Has anybody ever tried fruit wines? I’ve seen “wines” made from the juice of apples, pears, cherries, and blueberrys…when fermented, what do these “wines” taste like? They seem to be very expensive…can somebody recommend a good brand? I’d like to try a cherry wine.
I just bought some cherry wine before Passover. It tastes like a heavy, sweet grape wine, but smells like black cherry soda.
I’ve had apple wine (sweet and dry), cherry wine, plum wine (the sweet Japanese dessert wine), and rose wine. These wines all had tastes reminiscent of their origins. If you have local vinters, try those wines first.
A wide range of wines made from non-grape items are available in the UK (if you look for them), not even limited to fruit; Parsnip(err… interesting), Pea pod, Dandelion, Elderflower(Goooood), Carrot etc are all ‘out there’ in small commercial production, as well as apple, pear, strawberry, plum, gooseberry etc.
Mostly the ‘fruit’ wines are medium-sweet and very strong/heavy; more of a dessert wine than something you’d drink half a bottle of with a meal.
There’s a winery in St Pete, FL that makes wine out of almost anything EXCEPT grapes. I haven’t been there, but I’d love to go.
the japanese wine soki (please forgive my spellin of that as i have no clue) is made from rice.
I have, in my wine rack at this moment…
Raspberry Wine
Blueberry Wine
Blackberry Wine
(No Elderberry Wine, sorry)
Spice Apple Wine
Peach Wine
Plum Wine
Currant & Apple Wine
Dandelion Wine
Mead (Honey Wine)
Grape wines are for wimps.
There is a vintner in Wisconsin that sells all kinds of fruit-based wines. I liked the cherry wine so much that I bought a few bottles and brought them home with me. I don’t know how well they keep over long periods of time, though [for obvious reasons]. The part I liked best about the winery was the tour… with the tasting bar at the end! Sorry, but I don’t remember the name of the place. It was north of Green Bay on the UP. Hang on… I’ll do a search… Dang! I didn’t realize there were that many wineries in Door County! More than I can deal with, and none of the names I did look at sounded familiar. Just try a Google search with “Door county, Wisconsin, wines” and you’ll get lots of results.
Where do you get those from?
Linganore Winery, Mount Airy, MD.
Come to the Spring party. I’ll get you drunk.
I used to make a sparkling cranberry wine. It was light, slightly tart, and very tasty. Too much sugar in fruit wine simply spoils the flavor.
Jonathan, have you been able to locate a plum wine that isn’t sickeningly sweet? All the plum wines I find are fortified wines.
Well, if you’re gonna twist my arm…
My Dad makes his own fruit wines, it is a hobby that all the family appreciates. It takes a lot of practice and a fair amount of equipment (filters, fruit mushing attatchment for electric drill, bottles, demijons …) but the end result will be excellent once the skill is honed. Good wine can be made from allmost any fruit, some of the best are from apple, orange, plum (dry plum wine is great), elderberry, blackberry.
Cheers, Bippy
Up here in the PacNW we have a winery that makes a pear wine. They put the bottle over the bud of a pear and leave it there while the pear grows. So what you end up with is a pear, inside a bottle of pear wine. It’s a pretty neat process that I saw showcased on a local station last year.
Define ‘fortified’. I don’t consider Linganore’s to be overly sweet. But I like my wine sweet in the first place.
Where do you live???
The Amana Colonies in east central Iowa (along I80 ) have several wineries. They have stores in the villages that let you sample ,about 1/2 oz, the several different wines they make.
I like rhubarb.
You can get a pretty good buzz on by checking out all the stores in all the villages.
I can never make up my mind between 4 or 5 different wines in each store.
Hmmm haven’t done that in several years.Hmmm
Maybe next weekend.
Since you’re looking for opinions, I’ll move this thread to IMHO.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
Are you sure that was a wine? Usually the ‘pear in a bottle’ trick is done with brandies. The first several months of a wine’s life it lives in a barrel, then it’s bottled after maybe 6 months.
So either you’d have to make the initial must when pears are out of season, or somehow harvest a pear grown in a bottle when it’s out of season. I don’t know - maybe you could keep the wine in a barrel for a whole year.
Fruit wines can be excellent, and they don’t have to be dessert wines. Cherries, apples and pears are popular (I think) because they tend to grow in the same climates where grapes do, so a winery has access to those fruits.
At any rate, fruit wines can be found in New York, Michigan, and Virginia, in the wine country regions.
Dandelions and tomatoes supposedly also make very good wines.
I make pear wine myself. The big difference is that for most fruits you have to add acids at the beginning, and you often have to add sugar at the end (depending on how dry or fruity you want the wine). Pears, frankly, don’t have a whole lot of character, so any addition can be welcome.
Black Star Farms, up near Traverse City, Michigan, makes a killer pear wine that’s like a gewuerztraminer.
Oh, by the way, fruit wines I know of are sold by individual mom-and-pop or just larger wineries, and can’t ship out of state, or just to a handfull of states with which they have reciprocal agreements.