The term country wines refer to any alcoholic fermented beverage made from fruit, vegetables, herbs, or plants that are not grapes. For these wines, I love to use foraged, homegrown, and handpicked ingredients.
Making country wines takes a bit more finesse than making grape wines because grapes naturally contain the perfect balance of sugar, water, wild yeast, and tannins. Unlike grape wines that have everything naturally occurring for fermentation, non-grape wines need to have yeast added to start the fermentation process. You can use plain bread yeast if that’s all you have, but it tends to produce a rather “one-dimensional” tasting wine. I prefer to choose a wine yeast that has been specially created for the fermenting of wine.
Some country wines also require you to add other additives depending on the type of fruit, vegetable, herb, or flower you are using. These additives might be yeast nutrient, tannin powder (or strong black tea), acid powder, or pectic enzyme. These added ingredients can help to improve the taste or flavor of the wine or create a non-cloudy end product. To this recipe, we will add things like commercial yeast, and potassium sorbate to stop fermentation to have better control.
Great post 😁
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I am new to winemaking. How much yeast tannin do you add for this recipe? Also, if I wanted to make 5 gallons of this wine, I have read that you just multiply all the ingredients by 5 except for the yeast. Do you agree?
You only need 1/4 to 1/2 a tsp. per gallon. And you are right about the yeast. No need to multiply it. Let us know how it turns out 🙂