made a grape wine & I've never made wine from a kit. I mostly use fresh fruit & for the last several years have mostly formulated my own recipes, or tweaked the recipes of others to my own preferences. Some fruits are very difficult and/or expensive to get fresh in my area, so sometimes I'll use commercially frozen fruit or commercially canned fruit/purees. Another option for difficult to procure fresh fruits is commercially bottled/canned juice.

Juices are much easier to use than fresh fruit, produce less waste, less sediment, less work & less mess. The major problem with non-grape juices though, is the lack of recipes & the difficulty of adapting existing recipes that use fresh fruit. If you're working with pure black currant juice & all the available recipes use fresh or dried black currants, it's difficult to figure out how many lbs of fruit are in 1 gallon of juice, as there is no easily available reference. Then there's the question of dilution, the recipe calls for X amount of water and fresh fruit, how much water (if any) to add to the juice? It's certainly possible to find out, it just makes things a little more difficult to start & expensive if you make a mistake.
Regards, GF.

 

[Daniel1978]

Standard kits

 

[Gmdrp]

I primarily use fresh fruits. As of late though, I have been experimenting with honey.

 

[JackKeller]

Missing an Opportunity for More In-Depth Data

"Doing a little industry polling for people to understand where the current market is." This statement of purpose acknowledges the poll is intended for the "industry," which is kit manufacturers/frozen bucket product suppliers/concentrate manufacturers to aid them in market awareness, which I would assume their sales data would indicate more accurately. There is nothing wrong with the poll in itself, but if you were doing the poll for all home winemakers it would be designed completely differently and would go into depth, depending on your answer to each question. For example, answering the question you actually asked with "Fresh fruit (not grapes)" could then (and only then) display a new set of selections, such as *Homegrown fruit/berries, *You-pick-it farm-grown fruit/berries, *Farmers market/co-op purchased fruit/berries, *Supermarket/produce market fruit/berries, etc. That same selection ("Fresh fruit (not grapes)") could also open up *Mostly fruit, *Mostly berries, *Fruit and berries roughly equally. Selecting *Mostly fruit could then open a list of, say, 20-25 common fruit used in winemaking with *Other being the last and allowance for selecting, say, 5, and a similar list/options for *Mostly berries. These answers might not help the kit/frozen bucket/concentrate producers, but it would be more revealing to home winemakers.

 

[Scooter68]

I agree with Jack Kellers comments. This is really not an effective survey other than to determine what home wine makers are using to make their wines.

For me I use canned non-grape concentrates like Vintner Harvest only when I want to make a wine with fruit I cannot buy or find in fresh fruit form. I do not have any interest in grape based wines and I will only buy fruit concentrates IF they are 100% the labeled fruit. So any fruit concentrate that contains Apple, Grape or Pear Juice fillers I do not buy. The reason is that I want the flavor of that fruit only AND I want to know exactly how much fruit is in it.

I can assume that sellers follow the conventions of food labeling and list the ingredients contents in the order of the percentage of content. So when a concentrate is labeled as Cherry Fruit base but the ingredient lists Apple, White Grape, Cherry juices in that order - I assume that Cherry Juice is not the primary juice in that container. The label and advertising should be 100% honest if you are selling to wine makers. Provide us the percentage of each fruit type in that container*. And of course if I see the words "Natural Flavors" that's a no sale term to me too.

* Percentage of ingredients is very common in products why not in fruit concentrates?

 

[Kayts]

I totally agree with Scooter68..the fruit concentrate I ordered was to mix with some fruit I had and when I got the can it had labeled all these other ingredients.....I really love making fruit wines...my latest problem is my Blackberry wine has started popping the cork 5 months after being bottled and the temp of space kept in has been high of 64..I suspect the temp might of hit 66 but still I wouldn't of expected that...any idea's

 

[meadmaker1]

So honey. For mead was my vote because its a constant.
However I think I fall into a category I see in the pole of fresh/frozen fruit not grapes, and personaly never a kit. Shoot I have trouble following recipes as more than a guidline. A kit would have to be an inexpensive source of juice.

 

[soccer0ww]

Used to do quite a few kits. Now use the grapes and fruit out of our orchard. Doesn't make much but it is enough. I would like to get into the kits again in the future. In particular the whites. They just seem to turn out so much better than the red kits I have tried.

 

[Stevew1]

All I make is from juice buckets. That is what I learned on. I do Chilean, California, and Italian juice, in May, September, and October. Usually about 13 or 14 buckets over the year.

 

[Stevew1]

Location is also a factor in what people are winemaking. I live in southern NJ just outside Philadelphia. Getting juice or grapes is simple and close to home. There are a couple well known established retailers that sell grapes, juice and ALL the necessary equipment and supplies. I have not heard of any local vineyards selling grapes to the public. All of the home winemakers I know are second generation who switched from grapes to juice buckets because it is alot less work.