Fruit, Vegetables And Flowers

Making fruit wines is simple the most labour intensive part is gathering and preparing the ingredients in enough quantity to make the wine itself. The rest of the process, things like fermentation and maturing really take care of themself and requires only little interaction. So preparing your fruit, veg or flowers is important and it is these things of course that provides the primary flavour and your wines bouquet. This stage is important so don’t be tempted to cut corners.

If You Wouldn’t Eat It Don’t Use It

As a general rule if you wouldn’t want to eat the fruit for any reason then don’t be tempted to use it in wine. This is as simple as removing pips and stones from fruit, if these go into your must then they are likely to make your finished wine bitter and unpleasant. Remove any green stems or leaves and any under ripe or mouldy fruit that you wouldn’t usually eat. Wash all the ingredients just as you would if you were going to eat them.

Preparing The Ingredients

How you prepare your fruit will depend on what you decided to use. Hard fruits (or vegetables), like apples and pears, will need chopping into small dice to provide as much surface area as possible, a mincer can be used as well but remember the solid need separating later on in the wine making process. On the other hand soft fruit like berries need nothing more than crushing and squashing to release their juices, I will include methods for preparation on all my recipes here but mainly it’s just common sense. Flowers often need removing from the stalks.