As always, this is to make a 1.25 gallon batch, which will reduce to ~1 gallon once you rack off the lees. Jack Keller insists that the color will be better if you use Japanese persimmons. But if you use American persimmons, the flavor should still be as good, though it will impart a brownish tint to the wine. I have not been able to independently verify this because I have not made American persimmon wine. However, the flavor of American persimmons is all over the map. Some are excellent. Others are … acceptable? If you use a fruit that you know has good flavor, that should translate to the quality of the wine. Always remember that great wines are made in the orchard. (Well, that’s half the story anyway, I believe the other half of the story is yeast selection). I would not just use fruit that you have collected from the wild without verifying that it is high quality. This recipe calls for Japanese persimmons. My personal opinion is that the greatest American persimmons put the greatest Japanese persimmons to shame. However, Japanese persimmons – with the exception of Tamopan, which is truly awful – are of much more consistent quality than American persimmons. The worst American persimmons are much worse than the worst Japanese persimmons. So I would use caution in using American persimmon. That having been said, my orchard includes a young Early Jewel that has not yet come into production, but once it does I will almost certainly test this wine on an American variety.
- 5 pounds fresh Hachiya or Fuyu – or blends thereof – very ripe persimmon fruit.
- 980 grams of granulated cane sugar
- 8.75 pints water
- 1.25 tablespoons acid blend
- .75 tsp pectic enzyme
- 1 crushed campden tablet
- .75 teaspoon yeast nutrient
- 2 grams Red Star Premier Classique (Montrachet) or similar (d47 might make an interesting wine)
- Zero grams wine tannins
Yes, you read that correctly. Zero grams wine tannins. Persimmons are extremely tannic fruits. Although the tannin levels reduce at full ripeness, I believe they are still present. I added zero grams of wine tannins to the list because I did not want the reader to think that this was an oversight and start adding tannins to the fermenting vessel.
Boil the water and add your sugar. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Allow the sugar water to come to room temperature. Then pour it in your primary fermentation vessel. Place the persimmons in a food grade nylon bag, then add them to the sugar water mix in the primary fermentation vessel. Add your crushed campden tablet, yeast nutrient, pectic enzyme, and acid blend. Allow to sit for 24 hours.
After 24 hours, pitch your yeast. Allow to ferment for at least three days, maybe up to two weeks, depending on the temperature. At the beginning of your fermentation, your specific gravity should be exactly 1.1. You do not want to move to secondary until your specific gravity is below 1.03.
Move to secondary once your must is below 1.03 specific gravity (7.5 Brix). This will vary in terms of time but will usually be between 3 to 5 days if fermenting at room temperature. You DO want it to still be fermenting when you move to secondary because you want the CO2 to push all the oxygen out of your headspace in your secondary fermentation vessel. If fermentation has stopped, then the oxygen in your headspace can contaminate your wine. I like to let it sit for about a month in secondary before racking it off the lees. But I only like to do one racking before bottling. After a month, I typically let it sit with an airlock for a good ten or eleven months and bottle at the one year mark. By the one year mark, your wine should be crystal clear. If it isn’t crystal clear by the six month mark, you should probably consider adding some more pectic enzyme and possibly even amylase enzyme to clear it up. But I do not like to use fining agents. Time and enzymes should be all you need to produce crystal clear wine.
Depending on whether your wine is bone dry or off dry at this point, you may want to backsweeten. A small amount of sugar can greatly enhance the flavor of persimmon. I like to be between 1.5 – 3.5% residual sugar. If it is bone dry, you might try adding about 35 grams of sugar at a time. This will add nearly 1% at a time. Then taste and if you need to add more, you can add more. It is easy to add more, but difficult to remove sugar if it is too sweet. If you are using sugar to backsweeten, you will need to add wine stabilizer prior to backsweetening. Another option, if you do not wish to add wine stabilizer, is to add 40 or 50 grams of allulose at a time. Yeasts cannot ferment allulose, so you will not need to add wine stabilizer. But it is slightly less sweet than granulated sugar, so you will need to add a tad more.
50 grams of Allulose is about a quarter cup. Simply make a batch of simple syrup by boiling 1 quarter cup of water with a quarter cup of Allulose. Then add it to your wine and gently stir the wine.
