Congratulations on a successful introduction to this great hobby. It is
surprising how good of a wine you can make. Listen to others and their
suggestions but remember that you are crafting wine for your own taste. If
you want to try 14.5%, by all means do so. If it goes too far you can
always drop back with the next batch.
How long did you need to age it to make it drinkable? I find that frozen
concentrate wines age out pretty quick. In that case experiment.
Ray
"John F" > wrote in message
oups.com...
>I opened a bottle of my apple/mango/passion fruit made from Old Orchard
> frozen concentrate last night and was really surprised at how good it
> was.
>
> Not that I intended to make lousy wine but this batch is very good and
> it was a bit of a surprise to me how it has developed from the last
> time I tasted it. The strong tart taste is gone.
>
> I made 6 batches back to back to start this hobby and they are all
> fairly close together time wise so it's going to be interesting to see
> how the others turn out. At this point this is certainly a wine I could
> be happy to make more of and be proud of how it turns out enough to
> give away as gifts.
>
> The only thing I think I'll do different next time is bring the alc %
> up some. I'm at around 11% and one of our favorite brands is at
> 14.5%.....we could tell the difference. 
>
> I'm still surprised at how good it turned out. It's a tropical fruit
> sort of thing that tastes so much like "wine"...I'd never guess it's
> mostly apple (frozen concentrate) rather than a 100% real grape wine.
>
> John F
>
>