Grapes, Blueberries, and Antioxidants

Paul - That was a good article. His fortified wild blueberry sounds like the old Geritol vitamin product.

I have experience just the opposite of what you ask. I add some dry, non-oaked white wine to fruit wines I make. I don't add enough to confuse the taste of the fruits (cranberry, blackberry) but the addition seems to bring out the fruit, expecially in the aroma.

I've tasted a lot of fruit wines (local wine contest) with so much grape wine added that you don't know what you are tasting so I think you have to be careful not to add too much. Some simple bench top trials shows the way.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

Good comments. I have never experimented with the purpose of making a healthy wine but do not see why not. Aren't all wines healthy? I do like to add fruit wines to grape wines. One of my favorite blends is a rather non descript cherry wine that mixes very nicely with Cabernet style reds. This last year I did make a melomel with only one pound of blueberries per gal. It has the flavor of mead but just a hint of berries but an amazing amount of color.

We often hear wines characterized as having blackberry or cherry tones. So as a home winemaker, why not add these to your grapes if they are supposed to be a good thing? If you are not sure what to blend, try making each separately and then blending them after the fact.

Ray

Paul, Each year I make a blend of Chambourcin, Baco, Chelois and NY 73. To this I add about 3% blackberries, by weight, as either fresh or frozen fruit or already-made wine. Very ripe blackberries have a luscious, rich flavor which contributes greatly to the grapes I struggle with. The taste & nose are present, but well integrated in the wine, and most people are aware of "something very good", but they don't know what. Shhhhhhhh, Don't tell 'em, it's a secret. ;-)

Side note: I once brought some straight blackberry wine to a tasting event, and some very knowledgeable & sophisticated people and went on about the stuff, recommending it to others. They hadn't a clue that it was a non-grape wine, and were surprised if not embarassed, to learn it was homemade B'berry! So, yes, adding other fruits to grapes can work.

BTW, Do you think most people have any idea what "brambles" taste like when they say a wine tastes brambly? (chuckle, chuckle)

Mike, I will never tell.

My backyard vineyard is coming into production pretty good now - Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Chambourcin - plus some Cabernet Sauvignon just planted last spring. I like a "little" Chambourcin in the blend but next year I think I will have excess Chambourcin so I think I will experiment with adding berries of some kind to the Chambourcin. I also recently planted high bush cranberries and this spring will plant elderberries and June berries so I potentially have a lot of combinations to try in the future with my excess Chambourcin - which I am not crazy about by itself.

After reading DiGrazia's numbers, I can see why I like Cabernet Sauvignon so much. I know very little about wine-tasting, grapes, etc., but I know what I like. And the health aspect of wine is important to me, so I'm glad you brought it up. As I get more into this hobby, I'm wanting to make meads plus "mixing" elixirs from fruit and herbs from my garden that will not only taste good but be good for me.

I've got 12 blackberry plants ordered (Gurney's has a thornless special), plus a hardy kiwi harem, a jostaberry, a rugosa rose, Jerusalem artichokes, and habanero, cantaloupe, pumpkin, and Alpine strawberry seeds coming. I've got a fig and two young blueberry bushes going into their second year. Also the usual herbs and edible flowers, and I'm harvesting saffron, too. All of these I want to try with mead.

The question I have is this: Could one make a wine or mead traditionally, then stir in a bit of an elixir (or three) that was made with vodka without doing damage? (I'm talking more about taste and stability than I am about %abv...although one would have to be careful with that, too. I love to drink wine, but I don't enjoy getting snockered.)

I don't want to do anything so sweet as a liquor, but I was thinking of maybe filling some mason jars partway with vodka and tossing in the few bits of fruit I pick as it ripens and letting it really cook in the alcohol. I could have a blueberry jar, a fig jar, a habanero jar, etc., and build up quite a "medicine chest" over time. In the Schramm book, he says he knows people who have jars of vodka and fruit sitting around for decades, still on the fruit, and that the vodka pretty much negates the need to rigorously sanitize. It's not clear to me, however, if he's talking about straight vodka and fruit or liquers with added sugar.

Is there another accretion method that would work better for me? And is there any reason one could not impart oak flavor by making an oak-chip elixir?

Diane