Adding fruit while bulk aging

Rick - Usually the experts encourage adding stuff earlier rather than later. If you are adding anything that contains sugar (like the cherry puree), you need to make sure the wine is stabilized with sorbate and bisulfite, so that you don't get renewed fermentation. The other downside is that you are adding something with more solids, so you will have to wait until the solids from the puree settle out, before you can bottle. Adding puree may cause issues with pectin, etc. that you will need to deal with, in order to have the wine clear properly (again).

If you feel you must add something, I'd recommend trying just juice of some sort (a clear liquid) and testing it on a small scale. After mixing, I'd wait at least a week or two before bottling, just to make sure everything has settled.

Doug

Rick, I agree with the previous poster, if you're going to start adding stuff to the wine at this stage, then I would have concerns about fermentation starting again and pectin hazes. It would mean you might be starting all over again, I don't know that I would do that, especially if you want to bottle it soon. I only make 1 gallon batches, so if a wine doesn't turn out then I only have 5 bottles to decide what to do with. I've made cherry wine, and what it tastes like at 8 months isn't what it will taste like at 1 year or 2 years. I just opened a cherry wine I made 2 years ago. Yes, I wasn't totally happy with it, but since I had been having a bottle every so often, I could see how it matured. I made a second batch in which I tried to make some changes so that I would like it better (it is aging now). I bought fruit for a third batch last week. Just an suggestion, since you have 5 gallons, you could divide it up into 1 gallon batches - bottle one or two gallons, let another sit and bulk age longer, add something/puree to another gallon, and sweeten & stabilize another...? I would hate to see you lose the entire batch to experimentation. Keep good records, so that you know what you did, when you start tasting it. Good-luck. Darlene

Your local home brew shop should have Fruit Flavoring that you can add...

OK thanks for the input I'll just leave it bulk age some more and bottle next spring. And as far as the lacking cherry flavor goes I imagine there's a good chance it's due to the young off flavors.

Thanks again, Rick