So far so horrific

Two months old is very young yet. While I have not made those particular fruit wines, your observations don't really surprise me. FYI - all I make is fruit wines, and I really have not been at this long - ending my third year. But I have noticed that fruit wines change alot from beginning to the end, and they don't necessarily taste like you think they would or look like you think they should.

For example, my pumpkin wine tasted like rocket fuel when it was young, but at 7 months old (when I bottled it) it was a very smooth, white wine (almost like a German Riesling wine). I have big hopes for the wine as it is supposed to get better at 2 years old. My watermelon wine smells like watermelon, but it doesn't have a watermelon taste. My strawberry wine smells like strawberries and has a very pretty red color, but it tastes like a light red wine with a hint of fruitiness. You'd think my green pepper wine might be a bit green, but is came out as an off-white wine.

I'd hang in there, keep tasting as you go - so you know how they change as they age, and if you try them again, look for some ideas on how to change/add to your recipe so you can get a wine you'll like. Darlene

Thanks very much for your encouraging comments Darlene. I'll hang in there. Us winemakers are often flying solo. This forum is great for drawing together a community of experience (gettin' too old to have to learn everything the hard way). ;-)

I know what you mean. Between the wine books I have, Jack & Lum's wine sites, and this forum, I feel pretty good about making wine and dealing with those questions which ultimately come up. There's always a batch which teaches me something. I'm looking forward to the next couple of months, I'm going to be opening some of my wines which I have not sampled since they were bottled (at 7 months) - dandelion (1 1/2 yrs old now), raspberry (1 1/2 yrs old now), cranberry (11 months), and strawberry (11 months). Most of these wines were the first batch I ever made and I've tried to be really patient about letting them age. After tasting, I may alter my recipes for the next time I make them-you know add more body, sweeten, whatever etc. Darlene

I assume you have made these dry. If you expected a dry wine that tastes of apples, you will be disappointed. Typically a dry apple wine tastes like a nondescript white table wine and it will taste strongly of rough alcohol when young. At a year and a half the character will improve markedly but it still will not taste like apples. BUT if you add a bit of sugar to it the apples will leap out at you. The same is probably true of the other wines you made.

Give them time to clear so they are NOT contaminated water, give them time to age so their character mellows, and, if you want them to taste like the fruit they were made from, give them some sugar (1-2%). I think you will enjoy them in the end.

Ray

In my (very limited) experience - I only started making country wines this year - they keep on changing in flavour! I had what I thought was going to be a revolting rosehip - tasted of nothing very much except bitterness at first racking, but a couple of weeks later and wow! - it's now like a full bodied dry white - and it's still very young of course. I'm hoping the same will happen to the still very bitter rowanberry, but I'm not convinced!

Just keep persevering - that's what I'm doing - every time I taste one of the wines (and I currently have 22 different ones on the go - caught the bug in a bad way!) it's changed. I'm planning to keep them for at least a year before making up my mind - and I'll be happy if half of them turn out to be worth the effort. The process of discovery is, for me, half the thrill - after all, it's much easier to pop out to the shops and buy a bottle of wine!

The only wine I've made which tasted remotely like the fruit it was made from was a black cherry kit wine - and unfortunately I discovered that I'm not that keen on black cherries in wine form!

Anyway, good luck with yours, and let us know how they progress!

Jo