Cherry Season is in Full Swing! Make Wine and Aromatic Cherry Brandy!


Cherry Wine: A Source of Vitamins and Flavor

Cherry wine is a rich source of vitamins C, PP, and B, as well as tannins and organic acids. Learn how to make homemade cherry wine and, if you want to preserve the flavor longer, a delicious cherry brandy.

Essentials for Making Cherry Wine


Making cherry wine requires more than just a recipe. You also need to know the basic principles of homemade winemaking. Equip yourself with the necessary accessories and containers. You will need a fermenter and a fermentation tube to release gases. Finally, get bottles to store the homemade cherry wine. If the wine is to be distilled later, the bottles will be used for the finished brandy instead.

The Fermentation Process


Cherries are excellent for homemade wine because they ferment well. You can combine them with other fruits to create unique flavor compositions. You can make red cherry wine, whether dry, sweet, or semi-sweet. You can add cherries or apples for variety.

To make homemade cherry wine, you will need special yeast: FD-3. They should not be replaced with other yeasts (e.g., for sugar) because the wine will not have so many aroma compounds and worse flavor. 

How to Make Cherry Wine


For homemade cherry wine, choose ripe fruits, as only these will ensure a good flavor. It's worth waiting for the end of a season when the fruits are the cheapest. Wash the cherries thoroughly, remove the stems, and pit them.

Removing the pits is crucial as they not only give the wine a bitter taste but also contain harmful hydrocyanic acid. Opinions on this matter are divided. In many families, homemade wine was made with pits, giving it a unique taste. Some pits can suppress the yeast taste and slightly preserve the wine. Therefore, many people making homemade wine recommend leaving 20% of the pits.

Cherry wine is made from cherry juice, called must. Crush the pitted cherries and leave them in the fermenter for 2-3 days. Cover the fermenter outlet with gauze or a loose lid to keep fruit flies out. After 2-3 days, press the fruit to obtain a thick juice called must.

Preparing the Must for Fermentation


To turn cherry juice into wine, dilute the must with water and glucose in proportions based on the desired wine type. Usually, a syrup is made from a mixture of 1 liter of glucose and 1 liter of water. Typically, for 10 liters of must, 1.5-2 liters of syrup is used. Add more syrup for sweet and strong wine. For semi-sweet wine, use less syrup. Pour the must with syrup into the fermenter up to ⅔ full.

Fermentation and Bottling

 

Initial fermentation usually lasts a few days. After this period, strain the wine and leave it for several weeks. When carbon dioxide stops pushing water out of the tube, fermentation is complete, and the wine can be bottled. Do this carefully with a hose to avoid mixing the wine with the sediment. The wine should age in bottles for about a year.

If you want to make brandy, at this point, you can (without the sediment) pour the wine into the distiller tank and distill it according to its instructions. A simple pot-still or a reflux still will be perfect for producing more aromatic cherry brandy.

Typical Cherry Wine Recipe
A typical cherry wine recipe includes the amount of fruit, sugar, water, and type of wine yeast. The recipe assumes varying proportions of these ingredients depending on whether you want to make strong or weaker wine.

Ingredients for Cherry Wine:
10 kg cherries
1.3 kg glucose
1-5 liters of water
5 g DAP nutrient
FD-3 yeast
This recipe for cherry wine will yield 10 liters of 10% wine. If you want stronger wine, add more sugar and less water.

Remember, you can always find proportions and recipes in the manual included with each distiller!