I make my wines from fresh fruit, and I prefer to source the fruit locally. For this reason, I tend to focus on non-grape fruit wines. It’s not that I don’t like grape wines. Quite the contrary, grapes are, in many ways, the ideal fruit for wine. They have the right balance of acidity, tannins, and sugars. In addition, they also have a lot of flavors that meld together to create a lot of complexity. Some – but not all! – non-grape fruits tend to be dominated by a single flavor. Think about a navel orange. Put it in your mouth, and there is a dominating flavor of orange. Now, put a grape in your mouth and notice that the flavors are less bold than the orange, and this lack of an overpowering flavor allows an interplay of flavor.
That having been said, this “one-note” quality is not true of all non-grape fruits, and I am trying to develop wines in a style that allows non-grape fruits to be appreciated for the complex flavors that they contain. In the past, I have made Riesling, Pinot noir, Merlot, and Concord grape wines. I would like to explore some Gamay. I would like to do some more work with the American fox grape. For this reason, I planted Blueberry grape (a vitis labrusca cultivar, similar to Concord) in my backyard orchard and I hope to experiment with it. The problem with so-called “fox grapes” is that they tend to produce overly sweet wines. This is the fault of the style, however, as vintners tend to cultivate them as sweet wines, believing that the sweetness will mask the “foxy” flavor. In contrast, I believe that this foxy flavor is what makes American grapes interesting. In my view, this grape would be best served by being presented in the typical off-dry style that allows most fruits to put their best foot forward. Cloyingly sweet isn’t a good look for any grape, and thus it is a small wonder that American labrusca grapes have never developed a reputation as a good wine grape.
Beyond the grape, I have had the greatest success with plum. I believe that plum – especially Santa Rosa, but we are going to trial Shiro, as well – makes a high quality wine that rivals the best grape wines. Peach was a lot more harsh than plum, but I am still tinkering with the recipe and I believe that peach holds promise. In production right now are pumpkin, dried fig, pineapple, and persimmon which are being trialled for suitability.
Wine Style
Almost all of my wines are intended to be dry or off dry. I typically prefer about 1.5% – 3.5% residual sugar in the wine. At the lowest levels, the wine is not sweet to the taste but has just enough sugar to enhance the flavors in the wine. At the upper end of that range, you can just begin to taste a slight sweetness, but the sweetness is not overpowering.
Thus, if you prefer a sweeter wine, I would recommend adding no more than a half cup of sugar per gallon at a time and then tasting. You will also need to add wine stabilizer to keep the yeast from reactivating. Otherwise, the yeast will just eat up all your sugar and perhaps explode your bottle or pop your cork for your trouble. Another alternative is to add a little bit of a non-fermentable sugar: xylitol or allulose would seem to be the most promising candidates as these are the sugars least likely to impart off flavors to your wines. I typically add enough sugar to get to bone dry (0 g residual sugars), then I will either stabilize and backsweeten or just add allulose. Allulose is ideal because the taste is exact – indeed, allulose is a sugar, it’s just a rare sugar that can’t be fermented. However, allulose is also expensive, so you might be better off stabilizing and then just using sugar to backsweeten.
With the exception of fig and quince, I believe that all of these wines should be consumed within 5 to 7 years. None of my recipes (save fig and perhaps quince) are designed for extended aging. This is not substantially different from grape wines. Although there is a myth that is commonly believed that grape wines – especially reds – can be aged for decades, that is true of only a handful of wines. Nearly every wine on the market today, even exceptionally high quality wines, should be consumed within 5 to 10 years of bottling.
Wines that Interest Me
In no particular order, these are the wines that I think have a lot of promise. If they are accompanied by an asterisk, they are wines that I know, for a fact, are capable of producing a wine of comparable quality to grape. But the others I strongly suspect can make interesting wines. I base this off of either a) positive reports by others who have made the wine; b) the complexity of the flavors in the fruit. Bolded wines I have actually made. If you have a suggestion, please feel free to leave a comment. I am open to both other fruits as well as varieties of the fruits below (e.g. “Babcock peach”). You will probably notice that citrus fruits and apples are conspicuously missing from this list. That is intentional as a) I believe that citrus fruits are unsuitable for winemaking; and b) apples are suitable for winemaking but the variety is crucial to get them balanced and so it’s going to probably require a blend which will be a lot of work for me to figure out the perfect apple blend.
- Pinot Noir (grape)*
- Reisling (grape)*
- Blueberry grape (grape)
- Gamay (grape)*
- Vermentino (grape)
- Santa Rosa Plum*
- Shiro Plum
- Peach
- Pear
- Dandelion
- Persimmon
- Black Cherry*
- Tart Cherry
- Rainier Cherry
- Pumpkin
- Quince
- Pineapple
- Carambola
- Madrone
- Guava
- Dried Fig*
- Fresh Fig*
- Prickly Pear
- Dried Jujube
- Fresh Jujube
- Guava Flower
- Black Currant
- Kiwi
- Blueberry
