Cherry wine has a tart pleasant taste with a slight bitterness, rich cherry aroma and a wonderful dark ruby color. Homemade cherry wine is tastier and healthier than store wine. To prepare it, you will need a cherry and a lot of sugar - this berry is acidic, and you won't get a strong wine from its juice.
Wort preparation
To make homemade cherry wine, cherries must be ripe, almost overripe - dark red, soft, sweet and sour. It is better not to take light varieties or, as a last resort, mix dark and light berries. Rinse the cherries well and dry them.
Do not store berries in the refrigerator for more than three days, otherwise the wine will lose its rich taste.
Soak cherries in water. Remove all cuttings and seeds. To give the drink a specific almond flavor (slightly bitter, but mild and pleasant), leave some pits. The resulting raw material must be poured with water and left for a day: during this time, the dense berries will soften, and it will be easier to squeeze the juice out of them. Although according to some recipes, you need to immediately squeeze the wort, while others suggest that you first hold the cherries in a cool place for several hours so that it gives juice.
There is another way: heat the berries in a water bath at a low temperature for about fifteen minutes. This will quickly soften the cherries and juice easily.
You can crush the berries to obtain the wort both with your hands and with special devices. Then sugar is added to the juice, the proportions for different varieties of cherries and different quality of wine differ. To make a light unsweetened wine, about 100 grams of sugar is needed per liter of juice, if you want to make a strong sweet wine, put two or three times more. You can slightly dilute the wort with water and alcohol.
Fermentation of wine
Cherries, like grapes, contain fungi that make them ferment. But they are not enough to make good wine. It is advisable to use special wine yeast. Add them to the wort after pressing. Pour the mixture into clean bottles and pull on rubber gloves with small holes.
You need to store fermented wine in a cool place where the sun's rays do not fall. If the glove is inflated, fermentation is proceeding correctly. Do not open bottles for about a week. Then you can pour the wine to free it from the sediment. Monitor the condition of the glove - if it begins to fall off ahead of schedule (3-4 weeks have not yet passed), then add sugar to the wine. When, after the due date, the glove stops inflating with air, the wine is ready - fermentation is over. Pour it into another container using a hose so that the sediment remains at the bottom.
Store your cherry wine in a dark and cool place. It is advisable that it stand for several weeks, after which it can be drunk. But the more the drink is aged, the richer bouquet of taste it acquires.
