Bordeaux Style – Medium-Sweet White Wine

NB: If you are new to winemaking, it is worth checking out our guide to success.

Ingredients

• 1 Litre Apple Juice
• 1 Litre White Grape Juice
• 800g Canned Peaches
• 250g Ripe Banana (Pulp)
• 5g / 1 teaspoon Tartaric Acid
• 500g Granulated Sugar
• 225g Sugar for Sweetening
• Sufficient Pectolytic Enzyme
• Gervin No. 1 Yeast
• 1g / ¼ Teaspoon Yeast Nutrient
• Water to 4.5 Litres

Method

We ensure that the wine gets rather more body by incorporating solid fruits (as pulps).  Pulp from ripe bananas which are available all year round helps give the wine body.  Some writers of homebrew books suggest boiling the bananas to get more body, but this gives a courser wine with less attractive flavour and aroma; another point with bananas, is never use the skins of the fruit since they contain unwanted substances.  I recommend canned peaches for two reasons.  First of all they are always available.  Secondly, they prevent the formation of an undesirable flavour that can develop when fresh peaches are used.  This flavour appears to be associated with the stringy bits found in the flesh close to the stone.  Such bits are missing with the canned fruit, having been removed in the processing.

I suggest sweetening up the clear finished wine with sugar.  In order to avoid excessive dilution of the wine, I always add the sugar to the wine as a solid.  Stabilization with sulphite and sorbate will be necessary.  The wine should contain around 12% of alcohol and have an acidity of between 6 and 7 grams per litre.  If you would like a stronger wine then add a further 100g of sugar to the initial must, which will produce another 1.5% of alcohol.