1. From Vines to Wines: The Complete Guide to Growing Grapes & Making Your Own Wine by Jeff Cox
In addition to covering information on making wine, this book also covers grape growing. Although this is a great beginner's guide to growing grapes and making wine at home, it mostly focuses on the Vitis vinifera varieties, the classic wine varieties that grow in warmer zones (generally 6-9). It does not cover the particular challenges that northern grape growers have (like me in zone 4) when growing Vitis labrusca or hybrid varieties for wine.

2. Techniques in Home Winemaking: The Comprehensive Guide to Making Château-Style Wines by Daniel Pambianchi
This is a great, detailed book on making wine and includes much of the science behind the process. I also like that the author is Canadian and therefore has experience working with grapes in colder climates. He also runs two Facebook pages and has an informative website containing free calculators and guides to help winemakers. If you are new to winemaking, I would recommend starting with another of his books, “The Beginner’s Guide to Making Wine from Juice and Grapes” which is better for those just starting to make wine. Also, on my “to buy” list is his updated book, “Modern Home Winemaking: A Guide to Making Consistently Great Wines.”

3. The New Cider Maker’s Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for Craft Producers by Claude Jolicoeur
This book is the first I have purchased regarding making hard apple cider. Our apple trees have just started producing the past two years and we have started making ciders as we do not have the storage space for bushels of apples. This book includes descriptions of some of the classic cider apple varieties as well as a detailed description of crushing and fermenting the cider. I have several other cider books on my “to buy” list but this book is a great resource.

​Aronia berries (Aronia melanocarpa) or chokeberries are berries native to the United States. They grow on a bush known for its ornamental value (red/orange leaves in the fall) and its fruit. The berries are bitter and tannic but are considered by many to be healthy due to their very high levels of anthocyanin, an antioxidant. For more information on the berries see my previous blog post on “Aronia Berries.” I have used the berries in limited quantities in smoothies but wanted to experiment with making 100% Aronia wine. Due to the tannic nature of the berries, I am planning on using the wine to blend with my Marquette wine, which tends to be lower in tannins, to see if blending can improve the wine. In the past, I have also thrown a few berries into my elderberry wine ferments but I would like to do a more controlled experiment where I blend known amounts of the different wines. If you are new to fermenting, I recommend checking out my blog post on “The Basics of Fermenting Wine” and feel free to message me with any questions. 

​To steam juice, you add the fruit to the top colander-type compartment. Add water to the bottom of the juicer and start heating the fruit. Once the fruit softens and starts releasing the juice, it will flow into the middle compartment of the juicer and out of the attached tube. I collect the juice in half-gallon jars. Most juicing takes 1-2 hours to complete. Ensure that water remains in the bottom pan the entire time to avoid warping the pan. Stirring or pressing the fruit is not recommended since it can add small amounts of pulp or seeds to the juice, making it less clear. If I plan to ferment the juice into wine, I do not care about cloudy juice since it will be clarified as it ages. Therefore, I usually stir the pulp or scoop it out, mix the pulp with a little water, and crush it with a potato masher or spoon a second time to release more color and juice. I then add the pulp and water back to the top of the juicer and let the steam extract a little more juice. This will add water to the juice, but I usually add a little water to my fruit wines anyway. The general rule of thumb is 3-5 pounds of fruit per gallon of wine although there is nothing wrong with using 100% juice and it will make a more flavorful wine. Once you have extracted as much juice as possible, let it cool (I put the jar in cool water in the sink to cool it down faster, being careful not to crack the jar) before starting your fermentation. You can also refrigerate or freeze the juice to ferment later.

I used 1 gallon of Aronia juice with a starting pH of 3.13 and Brix (percent sugar) of 9.9. I added sugar to get a final Brix of 22.6 which should give an alcohol content of ~12.4% (multiply the Brix by 0.55 to get a rough alcohol percentage). I tried testing the total acidity (TA) but the results did not seem accurate, most likely from the color intensity of the juice (it is a colorimetric assay). My recipe is below:

1 gallon Aronia juice
1 tsp pectic enzyme
1 tsp yeast nutrient
RC-212 yeast

​I did not add a Campden tablet since the juice was sterilized from steam juicing but if you add one, wait 24 hours before pitching your yeast. I used Lalvin Bourgovin RC212 yeast which I have used for elderberry wine with good results. This yeast is typically used to ferment red wines, has an alcohol tolerance of up to 16%, and ferments well at 64-86°F. Other yeast options include Red Star Premier Rouge (64-86°F; 14% alcohol tolerance) or Lalvin EC-1118 (50-86°F; 18% alcohol tolerance). I fermented the juice in a 2-gallon bucket with an airlock. The airlock bubbled for about 2 weeks indicating fermentation was occurring. If you do not see bubbling it is likely that there is a leak in your lid, if you see bubbles when stirring the wine fermentation is likely occurring. When fermentation slowed, I racked the wine into a 1-gallon glass carboy. After racking, I added 1 Campden tablet plus 18 grams of medium toast French oak cubes. The recommendation from the oak cube manufacturer is to oak for 3-4 months.

