2015 Cherry Wine

I have a lot of cherry wine on hand from last year, but the cherries were on sale at the store, so I bought a few bags. These were California Cherries, and not too sweet. 


2015 Cherry Wine Recipe

11 lb Sweet Cherries (stemmed, and sliced, but with pits)
1.5 gal water
6 lb of sugar (!)
1 t yeast energizer
1 t pectic enzyme
yeast - Red Star Cravee


This made 10 L of wine which is aging well. 

The flavor was better without heating the cherries, but I probably had a lower yield of juice. 

Here is the wine label for this batch:

2015 Raspberry Wine

My brother Glenn made an excellent raspberry wine two years ago, so when raspberries were on sale, I bought 3 cases and here we are. I do have a couple raspberry bushes but they don't produce anything like what I needed.

This has about twice the level of raspberries compared to the online recipes. I wanted a stronger raspberry flavor. I can always dilute it at the end.

The plan is to ferment to dryness, and then mix back with either more sugar or a white grape wine. I plan to try both, but there will only be about 3 gallons total. I am a little concerned that I should add more water, but we will see.

2015 Raspberry Wine Recipe

9.75 lb water (1 gal + .6 qt)

15 lb raspberries (Well-Pict from California, with a handful of my homegrown raspberries)

7.3 lb sugar

1 lime - juice only

1g wine tannin

4 g pectic enzyme

5 g yeast energizer

1 Premier Cuvee

The sugar content was measure by refractive index at 27.7% sugar (25 brix.) This should give 13. 1%.