I know it seems fruity and sweet wines seem to be tabu. I wager conneuseurs (sp?) like it pale and dry. But, what are some real fruity wines? I was especially curious if there may be a cherry wine. I found some, but they put weird junk in it like anise and orange peel, etc.
Maybe someone on the SD shares my taste in wines and can make some recommendations?
Here in Tennessee, you find a lot of muscadine wines that tend to be on the sweet side. I tend to find some (most) white zinfandels to be too fruity for my liking. I like my wine aggressive, oaky, and dry as a popcorn-fart.
Are you interested in wine made from fruits other than grapes? Or just “fruity” grape wines?
For the latter, have you tried Beaujolais? That’s the French Gamay grape, made into a light-bodied, low-tannin, inexpensive quaffing wine with a variety of fruit flavors. The simplest Beaujolais will have at least the flavor wine aficionados describe as “red berries.” Slightly more expensive and specific versions may exhibit “apricots,” “blueberries,” “cherries,” “currants,” “peaches,” or “raspberries.” Again, all of these are actually coming from grapes, but you might be surprised.
I’m no wine connoisseur, and I enjoy my wines fruity and wet. Dessert wines I find enjoyable, on top of the high alcohol content. I like ruby port a lot, and use marsala with fruit often. As far as table wines, I enjoy riesling. My thing lately has been cheap bottled sangria with a freshly juiced/reamed orange and grapefruit mixed in. It would probably be good with cherry juice!
Blasphemy, I know.
nope, I am another sangria / cheap fruity plonk swiller =)
My absolute favorite wine ever was some cheap local plonk we found in cafes in Perpignan - straight out of the vat, a real good days work fermenting=)
Thick deep ruby red, heavy in the sugars, fruity. The legs on it were amazingly syrrupy sigh it was like the soda pop of wines and I miss it =(
There’s always at least one popular sweet ‘n’ fruity wine (that’s generally pretty cheap), as well as the popular dry wines. For a couple of decades, it was White Zinfandel, now it’s Reisling and I’m seeing more and more affordable (read: cheap) Muscats and Eisweins in our local stores. There are also a lot more Hard Ciders (apple and pear) widely available now, which may satisfy the palate of a sweet-toothed drinker who used to drink wine coolers (which weren’t wine, either).
Now, are they raving about them in wine magazines and high end restaurants? Probably not. (Although I think I did see one Muscat article a few months ago.) But that’s due to entrenched wine snobbery and groupthink just as much as subjective taste, I believe. Same as Tabasco’s not widely touted at Burn Your Buds chili cookoffs, but it’s probably in 80% of the chili recipes people make at home.
Yes, I’m a sweet ‘n’ fruity fan from way back. 
If you like bubbles you might enjoy a Moscato d’Asti from Italy. It’s a sparkling white wine. You might also enjoy a Brachetto, sparkling sweet red from Italy but probably much more difficult to find here.
I like them… but I’m a girl. My favorite is Alto Vineyards “Shawnee Gold”, which is described just as “American sweet table wine”. I’m pretty sure it’s made from just grapes, but it has a distinct flavor of peaches and apricots. It’s lovely.
Asti is my first choice for New Year’s Eve and other festive occasions.
I don’t pretend to be a wine connoisseur at all, which is an understatement- I have no palate, “I just know what I like”, and that’s grape juice with alcohol (and what I hate, which is liquid sawdust). That said, I’ll mention port in general (ruby port mentioned above)- it’s considered a dessert wine by some and ranges from grape juice in taste to grape jelly melted at room temperature.
There are some other wines I like but I hesitate to mention them because wine lovers would pelt me with rocks and garbage as they’re cheap and screw top.
Since it’s Channukah perhaps they’ll let me mention Mogen David without issue though.
And I love white sangria.
Reisling isn’t necessarily “sweet”. The good stuff is all over the map. Understanding Reislings from Germany can take a long, long time.
Those are meant to be desert wines, so they’re really in a different category.
Further… “fruity” is not the same “sweet”. Lots of high-priced wines from Napa are affectionately (sometimes not so affectionately) known as “fruit bombs”. Not like the more subtle wines you typically see coming from France.
So, if you like big, fruit-forward wines, look for some of the Zinfandels or Zin blends.
I was in the liquor store the other day and walked past the regional wine section. There was many wines made from fruits besides grapes — I was really amazed! I know I saw cherry, raspberry, blackberry and one or two others. I was tempted but since I like drier wines, I didn’t purchase any.
Here’s a list of some award-winners. I see pomegranate on there!
Linganore Vineyards in Mt Airy, MD is where I get mine. They make wines from all sorts of fruit. Apple, cherry, raspberry, blueberry, mead, you name it. I have served it at parties with dopers and congressman and punk bands and it’s been liked.
From that page:
Peach
Plum
Strawberry
Raspberry
Blueberry
Blackberry
Spice Apple
Dandelion
Honey
They’ve done others in the past, including (sigh) elderberry. Commence the jokes now.
Me and my sweet tooth have recently taken a shine to Jacobs Creek Moscato. It’s a pretty affordable sparkling, and it darn near tastes like peach soda.
My wife is a big fan of the Carolina Red/Hatteras Red muscadine wines and Scuppernong wine from Duplin, which have become ubiquitous here. 12% alcohol, but you sure can’t taste it.
Boone’s Farm Melon. As sweet and fruity as it gets!
I really like Adesso Cagnina di Romagna, around $11.00 USD. To me, it seems to be both fruity and slightly sweet. It has a cool label too.
My wife drinks it cold, which I thinks is incredibly gauche :D.
To me, fruity wines are dessert wines. IMHO, one of the best vineyards is Bargetto. They actually ferment the fruit instead of adding flavors to white wines. I once had an incredible strawberry wine there, but the winemaster told me it was the most difficult wine he ever made. Now they seem to have Olallieberry, Raspberry and Pomegranate - and a real mead made from honey.
Try the Raspberry to make a champagne cocktail - you might get lucky 
They do mail order.
Here’s a whole region of fruity whites: sauvignon blanc from New Zealand’s Malborough region. There’s lots out there, and I’ve mostly seen them in the $8-12 range. Those clever Kiwis make their white wine taste like passionfruit and pineapple, with a wonderful balance of acidity. It’s my summer wine. In winter I like a big fat Shiraz from a dry place.