I’ve just bottled the plum wine that I started making back in January. If you think the waiting in beer making is bad, try making wine! Five months until it’s even bottled, then a minimum recommended aging of at least six months. But as I do when bottling beer, I took the opportunity at bottling time to sample the product. And, well, I’ve got to say I’m pretty impressed at this point. Ok, it’s not the smoothest, finest wine but it’s more than drinkable in it’s current state. And if aging brings significant improvements, it’s going to be bloody good. The problem though is that it’s so drinkable right now that I reckon a lot of it’s going to be gone before the recommended aging period.
It looks good too, nice and clear, colour somewhere between a rosé and a red. Taste-wise it’s not far removed from a grape wine but in the aroma and taste there’s a subtle pluminess that gives it a real nice character. I’ve never actually had plum wine before this and now that I’ve tasted my own first amateurish effort, I’m wondering why plum wine isn’t more common. I’ll definitely be making more next year and with the knowledge that I’ve gained from doing it I should be able to improve over this batch.
Prior to bottling I stabalised the wine with potassium metabisulphite and potassium sorbate. I back-sweetened with some concentrated fruit cordial and a little sugar syrup. I like a dry wine so I went easy on the back-sweetening but a little bit definitely improved it without making it actually sweet.
2 comments
Hi there, I was wondering if you’ve had a taste of this yet? I was looking at your recipe (http://www.instructables.com/id/Plum-Wine) and notice that you must have finished this lot and possibly made it again. How did it turn out, and do you have any advice/modifications? I have two shopping bags full of plums and need to use them soon. Plum wine sounds ace :-)
It turned out great, I’m really happy with it and will defintaley make it again. More than half of it is gone already and now I’m trying to hold on to some of the remaining bottles to see how it ages. I didn’t get to do another batch this year because we didn’t have a good plum harvest, I left it too late to pick them so a lot of them had dropped off and the birds ruined most of what was left. My main modification would be to use more plums and less water/sugar – I’ve gathered that that would produce a superior result. An expert winemaker would measure the suger content of the plums (brix) and let that be a guide to how much, if any, sugar is needed. Still, even blindly following the recipe I got a good result. But from my research I’ve come to the conclusion that this recipe could be improved by increasing the percentage of fruit.