Ray and Dave,

Earlier this year, i was interested in the cranberry wine experiment.

There was much debate as to how much cranberry to use, and what to
expect in final product. This being said, I tried 3 separate batches.

I found welch's 100% juice white grape cranberry blend, made 1 gallon
of that, then used the highbush cranberry recipe from Jack's website
for two batches, (used only between half and two thirds the
cranberries due to Ray's comments on tartness). In the first of the
fruit batches, I used Welch's Niagara instead of raisins, then in the
second batch I did use the golden raisins.

I performed two rackings since not including from primary, and all are
close to bottling now, just waiting on the one with the raisins in it
to clear a bit more.

My experience is this... during fermentations and racking-tastings,
the best flavor for that young, though still sharp and raw was the one
with the raisins. This last racking, I enjoyed the blend between
fruit/niagara blend.

In my experience using Welch's concentrates, they all (when used as
main ingredient, no fruit) have a very similar smell and taste. Some
turn out fantastic in the end, and some are just so-so...Not sure why
this is even when I follow notes from prior batches that are great.

My Cranberry whim started just after Thanksgiving when I noticed that
the local wal-mart had reduced the cranberry bags to only $1.00 from
2.00. I ended up buying a bunch at this price and made the wines above
and dried some for use in salads and snacks, but be careful to not
over dry them.

A couple weeks before Christmas, I tried a bottle of wine I made from
old orchard cranberry/blackberry 100% juice. It was out of this world
for bottled juice. I immediately went to the wal-mart and bought more
dollar bags of cranberries and blackberries and mixed with a gallon of
Niagara Welch's juice and water to 5 gallons. I don't have notes for
specifics handy, but I believe it was 4 lbs cranberries and 8 lbs
blackberries plus the gallon of Niagara. I racked this twice since
primary as well, and it is just starting to clear now, at last taste
it was still very rough, but it obviously has potential. I am
hopefully going to get a balanced wine. I noticed later that there
was apple juice concentrate in the original old orchard as well, so
maybe next batch will contain a can of apple concentrate as well.

All I can say is good luck with the experimenting, and thanks to all I
read such excellent ideas from.

HINT: If you wait even longer, like day after Christmas or January 2,
the cranberries will go even cheaper for about $0.50 a bag. You will
have more bad ones to remove, but at 1/4 the price of original, it may
be a good time to stock up. I purchased several bags like this,
cleaned and sorted the berries, then used the food processor to grind
them up roughly, then froze in gallon freezer bags for further
experimenting, plus I dried a few more batches!.

Greg, Erie, PA

On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 15:04:16 GMT, "Ray Calvert"
> wrote:

>I too have made Jack's recipe. It is not my favorite but women seem to love
>it. It is a bit strongly cranberry flavored for me. I will make it again
>but will use more grape juice and less cranberries next time. Not saying
>anything negative about Jack's recipe, just crafting to my own taste.
>
>As stated Cranberries are very strong and will overpower most anything used
>with them. I would not use an expensive kit for this. Kind of over kill.
>In fact I would suggest using Welch's frozen Niagara concentrate. It makes
>a good wine on it's own and Jack recommends it to add vinuosity to fruit
>wines. This agrees with Dave's comments.
>
>Ray
>
>"DAve Allison" > wrote in message
.. .
>> Cranberry wine can be very good and is also a good mixer. Tomasello winery
>> http://www.tomasellowinery.com in NJ makes a dynamite Cranberry wine that
>> makes a terrific Cosmopolitan, but making your own is better.
>>
>> I did 6 gallons using Jack Keller's recipe (from his website at least).
>> http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/request.asp
>>
>> Using Welch's white grape concentrate instead of raisins seemed to work
>> well for me. See his recipe.
>>
>> In my humble opinion, if you do use a pinot G wine kit, you should put the
>> cranberries in the primary, not after the first racking. The yeast needs
>> to work on the berries. As far as how much berries - don't know. But
>> keeping the must to 1.099 will not stop the yeast. Going higher and it
>> could stall.
>>
>> OK, this is only my 2 cents, I've only made 100 bottles of wines so far,
>> so i'm still kinda new.
>> DAve
>>
>> wrote:
>>> I've been thinking about making a cranberry wine but I wasn't thinking
>>> about doing it straight from 100% cranberries and sugar. I was
>>> thinking about using a Pinot Grigio wine kit and racking it off to the
>>> secondary with some cranberries in it. I don't know if this is a good
>>> way to make cranberry wine and I also don't know how many pounds of
>>> cranberries to use. I am assuming that I relish the cranberries before
>>> racking off on to them. Any suggestions? Thanks
>>>
>