As another poster mentioned, acid blend on its own won't balance bitterness. You might want to taste the wine again to make sure it's bitter you're tasting ... pick up a bit of grape tannin from the homebrew store, mix a bit with some water, and taste that. Or brew some really strong tea and take a tiny sip. These are bitter things ... then (after eating some bread and drinking some water to get the previous taste out of your mouth) retaste the wine.
If you're still convinced that what you're tasting is bitterness, I recommend trying a fining with PVPP fining like Polayclar VT do nothing or work miracles. I made apricot meade with pureed dried apricots a few years ago which turned out very bitter (since I actually pureed the reconsbreastuted dried apricots, skins an all, in a blender) and dark. A fining with PVPP removed the bitterness, lightened the color to a nice amber, and left just a wonderful wine. So, I would try this first. Some sources indicate that you need to filter your wine after fining with PVPP, but I just let it settle and racked, and had no problems.
If you think the wine is still bitter after fining with PVPP, you could try fining with gelatin. You can either use unflavored gelatin from the grocery store or by gelatin sold by your homebrew store specifically for fining. Gelatin fining will also remove tannin from wine, and tannins are bitter. You need to add the gelatin to the wine while it's still warm, and mix well. Don't forget to bump up the potbuttium metabisulfite a bit to compensate for the air exposure.
If even after the gelatin fining, you still think the wine is bitter, you can either try some additional gelating finings, decide the wine is good enough and leave it alone, or discard and start over. One other option would be to try adding some spices (cinnamon-cloves-ginger) and both acid blend and sugar to mask the bitterness, but you'll end up with a very different wine of course.
It's also worthwine to reflect back a bit and try to determine where this bitterness came from. Were there a lot of seeds or stems included, or were these pureed in a blender?
In any event, good luck!
Jon Check out my winemaking homepage at
