In my opinion, plums are the ideal fruit for wine.
Like the grape, they have the right kind of mix to make interesting wines. They have a lot of water, a lot of sugar, a lot of acid, and a lot of interesting volatile compounds to create complex flavors in wine. Everyone knows that grapes make for great wines, but in my opinion plums are severely underrated. I have made a lot of wines in my time – both grape and non-grape – and by far the best wine has been the batch of Santa Rosa plum that I made. (And this is saying something because among the wines that I have made that were surpassed by the Santa Rosa plum wine have been Pinot Noir, Reisling, and Merlot!)
Now, I do not know that every plum would make an excellent wine. But I can say from first-hand experience that Santa Rosa does make an excellent wine. Now, to be sure, this is to be expected because Santa Rosa consistently ranks among the top three plums in terms of sweetness and flavor, the other two being Green Gage (Reine Claude) and Mirabelle. I have never had the fortune to experience a Reine Claude nor a Mirabelle. But, until a boring insect killed it, my Santa Rosa plum tree was the crown jewel of my orchard, consistently producing the best little plums I have ever eaten. I knew that they would make an excellent wine; the only problem was diverting enough fruit away from fresh eating to make a batch. I was only ever to accomplish that feat one time, so I’ve only ever made one batch of this wine. It was – as I expected – phenomenal.
So I want to emphasize that I am kind of enamored with this particular plum. Would another plum make a wine just as good? Possibly. And I am definitely not done making plum wines. (A year from now, Shiro will probably be making its way into bottles). But Santa Rosa is so good that it deserves its own category. This is the Pinot Noir of plum wines.
Recipe
This is to make 1.25 gallons which should reduce down to ~1 gallon once you rack off the lees.
- 5 pounds Santa Rosa plums
- 2 pounds sugar*
- 7.75 pints of water**
- 1.25 tsp acid blend
- 1.25 tsp yeast nutrient
- .75 tsp pectic enzyme
- 1/4 tsp tannin
- 1 campden tablet
- 1 package Montrachet yeast (or d47 or use your favorite yeast).
* It is not possible to give an exact amount of sugar because the plums have varying quantities of sugar based on when they are picked. Use a hydrometer and this chart. Ideally, I like to be at 1.1. So, I would add a pound of sugar and mash the plums. Then see where you are at on the hydrometer and subtract the sugar from where you are at from the sugar at 1.1 to see how much sugar per gallon you should add. (This recipe, for instance, is to make about 1.25 gallons. So you would want to multiply the number by 1.25).
** It is not possible to give an exact amount of water because the plums have varying contents of water. In general, plums are about 85% water. So, you are adding about 4.25 pints of water to your mix. In total, then, you will have ~1 gallon, plus 3.75 pints if you follow this recipe, which is nearly 2 pints more than the recipe calls for. In reality, you will not be able to squeeze all the water out of your bag of fermented fruit at completion, and you really don’t want to because that would be squeezing tons of sediment into your mix as well. So this recipe relies on you getting about 50 – 60% of the available water out of the plums. This ought not be terribly difficult. But one hint is to press as much as you can prior to fermentation. Mash them with a potato masher before you take the hydrometer readings because if they release the water after you take your gravity reading, it will dilute your perfectly balanced must and lower your alcohol levels. It is less important that you have exactly 1.25 gallons as it is that your sugar is balanced to the amount of water that you actually have.
