Montmorecy Tart Cherry

I think you can approach this in one of two ways:

1) Reconstitute the juice and measure the volume, estimate the amount of fruit required to produce that volume of juice, then use a recipe scaled to that amount of fruit. If you don't know, use 15 lb/gallon as an estimate. Jack's site has a recipe for making wine from Morello cherries, which are also tart, called "Cherry Wine [Dry] (3)" on this page:

2) Another approach would be to decide on appropriate SG and TA levels, reconstitute the juice, add sugar and acid to your target then pitch the yeast.

An OG of 1.090 is a good starting point, but there has been some discussion of making fruit wines to a lower alcohol level than commercial grape wines. If you wanted to try that, then you might consider an OG of 1.075-1.080, which would give you 10-11% alcohol.

White wine must normally has a TA of about 7-9 g/L. For red wine musts it's a little lower, maybe 6-8 g/L. Most people think cherry wine ought to be a red, but since you have juice you might want to make it as a "white". You might also let the TA of your juice guide you; if it's already at the high end, or higher than, the TA for white wine musts you might make it as a "white" to minimize the amount of acid reduction. If you decided to make a lower alcohol wine, then you may want to lower your target acid as well.

If you decide to make your wine as a red, then you'll want to think about tannin. You're using juice, so you wont have any skin contact. The thing is, I really don't know how much to add. 1/4 tsp per gallon is common, so you might start with that. I would think you'd need more than that and I would probably use 1/2 tsp per gallon myself. Maybe someone who knows more can chime in on this. On the other hand, if you're making it as a "white", then you can just add a minimal amount or skip the tannin altogether.

Good luck, and let us know how it turns out,

Erroll

The Anchorage Fishwrapper and Litterbox Liner Press