Taste Your Wine Any Time
First off, I ALWAYS taste my juice before I begin a batch of homemade wine. I want to know what my blueberry juice or blackberry juice tastes like before I add the yeast. I want to know if it is sweet, tart, and if it has lots of flavor or only a little flavor. Good tasting wine should start out as good tasting juice.
A winemaking buddy once told me about a festival where they drink the wine when it’s half-done fermenting. The alcohol level is low, the wine is still sweet, and there is a slight carbonation to the drink. In Austria, they call it sturm.
I had never heard of this idea and at first it seemed wrong. After all, it’s not wine yet. I decided to try it, and I must say, it was rather good. Go take a small glass of strum from your fermenter when the specific gravity is around 1.025 and let me know what you think.
I found a link that describes several of these festivals in different countries.
http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/the-harvest-party-circuit
If any of you have been to one of these festivals, I would love to hear all about it.
scaryreasoner said,
March 2, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Interesting…. might have to try this with my next batch.
BTW, you mentioned, you always taste the juice…. why? Do you do anything differently depending on how it tastes? Or is it just to satisfy curiousity? (Granted, the sweet juice does taste good.)
Scott said,
March 2, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Mostly just curiosity. When was the last time you had homemade blueberry or blackberry juice? I’m constantly tasting when I cook too.
I do want a feel for how much body the juice has before fermenting. Developing enough body in a fruit wine is a real challenge.