Well there is, in that there are a lot of fruit winemakers out there (both commercial and non-commercial). However, opinions on how to best make fruit wines tend to vary widely. Thus, for example, the variety of opinion on pulp fermenting vs juice fermenting in this thread.
I think it's predominantly an extraction issue. If you can get decent extraction with your crush and press set-up (for juice only), then the only reason to pulp ferment is to get an *alcoholic extraction* of compounds in the fruit you are using. In the opinion of a (seeming) growing number of winemakers, this is often not desirable (as Frederick and I have stated, in our opinion).
If you can't get decent extreaction with your crush and press set-up (for juice only), then you might pulp ferment to try and better extract. I suspect the latter is the reason many non-grape home winemakers do pulp ferments.
Otherwise, it just depends on the fruit you're using. It depends on the style of wine you're making. Say you want a heavier style with more extraction, more astringency etc, then you might pulp ferment for more phenolic character.
Sure, but the following issues would probably apply: (1) many fruit winemakers see grape wines as different from non-grape wines and, to an extend, tend to dismiss chances for correlations between the too - thus any such possible extrapolations are ignored, (2) the chemistry of each other fruits is a whole area in itself, and these have not been investigated for the purposes of making wine like that of grapes has (if we knew this intimately, then we'd be able to talk about whether pulp fermenting was beneficial or not with more certainty), (3) most fruit winemakers don't care to learn/know about the chemistry of their fruit.
I think so. (?) ;-)
Ben