Newbie question

[pensfan]

Made my very first wine in February and I seem to be lacking some ingredient. being that fruit options were limited during winter I choose an orange wine. I followed the manufactures recipe exactly and my wine has no flavor at all but does have a strong orange smell so I added stabilizer in hopes of saving the batch. The stabilizer created a little tartness but the wine is not drinkable! Ideas where I went wrong?

 

[BernardSmith]

Hi Pensfan. What in fact was the recipe? It may be that the wine is tart because oranges are tart and if you have fermented out all the sugar that was in the oranges you may really only have the acidity of the fruit rather than any of the sweetness you associate with oranges. If you provide the recipe those on this forum may be able to identify the crux of the problem (it may have nothing to do with the stabliizer) and may be able to help make the wine more drinkable....

That said, if you measure the specific gravity of the wine you have and then pour three or four small glasses of the wine and add enough sugar to each glass to raise the gravity by say, 0.005 (so if your gravity is 1.000, then the first glass would be sweetened to 1.005, the next to 1.010, the third to 1.015 ) then you can see if sweetening the wine brings out more of the flavors and see if it makes the wine more "drinkable".
I made an orange wine some time ago and found it very harsh but time seems to be mellowing the flavors as does back sweetening it.

 

[pensfan]

The ingredient list is 8 to 9 oranges, 1 pound light grapes, 6 parts water, 2 1/2 pound sugar, 1 tsp nutrient, 1 campden, wine yeast. I don't mind tartness but this tasted (as best I can think to describe it) like water that was sour.