With modern yeasts, can you feed sugar to a must in bigger chunks?

I'll check on that too, thanks.

Good point.

Not good to go with the whole amount of sugar at the start, though?

I'm planning to add another 500 g of corn sugar to the (approximate) gallon (in addition to what was in the juice blend already and the

500 g I've already added). If I were following the book, I'd do that in five stages, but should I risk doing it in one, or two?

(I suppose if it doesn't work and the fermentation sticks, I could go back to the brewing shop to see if they have the yeast specifically labelled as "high-alcohol" in stock.)

Right, but I can't find a Gervin website (see next post).

Well, it probably won't kill the yeast, but it might be a very slow, sluggish fermentation. If you want the primary fermentation to be done in a week to 10 days then you'll want to give the yeast a good environment to really get going, then it'll be able to ferment the sugar additions more quickly and efficiently.

Dessert wines often finish at over 200 g/L. Most Icewines are well above this when they are bottled, but they take several weeks, even months, to ferment from the starting brix of 40+.

I couldn't find one either, but I found some write-ups on brewing shop websites and it seems to be recommended for high-alcohol and also for re-starting stuck fermentations, so you probably have the right yeast for what you are doing.

OK. If the current SG isn't very high, I'll add another 500 g (over about 4.5 litres) tonight.

Are you sure "200 g/L" is right? That's more than most beer worts

*before* fermentation!

Thanks. (I've got a Gervin product leaflet, but it's at least 10 years old.)

Sure does sound high... I thought we're shooting for 1-4% residual sugar, which would be 10-40 g/L if I'm not mistaken.

I found some a table of final gravity "targets" for various categories in another old book (Mitchell, _Scientific Winemaking Made Easy_,

1969):

Dry white wine ferment to dryness Dry red wine ferment to dryness Sweet white table wine 1020 Medium sweet dessert wine 1010 Sweet dessert wine 1038

An original gravity of 1038 is 105 g/L, so a final gravity of 1038 is going to have more sugar than that (because the alcohol lowers the overall density), but not 200.

(Since I have rather more experience in homebrewing than winemaking, I found the FG 1038 quite shocking at first.)

Yesterday I forgot to measure before adding the sugar, but the sample I took while syphoning had SG 995, so I think I had waited long enough.

My big mistake with this batch was starting off with just the Pomegreat in the demijohn and coming back to add all the sugar after fermentation had started --- so I didn't have much room to add syrup (I couldn't fit all the wine in after the second addition).

Looking for info, I've just discovered that "Icewine is a rare gift from a magical Canadian winter." Interesting.

Wow. I had no idea.

Taste is important, but I also want to avoid unexpected bottle fermentation. ;-)