Cherry Wine

Cherry Wine is easy to make, whether from fresh fruit or frozen. This Cherry Wine Recipe will show you how. Make now, drink in one year.

Cherry Season is upon us!

As you gaze upon rows and rows of fresh cherry cartons at your farmer's market (we're lucky to live in the fruit belt!) or store, you may start considering the possibilities.

Cherry jam and cherry pie are the usual go-tos, but what if you're looking for something a little different? A more long-game project, perhaps?

Consider making some cherry wine!

- You get some fruit, some sugar, and some yeast

- You let the yeast go to town on the fruit and sugar (in a sanitized bucket!), vomiting out alcohol

- The fruit pulp and yeast waste settle to the bottom of the bucket, leaving you with beautiful clear wine on top.

- You get the wine off that waste, and into a sanitized jug.

- You let it do its thing for a bit, before moving it over to a new clean jug.

- You wait.

- You have wine!

The Fruit

The fun thing with cherry wine is that your wine can vary wildly from batch to batch, based on the fruits you use.

Black cherries will make a deeper, darker wine.

Red cherries will make a lighter, brighter red wine, as pictured in this post.

Rainier cherries will make a white or blush wine.

Frozen cherries - thawed - of any variety will give up their juices easier than fresh fruit, as a general rule.

Note: If you're using fresh cherries, I HIGHLY recommend getting a cherry pitter, if you don't already have them. Even if this batch of wine is the only time you'll ever be pitting cherries, it's worth the investment - makes life so much easier. This one is the model we have, I love it!

In addition to the colour differences, the flavour profile will be a bit different between them. Additionally, the sweetness of the variety used - and the ripeness - will impact the final wine:

The Sugar

Assuming the same level of ripeness, the various types of cherries have different sweetness (and acid!) levels. In general, Rainier tends to be the sweetest, followed by black cherries, followed by red.

Individual varieties in each of those categories can be exceptions to that rule, of course.

Then, there's the matter of ripeness. Cherries that are more ripe have a higher sugar content than less-ripe cherries.

When making wine, sugar comes from two sources - the cherries themselves, and the sugar you add. I recommend only tweaking the added sugar, in customizing your wine - ripe cherries have better flavour, and their juices are more readily available. You should always use the ripest cherries you can.

If you're looking to make a wine that's more on the dry side, you can always cut back the added sugar. I wouldn't recommend using less-ripe cherries as a way of aiming for a dry wine.

In addition to the sweetness of the finished wine, the amount of sugar your start with also contributes to the final alcohol level - ABV - of the wine. The other determining factor there is:

The Yeast

You can choose your yeast variety to customize the alcohol content of your wine.

Some yeast are more robust, and can survive in a higher alcohol environment. These yeasts - such as champagne yeast - will eat up more of the sugars in the mix, and produce more alcohol.

Some yeast are less robust, and will die off faster, as their environment becomes more alcoholic. These yeasts - such as a sweet mead yeast - basically deactivate before they've made the wine super high ABV, or super dry.

Of course, this depends on your Cherry Wine Recipe to an extent, as well. A recipe that starts out with less sugar and uses a less robust yeast will not necessarily turn out sweeter than a wine that starts out with more sugar and uses a more robust yeast.

Isn't wine making fun? 🙂

Another consideration: No matter what kind of yeast you use, you can keep an eye on things, sampling every once in a while (sanitized equipment!), and just prevent the yeast from continuing to multiply, when the wine reaches the sweetness/dryness level that you want. This is called "stabilization", and is usually achieved through the addition of potassium sorbate. (½ teaspoon per gallon of wine)

For this particular Cherry Wine Recipe, we're aiming for a mid-sweet wine. Not too dry (Dry fruit wines don't tend to taste like the fruit used, IMHO), and not TOO sweet. Again, this will depend on the fruit used - just have some fun with it!

ANYWAY. Let's get to that recipe, shall we?

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5 from 7 votes

Homemade Cherry Wine

Cherry Wine is easy to make, whether from fresh fruit or frozen. This Cherry Wine Recipe will show you how. Make now, drink in one year.

⁠

Prep Time2 hours hrs

Cook Time40 minutes mins

Resting time365 days d

Total Time365 days d 2 hours hrs 40 minutes mins

Course: Beverage

Cuisine: French

Servings: 1 Gallon

Calories: 6981kcal

Author: Marie Porter

Equipment

• Cherry Pitter
• 2 gallon fermenter bucket and lid
• 1 air lock and stopper
• Siphon, siphon tubing.
• 1 - 2 1 gallon glass carboys

Ingredients

• 6 lbs fresh cherries*
• 3 lbs white sugar
• 1 gallon spring water
• ½ teaspoon acid blend
• ½ teaspoon pectic enzyme
• 1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
• ¼ teaspoon wine tannin
• 1 packet Red Star “Pasteur Red” yeast
• Wine stabilizer of choice optional

Instructions

• Rinse and pick through cherries, removing any that are moldy, etc. Remove stems and pits, chop them up.
• Place in a large pot, along with the sugar. Using a potato masher or VERY clean hands, stir and mash cherries.
• Add water, stir well. Heat to ALMOST boiling, then simmer gently for 30 minutes. Stir in acid blend, enzyme, nutrient, and tannin.
• Pour mixture into a freshly sanitized fermenting bucket. Cover with sanitized lid and air lock, allow to cool to room temperature (overnight).
• The next morning, give the mixture a quick stir with a long, sanitized spoon, and – using sanitized equipment – take a gravity reading of the liquid (strain out any cherries). Keep track of the number! (This is an optional step, but will allow you to calculate your final ABV %)
• Sprinkle yeast into fermenter, cover with sanitized cover and air lock. Within 48 hours, you should notice fermentation activity – bubbles in the airlock, carbonation and /or swirling in the wine must. This means you’re good to go!
• After a week or so, use your sanitized siphon setup to rack the must into a freshly sanitized carboy. Put the carboy somewhere cool (not cold!), and leave it alone for a month or so.
• Using sanitized equipment, rack the wine off the sediment, into a clean, freshly sanitized carboy. Cap with sanitized airlock, leave it alone for another 2-3 months.
• Rack one more time, leave it for another 3 months or so.
• When your wine has been racked a few times and shows NO more fermenting activity for a month or so (no bubbles in the airlock, no more sediment being produced, you can move on to bottling. **
• If stabilizing, follow the instructions on your selected type of wine stabilizer to stop fermentation. For potassium sorbate, this needs to be done 2-3 days before bottling.
• Using sanitized equipment, take a gravity reading, then rack the wine into clean, sanitized bottles. Cork.

Notes

* If using frozen cherries, allow them to thaw. Don't bother straining them - just skip the sorting/pitting step!

** If you're sampling as you're going, and your wine reaches the right sweet/dry level for you, you don't need to wait for the fermentation activity to end. Just skip ahead to stablization!

IMPORTANT:

Software generates nutritional information based on the ingredients as they start, and is unable to account for the sugars consumed in the fermentation process. As such, the calories, sugars, and carbs are shown WAY higher than reality.

Additionally, the listed value is for the entire recipe, NOT per serving.

Nutrition

Calories: 6981kcal | Carbohydrates: 1796g | Protein: 29g | Fat: 5g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Sodium: 203mg | Potassium: 6042mg | Fiber: 57g | Sugar: 1707g | Vitamin A: 1742IU | Vitamin C: 191mg | Calcium: 481mg | Iron: 10mg

A 5 gallon batch of cherry wine, freshly bottled

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