North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["kieran or donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

Yes, wild black cherries make the most fantastic wine,  for flavoring
purposes.  I found it tended to be too bitter to drink in any quantity, but
as wine it kept forever and was handy for anything I wanted to give an
authentic black cherry flavor to.  I used to make a trifle to take to pot
luck dinners, unfortunately it was so popular that I hardly ever got any.
Bake or buy a very plain sponge cake, tear it up into a large bowl,  pour on
maybe half a cup of cherry wine, surround with soft fruit (I used to use
canned Kieffer pears), and then pour custard over it.

A standard wine recipe would be:
A quart of wild black cherries, more will not hurt.  I think I used to boil
and strain them.  You don't have to worry about wild yeasts or vinegar
bacteria if you do that.
4 1/2 cups of sugar
enough water to fill up a glass  gallon jug
An airlock or peice of cellophane or plastic rubber banded on
Yeast, a wine yeast is a better idea, but I have made it with baking yeast.
Supposedly you will have better flavor with the wine yeasts, and certainly
higher alcohol, so as to keep better and also to make the above recipe truly
a "Tipsy Pudding".
Don't fill the jug to the brim, in fact fill only to the shoulder till it
has had about a week to subside.  Sterilize your jug, and don't bother with
all the racking and so on.  Actually, you can do inventive things with the
sludge, with apple wine sludge, I like to marinate fish or meat in it, but
the cherry sludge would take some thinking about.  I am sure that purists
would turn up their noses at the wine I make, but tastes fine to us
uncultured country folk.    Donna