Plum wine from juice..question.

It depends what they added. The term "pickling" usually refers to adding some sort of (salt and vinegar) brine to preserve the product. If that were the case, it's not going to make a very good wine, if you can even get it to ferment. On the other hand, if all they did was add sugar as a preservative, and then process it in a water bath or steam pressure canner, you can probably make wine from it.

Here is a recipe that you might be able to adapt to your plum juice:

Since there is already sugar added to the juice, you will want to measure the sugar content with a hydrometer, and add sugar to an SG of 1095-1100, rather than adding the amount specified in this (or any) recipe. If this is your first attempt at wine-making, you will want to read (at least) "Getting Started" and "The Basic Steps" at the aforementioned site.

Good luck.

similar problem?

Do you use a pectic enzyme? It's a good idea to add pectic enzyme before fermentation, especially if you have heated (or steamed or cooked) the fruit to extract flavour.

Well, I think the "cooked" taste may be different than fresh, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is a bad taste. I think it would turn out great!

Thanks to all for the input. I will give it a try. I have made plum wine in the past but have used fresh (ripe) plums and the result has been very good. As someone mentioned, there is nothing to lose. The pickling I mentioned, meant added sugar as a preservative. I will be careful with the sugar content though.

Thanks aga>"firefox45" wrote:

The only time I've had trouble clearing plum wine was when I used hot mix sparkloid as a fining agent. I used pectic enzyme & it was clearing nicely, but I got impatient & wanted to speed the process up. When I added the sparkloid the wine developed a definite haze. I think the heat from the sparkloid activated some of the pectin that was still in the wine.