Fruit Wine #1 Tasting

A- very clear for the most part but with a touch of sediment from the bottom of the bottle. Pale yellow in color, a few carbonation bubbles that disappear almost instantly. Certainly not "star bright" but looks good in a glass.

S-lots of sweet stone fruit: peach, apricot, nectarine. There is also some banana and some more  savory jammy/plum character.

T/M- dry and still, with a big, slightly sour/slightly sweet, peach sensation. In some ways less complex than the nose with an emphasis closer to straight peach flesh, but with a very nice balance and shift through the swallow from the up front sugars and on to the finishing sourness. No hotness or other off flavors, just mild to moderate peach characters.

O- I can't complain at all with how this one has turned out. Lots of stone fruit character, a touch of sweet, a touch of sour. How much of the sourness came from the fruit and how much came from other the additives is anyone's guess, but it certainly balanced well in the end. 

The wine tasted pretty hot a few months ago but has mellowed nicely and seems to have even more fruit character (less weird white wine-y) than it did when I first tasted it out of the bottle.

Nothing life changing here, but for someone who hasn't had many "fruit wines" I'm very pleased with the results.

Country Wines (Wines #1+2)

After purchasing the quad pack of 1 gallon jugs wine seemed like an even more inevitable creation to work on. Finally having a partially free weekend without enough time to brew and nothing to bottle I decided to get to work. My first two wines are very similar with only minor tweaks between them to test a few small things. Both wines are peach and nectarine with other juices added. The recipes and processes for each are listed below. 

Both wines were made with fresh chopped fruit which was boiled to sterilize due to time limitations not allowing for the more normal Camden tablet process.  In addition to time limitations I found myself out of sugar as I went to increase the gravity of the second wine and instead used a mixture of a small amount brown sugar, a few tablespoons corn syrup and a mix of grape and apple juice in place of water to reach a similar gravity.

These will likely age for 6-12 months prior to bottling and at least another 6-12 months of bottle aging. A long wait for such a small amount but minimal work and a fun experiment all around.

10-04-13

Finally racked off the fruit and lees after about a month, only keeping about 2/3rd of a gallon of each wine. Both were topped off with about a glass of wine (Apex Chardonnay, just because it was what we were already drinking) and a quarter gallon of apple juice.  Plan is to rack again in about a month then either rack again or bottle 1-2 months later before another 6-12 months of aging.

11-02-13

Racked again and topped off with just a little apple juice.

11-29-13
Final racking, topped off with apple cider.