Talsheek Cellar Blog
Granny Apple Wine Update
Posted by: Greg on Feburary 1st, 2010
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Back in April 09, my wife and I purchased 40 pounds of Granny Apples from Sam's Club, quartered the apples and froze them for several weeks before processing the fruit for a batch of wine. We extracted the juice from the fruit with our press and fermented the juice. We tasted the wine after 7 months or so of aging, but the wine lacked body and the flavor wasn't up to our standards. At first, I thought the acidity level might be to low in the wine and that could be affecting the flavor, so I tested it and everything seemed to be in order for a fruit wine. We couldn't quite put our finger on what was missing in the flavor, but it definitely needed something.
Really not knowing which direction I wanted to go with this wine, I decided to add some spices to it, just to see if it would help jump start the flavor. I added 6 cinnamon sticks, 9 whole allspice and ¼ tsp of freshly ground Nutmeg to 3 gallons of wine. The spices was added two months ago and yesterday, we tasted a small sample of the wine to see if the spices made a difference and without a doubt the spices brought back life to the flavor! The wine will be a year old in April, so I'm going to let it bulk age for a couple of more months, then sweeten it and bottle.
If there is anyone that would like to try and make this batch of wine, the recipe is posted below:
Makes one gallon
8 lbs of fresh Granny Smith Apples
4 oz of Welch's White Grape Concentrate
2 lbs sugar
1 tsp Yeast Nutrient
¼ tsp Pectic Enzyme (liquid) or 1 tsp dry
¼ tsp Tannin
1 Campden Tablet
Red Star Montrachet Yeast
After the wine went through primary and secondary fermentation, I de-gassed the wine, cleared the wine with Kitosol 40, a fining agent that works really good. I added 3 cinnamon sticks, 9 whole allspice and ¼ tsp of Nutmeg to 3 gallons of wine. I let the spices soak in the wine for 2 months before I tasted it. I'm going to let the spices soak a couple of more months before I remove the spices. By that time the wine should be ready to bottle.
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