Fruit wines are fermented alcoholic beverages made from a variety of ingredients (other than grapes) and having a variety of flavours. Fruit wines are usually referred to by their main ingredient fruit (e.g., plum wine), since the word wine alone is often legally defined as a beverage made only from grapes. In the European Union "wine" is legally defined only as the fermented juice of grapes. The term country wine is also commonly utilized in Great Britain and the U.S. interchangeably with fruit wine to indicate any non-grape wine, and should not be confused with the French term vin de pays. In British legislation, the term made-wine is used.
Wine can be made from any sufficiently sweet food or, with addition of sucrose in the form of table sugar or honey, from other fruits and many other plant sources. This can include wines produced from fruits like apples and elderberries, starches like rice, vegetables like carrot or peapod, as well as flowers and herbs such as dandelion, elderflower, and even marijuana. The most common, narrow definition of wine relates to the product of fermented grape juice, though it is sometimes broadened to include any beverage with a fermentation based on the conversion of a sugar solution into alcohol (fermented beverages based on hydrolyzed barley such as beer are often excluded). Some drinks such as cider, mead and perry are also excluded from this broad definition of wine for historical reasons.
Fruit wines have traditionally been popular with home winemakers and in areas with cool climates such as North America and Scandinavia. Most fruits and berries have the potential to produce wine. Few foods other than grapes have the balanced quantities of sugar, acid, tannin, nutritive salts for yeast feeding and water to naturally produce a stable, drinkable wine, so most country wines are adjusted in one or more respects at fermentation. The amount of fermentable sugars is often low and need to be supplemented by a process called chaptalization in order to have sufficient alcohol levels in the finished wine. Sucrose is often added so that fruits having excessive levels of acids (usually citric or malic acid) can split the sucrose into fermentable fructose and glucose sugars. If the specific gravity of the initial solution is too high, indicating an excess of sugar, water or acidulated water may be added to adjust the specific gravity down to the winemaker's target range. Many fruit wines suffer from a lack of natural yeast nutrients needed to promote or maintain fermentation. Winemakers can counter this with the addition of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium available commercially as yeast nutrient. Like many conventional white wines, fruit wines often do not improve with bottle age and are usually meant to be consumed within a year of bottling.
The fermentation of fruit wines at home was particularly fashionable in the UK in the 1970s and was popularized in the BBC TV series The Good Life.
Ingredients
The other ingredients that give the wine its flavour and character can be fruits, flowers, herbs, etc. Examples are elderberry wine and dandelion wine. A wine made from elderberry flowers is called elder blow wine. If the flavouring ingredients are leaves or roots then the beverage is sometimes called a beer (for example, ginger beer). (Note that the beverages known as root beer, ginger beer and ginger ale are often non-alcoholic.)
If the sugar source is honey then the beverage is usually called mead; if it is apple or pear juice then the beverage is called cider or perry, respectively. Cyser is made from apples and honey.
List of fruits and plants used
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Plum wine
Ume liquor, also known as "plum wine", is popular in both Japan and Korea, and is also produced in China. Umeshu , sometimes translated as "plum wine") is a Japanese alcoholic drink made by steeping green ume in shōchū , clear liquor. It is sweet and smooth. The taste and aroma of umeshu can appeal to even those people who normally dislike alcohol. A similar liquor in Korea, called maesil ju , is marketed under various brand names including Mae Hwa Su, Mae Chui Soon, and Seol Joong Mae. Both the Japanese and Korean varieties of ume liquor are available with whole ume fruits contained in the bottle.
In China, ume wine is called mei jiu .
In Taiwan, a popular post-World War II innovation on Japanese-style umeshu is the wumeijiu, or Wumei liquor , which is made by mixing Prunus mume liquor ( méijǐu), Prunus salicina liquor ( lǐjǐu), and Oolong tea liquor.
Pineapple wine
Pineapple wine is made from the juice of pineapple. Fermentation of the pineapple juice takes place in temperature controlled vats and is stopped at near dryness. The result is a soft, dry and fruity wine with an unmistakable pineapple bouquet. It is made in Hawaii by the Tedeschi Vineyards called 'Maui Blanc' located in Ulupalakua, Maui-Hawai`i, on the slopes of Haleakala. Several varieties of pineapple wine are also made in Okinawa Japan from locally produced pineapples. Its alcohol content is 11.5% by volume.
Lappish Hag's Love Potion
Lappish Hag's Love Potion (lapin eukon lemmenjuoma) is a traditional homebrewed Finnish fruit wine made from blueberries which ferment naturally with wild yeast (called the bloom) present on the skin. The drink is also known as Lappish Grandmother's Love Potion (lapin isoäidin lemmenjuoma), Lappish Mother's Love Potion (lapin äidin lemmenjuoma), or simply Lappish Love Potion (lapin lemmenjuoma).
Lappish Hag's Love Potion is made by filling a bottle with tightly interspersed un-crushed blueberries and sugar to near filling point, and then topping up with water, little by little. The bottle is left to ferment in the sunlight for about a month.
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