Apple Wine - Where's The Character?

Apple wine, especially if you've fined and filtered it, doesn't have a strong apple aroma or taste. All that clarification and racking will leave you with a white wine that tastes, well, pretty much like a white wine.

Back in my early winemaking days in the 1990's, we had a big ole winesap apple tree in the back yard which had lots of apples. I picked up the windfalls, actually cut them by hand and ran them through a juicing machine skins and all (it was a lot of work), bumped the sugar way up, and made a fairly dry wine (a little residual sugar) that I racked only twice and added no finings. This made a moderately oxidized, rough wine ... but you know, we enjoyed it, and it definitely had some "apple character."

In 2003, on the other hand, we made some wine from cider, fined it with PVPP, and ended up with something very much like a nice german white wine ... very nice chilled, you'd never know an apple had been involved. It was particularly good because the cider was from a produce stand where they had made it from a blend of a bunch of different apples.

One thing you can do to give your wine a bit more "apple" character is bump up the malic acid content (malic acid tastes a bit "appley") ... acid blend is generally one third malic acid. To preserve the apple flavor, fine less, rack less, and definitely avoid a MLF. You could add some apple flavoring at the end, but in my opinion that's cheating :o). Better is to reserve some of the unfermented apple juice, let it settle/clarify in the fridge if it's cloudy, and add that to the wine prior to bottling (make sure to add potassium sorbate to prevent fermentation for restarting in the bottle).

The final thing you should ask yourself is if you'd rather be drinking hard cider, and if that's the case, look into making that instead of apple wine.

Jon [Check out my winemaking homepage

I sweetened mine a little at bottling..brought back a little apple taste.

And you have a point about hard cider.

Higher alcohol can really detract from fruit flavor. Keep the alcohol content down.

You are exactly right. Apple is famous for this. Dry apple wine tastes like white wine. Sweeten it a bit and the apple comes back.

A lot of people are surprised at this but do you expect a dry red wine to taste like fresh grapes?

Ray

Not to nitpick, but the ratio of sugar to water does not matter.

"invert" sugar is just sucrose that has been cleaved into its monosaccarides glucose and fructose through heating. This process is acid catalyzed so it helps to add a pinch of acid to the water, although it will work without it...it just takes longer, (since all water has some free H+ in it)

I just added a fourth cup of regular table sugar( boiled in a small amount of water) for a gallon of apple wine.

I did fine with bentonite.

I've heard that the best apple wine and apple juice comes from a combination of different types of apples. Apparently you get a better flavor, acid, and sugar blend. I actually used 4 different types of apples in my wine with varying acidity and tastes. I'm hoping my finished wine tastes something like a german white wine. I stopped fermentation at 3 BRIX to keep some sugar and keep alcohol around

I did some acid trials and found the Malic to be a bit harsh. However, it definitely does represent apple character better than others. On a suggestion from a professional apple winemaker friend, I used a dash of citric acid instead. Even though apple has little or no native citric, a dash gives the wine a crisp taste that I really liked.

Good point!

It does not take much. Maybe as little as a couple of tablespoons. Do it to taste. You might want to try using a good honey instead of sugar. It will add an interesting aroma. If you read any ancient literature you read about "honied wine".

Ray

You can always add a bottle 4 oz of apple flavoring. I do it when I make hard cider because it's usually dry and the cider taste is very weak.