Cranberry wine

Ray and Dave,

Earlier this year, i was interested in the cranberry wine experiment.

There was much debate as to how much cranberry to use, and what to expect in final product. This being said, I tried 3 separate batches.

I found welch's 100% juice white grape cranberry blend, made 1 gallon of that, then used the highbush cranberry recipe from Jack's website for two batches, (used only between half and two thirds the cranberries due to Ray's comments on tartness). In the first of the fruit batches, I used Welch's Niagara instead of raisins, then in the second batch I did use the golden raisins.

I performed two rackings since not including from primary, and all are close to bottling now, just waiting on the one with the raisins in it to clear a bit more.

My experience is this... during fermentations and racking-tastings, the best flavor for that young, though still sharp and raw was the one with the raisins. This last racking, I enjoyed the blend between fruit-niagara blend.

In my experience using Welch's concentrates, they all (when used as main ingredient, no fruit) have a very similar smell and taste. Some turn out fantastic in the end, and some are just so-so...Not sure why this is even when I follow notes from prior batches that are great.

My Cranberry whim started just after Thanksgiving when I noticed that the local wal-mart had reduced the cranberry bags to only $1.00 from 2.00. I ended up buying a bunch at this price and made the wines above and dried some for use in salads and snacks, but be careful to not over dry them.

A couple weeks before Christmas, I tried a bottle of wine I made from old orchard cranberry-blackberry 100% juice. It was out of this world for bottled juice. I immediately went to the wal-mart and bought more dollar bags of cranberries and blackberries and mixed with a gallon of Niagara Welch's juice and water to 5 gallons. I don't have notes for specifics handy, but I believe it was 4 lbs cranberries and 8 lbs blackberries plus the gallon of Niagara. I racked this twice since primary as well, and it is just starting to clear now, at last taste it was still very rough, but it obviously has potential. I am hopefully going to get a balanced wine. I noticed later that there was apple juice concentrate in the original old orchard as well, so maybe next batch will contain a can of apple concentrate as well.

All I can say is good luck with the experimenting, and thanks to all I read such excellent ideas from.

HINT: If you wait even longer, like day after Christmas or January 2, the cranberries will go even cheaper for about $0.50 a bag. You will have more bad ones to remove, but at 1-4 the price of original, it may be a good time to stock up. I purchased several bags like this, cleaned and sorted the berries, then used the food processor to grind them up roughly, then froze in gallon freezer bags for further experimenting, plus I dried a few more batches!.

Greg, Erie, PA

On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 15:04:16 GMT, "Ray Calvert"