North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Richard MURPHY <murphman108@msn.com>]

Hello All;
 
I've been making fruit wine for about 5 years now. Most of my recipes use apple cider as a base fruit juice, and other fruits added later to create different flavors. I have an unusual, repeatable failure mode I would like to share with you all.
        Raspberries OR Cranberries just don't work! There is always some odd aroma even after 6 months of aging. What's really strange is that if you opened a bottle of each, blindfolded, you might not be able to tell them apart, based on smell. None of the other fruits I've used cause this aroma. It's almost like plastic or glue smell; not sulfur.  (apples, raisins, ginger, prunes, grapefruit, orange peel, elderberry, aronia, blueberries, blackberries all do well for me!) Furthermore, I've repeated the recipes a couple of times, varying the fruit/cider ratio, but that gave similar results.
 
Does anyone know what these 2 fruits have in common? Is it citric acid? I'm at a loss.
 
       (For the enologists in the crowd; typical must: S.G. = 1.085  pH = 3.4 avg  So2 = 25ppm)
 
It would be awesome to be able to use cranberries and raspberries for wine, but for now I'm stuck.
Maybe a bottle of wine or 2 for the correct solution?
 
Thank you
 
Murph