​After two months I racked again to remove the lees that had settled to the bottom and added another Campden tablet. The pH was 3.51 which is good for red wine (recommended pH is 3.4-3.6). I tasted the wine at this point, it was extremely dry/tannic which given the taste of the berries is not surprising. I used our 2023 Marquette wine to top off the Aronia wine to eliminate headspace in the carboy since I do not have a previous vintage of Aronia wine to use. Since I plan to use the Aronia wine to blend into our Marquette wine anyway, I figured this was the best choice of wine to use to top off.

I plan to rack the Aronia wine and add an additional Campden tablet every 3 months for about a year. Once lees stop accumulating at the bottom of the carboy I will cold stabilize for a month or two in the refrigerator or outside (if it is still winter). Next fall I will do blending tests with the Marquette wine to see if blending improves the Marquette wine, Aronia wine, or both wines. If blending improves the Marquette wine, I will blend a larger batch and bottle. I will update this post or write a new one when I have those results.

​As I mentioned in my previous post, garden huckleberries are a unique berry in the nightshade family. They are toxic when unripe, have little taste when ripe, but when fully ripe AND cooked, they are absolutely delicious and make a beautiful dark purple jam. After making a batch of garden huckleberry preserves, we still had quite a few berries left over in the freezer. Since my husband and I love fermentation we decided to experiment with a one-gallon test batch of garden huckleberry wine. We both have a Bachelor’s degree in biology and I also have a concentration in microbiology so we enjoy the science behind fermented foods and drinks, although neither one of us is an expert. Thus far we have made kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi, wine and beer from kits, mead, and now garden huckleberry wine. We also currently have a maple wine (which smells absolutely delicious!) undergoing secondary fermentation and will hopefully be the subject of a future blog post. This summer we also would like to experiment with dandelion wine and a spruce-tip beer.

We planted wine grapes on our property in the spring of 2017 which will hopefully produce their first grapes this summer (2019) on 3-year-old vines. These grapes, Marquette, are a red grape well suited to our climate (zone 4) however, they can be acidic as short/cool season grapes often have difficulty fully ripening. Therefore, blending is often used to reduce acidity and increase sugar content of these grapes if needed. However, as more growers are cultivating the Marquette variety, they are having success producing a very nice dry red wine or slightly sweet port that is not overly acidic. We are hoping in addition to making 100% Marquette wine we could also find some fruit or other grapes varieties to use for blending. Blackberries or raspberries are commonly used to make a delicious berry-Marquette port.

When we realized we had extra garden huckleberries we thought it would be good to practice making wine from scratch rather than a kit and also possibly find a good fruit to blend with the Marquette grapes. In this post, I will assume that the reader already has some experience fermenting. If not, a good place to start is to buy a wine or beer kit, to first determine if you enjoy brewing. Once, you have tried a few kits, read a few books, looked at some websites, and/or listened to some podcasts, it is much easier to experiment with fermenting from scratch.

To make our garden huckleberry wine we modified a recipe for blueberry wine (see our modified recipe below). As garden huckleberries must be cooked to bring out their flavor, I first cooked the berries with a little water and crushed them with a potato masher to release the juices. I cooked them for about 20 minutes added 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, cooked an additional 5 minutes, and then added the sugar to the berries and mixed until dissolved. Garden huckleberries are a very tough fruit with an almost leathery skin so in the future I may use an immersion blender to help pulverize the berries rather than just a potato masher.

​​After the sugar was dissolved, we brought the water up to 1 gallon. At this point you can check the specific gravity to make sure the sugar content is correct, generally you want to start wines around 1.090 depending on what you would like your final alcohol concentration to be. When making a fruit wine you would generally add in one Campden tablet/gallon or potassium metabisulfite at the correct concentration to kill any wild yeast on the berries. Since we had just boiled our berries, I assumed most wild yeasts would be killed and skipped this step. We then added the tannin, acid blend, pectic enzyme, and yeast nutrient and mixed well. I am not sure if both the lemon juice and acid blend are necessary and may skip the lemon juice next time. The pectic enzyme will digest the pectin in the fruit which otherwise could make the must gelatinous; also excess pectin will also leave your wine hazy and keep it from clarifying properly. Yeast nutrient is used to help give the yeast a boost, yeast energizer can also be added or you can buy them already mixed together under specific brand names. If fermentation slows before completion you can spike in more nutrient and/or energizer to help push fermentation to completion. Some brewers also like to add in grape juice concentrate to their fruit wines, which increases sugar content so make sure to adjust final sugar levels to the correct specific gravity after mixing this in. This will also make your wine fruitier. As we wished to see what a pure garden huckleberry wine tasted like, we did not add any grape juice concentrate.
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The last step is to add the yeast. Since we had boiled the berries it was important to make sure the must was not too hot, you generally want it around room temperature. We used Lalvin K1-V1116 yeast which is supposed to be good for fruit wines and also has a high alcohol tolerance (18%). This was also important since we wanted to make sure it would ferment to dryness. We dry pitched the yeast and stirred it in, however, most yeast packets will recommend activating the yeast prior to pitching. If you activate first, make sure you follow the instructions exactly as written, otherwise you may shock the yeast too much which will prevent fermentation from starting. We fermented in a 2-gallon bucket fermenter that we had cleaned with one-step cleanser and sterilized with potassium metabisulfite. Make sure everything that comes in contact with your must is as sterile as possible. After everything was mixed well, we covered the fermenter with a lid containing an airlock to let out the CO2 gas released during fermentation. Generally, you should see bubbling in the airlock within 24-48 hours.