Making (and drinking) wine :-)

[asly]

So are any punawebbers making any decent wine out of island fruit, grapes and berries? I'm wondering about process problems specific to the tropical environment, heat and humidity.

Enjoy the day! Ann

Back to blogging at
http://crazypineappledream.blogspot.com

[Peter Epperson]

I've found that there are lots of fruits out there that you may imagine would make a good wine but don't. My favorites that do work well are jaboticaba, lychee and ohelo berry. You need to keep all equipment very clean, especially in the tropics where all kinds of contaminants would love to get into your fruit juice.

My biggest discovery of late is to use potassium metabisulfite instead of sodium metabisulfite to sterilize the fruit. Pot. meta. is allowable in organic wines and doesn't leave residual flavors or sodium in the finished product.

[asly]

Do you have trouble storing your wines because of the temperatures, for instance, here in MT when we've made wine it's been hard to keep it up to temp for fermentation then when put into a controlled temp room we've been able to keep the temp constant for bulk storage prior to bottling. But in the tropics, it seems one would have to keep the room air conditioned ? possibly, which would be an extra expense.

I'm curious about making wine out of ohelo berry. Are they plentiful enough to forage for?

Enjoy the day! Ann

Back to blogging at
http://crazypineappledream.blogspot.com

[JWFITZ]

Peter is on it.

Actually, the future in Hawaii is in distilled liqueurs not wines. . .but that's another topic.

http://sensiblesimplicity.lefora.com/

[Peter Epperson]

asly, Storing wine hasn't been any problem. I am in upper Puna and the temp is cooler. I keep the wine in a sort of a cellar area under my house. I am fortunate to have access to an area where ohelo berries are plentiful and aren't guarded by the ohelo berry police as in the national park. I got busted by a ranger more than once because he thought I was harvesting for commercial use. He said the limit is one quart of berries per week. No hope for winemaking quantities there. Since then I have found a private area with plenty of fruit.

JWFITZ, I distilled a 5 gallon bottle of waiwi wine once to see what would happen. It was surprisingly easy to do. I ended up with some serious white lightning. I even put some into a generator along with some gas and the engine purred happily.

[asly]

Wow! That is the future when you can make a strong cocktail and run an engine on it as well! LOL

So are secret Ohelo berry patches as gaurded as huckle bberrry patches are here in MT. I guess I didn't realize there were limits set in the park for picking. What elevations do you tend to find the berries at?

Enjoy the day! Ann

Back to blogging at
http://crazypineappledream.blogspot.com

[janeadams]

There is currently a research effort underway here in East Hawaii (CTAHR and USDA) to develop strains of Ohelo that can be home-grown for production so that people aren't going up and depriving Nene of their feed. We at White Cloud Nursery are participating, but it's a slog. We're just about to plant our first ones (not the USDA provided, but from a couple of berries picked up in a parking lot) out to see how they do in the ground at 1050'.

Background -- we used to make 5-gallon amounts of great wine in the Northwest from Blackberries, Raspberries and Strawberries. Would love to do so here, but our Jaboticaba is years from bearing fruit... Tired Lime wine, but it was a distasteful bust!

jane

[Carey]

Jane et al vintners... what about lychee, & similar fruit, wines (I know that there is a heady Chinese lychee wine)

[asly]

Has anyone tried Volcano Winery's Infusion? It's a wine blended with tea - really good.

Enjoy the day! Ann

Back to blogging at
http://crazypineappledream.blogspot.com

[Peter Epperson]

Jaboticaba takes years to ripen but there are already a lot of them out there. I put an ad on Craigslist for fruit once and got several replies from Puna and Hilo people that were happy to share. Check out this link http://www.winepress.us/forums/index.php...aboticaba/ and read towards the bottom of the page where the guy from a winery in Australia gives advice for a jabo wine. His method changed my winemaking technique. Also I am now using only 1/2 tsp of potassium metabisulfite instead of 10 tsp of sodium metabisulfite to sterilize the fruit. And I leave it for 48 hours before introducing yeast instead of just 24. It has been an improvement. In my latest batch I also added a toasted oak spiral to the wine to give it that oak barrel flavor. Expensive addition but it works. Careful not to leave the skin in the fermenter for more than 3 days max. It can get really tart from all the acid in the skins.