CJJ Berry Raisin Wine

[Ebob01]

Hi All

CJJB has 2 raisin wine recipes in First Steps In Winemaking
1 has 3.5kg and no sugar, the other has 1kg and 1kg sugar.

First of all has anybody tried these recipes and are they any good? I'm interested to make something which tastes like a sherry/Madeira/dessert wine.

It says the first recipe with 3.5kg of raisins ends up dry, however the raisins equate to 2.3kg sugar!

The second one it says it is sweet, I would imagine that would have a better chance of ending up dry than the first.

He states to leave it in the bucket for 10 days before siphoning into the demijohn. Surely the whole thing would have finished in the bucket by this time. Was there a difference in using yeast that was available 50 years ago in the 70s....?

 

[Wynott]

Hi Ebob01

I haven't made either of these yet - but I have made a Tea & Caraway using 1lb of raisins. After the initial time in the bucket, it took a good couple of months to ferment out in the DJ.

I'm sure I have seen discussions on the forum about the sweetness of raisins, so it sounds about right that only using them would not produce as sweet a wine as raisins+sugar. There will be more experienced people here who can advise on that, I'm sure.

I'd be interested to know how the raisin wine works out, as I've thought of trying this one day. Probably the latter one first, 3.5kg of raisins ain't cheap!

Good luck

 

[johncrobinson]

Careful with berry's books I have mentioned it on here before,Some of the sugar quantities in a wine he recommends are way,way too much.

A lot of wine in the 70s was made with coarse chopped fruit which had to slowly leach out the sugars,Leading to prolonged fermentation times.(you will find this with raisins.)
Also fermentation's were done a lot cooler than we tend to do today.