North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Bill Russell" <shaman@pennswoods.net>]

Glad to hear that your chokecherry wine survived the uncertainties of 8
years of storage!

 A couple of weeks ago in a dark corner of my cellar, I found a few bottles
of chokecherry wine that I made over 20 years ago. It is quite good, with a
high astringency characteristic of the fruit. After (unfortunately) I made
the wine, I learned a trick to greatly reduce the astringincy from the
experiments of home-brewing neighbor: while the chokecherry wine is aging in
the mass storage vessel, prior to bottling, toss in a handful of oak
sawdust - about one large handful per 5 gallons of wine. You get a much
better product. Does anyone out there have an idea of how this works?

Also, fermenting the wine on the seeds for a few weeks should not cause a
problem unless the seeds are cracked or broken. The intact hulls prevent
leaching of much cyanide.

Bill


----- Original Message -----
From: "del stubbs" <pinewoodel@hotmail.com>
To: <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2002 9:35 AM
Subject: [NAFEX] old chokecherry wine/aronia


> 8 years ago we lived where there was an incredible patch of chokecherries,
I
> picked 25 gallons one week. I tried my hand at wine making with it, then
> suddenly life got uprooted and they got forgotten till this week as we are
> organizing the basement. The wine was never even decanted from the
origional
> gallon jugs with only balloons for caps. Incredibly most of the balloons
> were still sound, and low behold the wine ain't bad! Amazing thing, on one
> bottle that the balloon had opened up a bit - the wine was not
> vinegar.....do chokecherries have a natural preservative?
> This wine was made without the seeds, I have been told to watch that .
> When I first moved to Minnesota from N. Calif I had never tasted
> chokecherry, I made some jam and used it on vanilla ice cream for a year
and
> never got tired of the intense taste. Sam, you have inspired me to try my
> hand at using the aronia berries, they sure are productive.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Del Stubbs  www.pinewoodforge.com  ag zone2/3
>
>
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