Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
finished product. You will never make great wine from bad
fruit—no amount of technique will improve its quality. But if
you start with the highest quality fruit, there is at least the
potential for creating great wine through solid technique.
You can use fruit in nearly any form to make wine: fresh
fruits, dehydrated fruits, canned fruits, and frozen fruits. Fresh
fruits and frozen fruits give the best results, and in many cases
frozen fruits are superior to fresh because the process of
freezing breaks down the cell walls to release more juice and
flavor. Canned fruits often have a distinctly “cooked” taste
that can detract from a wine, making it taste flat. They are
best used for no more than half of the fruit in a wine.
Wine-making shops sell specially canned fruits that come out
better in wines than the canned fruit at the supermarket, but
even these should constitute no more than half of the fruit by
weight.
Dehydrated fruits retain their sugar, but have been subjected
to oxidation and the loss of some of their more volatile flavor
components. Usually, they are used in the form of raisins for
purposes of adding some grape components to a wine so that
it has a more vinous quality; dehydrated fruits in general,
such as prunes and apples, are good for adding sherry-like
taste qualities. Dehydrated banana is good for adding body to
a wine such as watermelon wine that would otherwise be very
thin. Very often, dehydrated fruits are sulfited to preserve
their color. This is not a problem when they are added to a
primary fermenter. In general, one cup of minced dried fruit
will impart three ounces of sugar to the must, but this rule of
thumb is no substitute for measuring with a hydrometer. Do
keep in mind that making wine out of a dried fruit can
