Cherry Wine Recipe How to Make Cherry Wine

Cherry Wine RecipeThis cherry wine recipe uses a mixture of sweet and sour cherries to produce a delicious rich wine with a heady aroma. If your sweet cherries come before the sour, just freeze them until you’re ready to use them.

All you need to do is to put them in an air-tight bag and pop them in the freezer. They’ll be fine for a couple of months. When defrosted they will be softened, which makes it easier to crush them.

You may find the page How to Grow Cherries on the Allotment Garden web site helpful.

Cherry Wine Recipe

Ingredients for Cherry Wine Recipe:

  • 6 lb mixed sweet and sour cherries
  • Campden tablets
  • 2 ½ lbs sugar
  • Wine yeast
  • Yeast Nutrient
  • Water

Note: Ideally you want a 50/50 mix of sweet and sour cherries. If you don’t have at least 1lb of sour cherries, add the juice and zest of a large lemon to the pulp.

Method for Cherry Wine Recipe:

  1. Remove the stalks from the cherries and rinse.
  2. Put into a fermenting bin and crush. An old-fashioned potato masher is great for this.
  3. Pour on 4 pints of boiling water. When cool, add 1 Campden tablet, crushed and dissolved in a little warm water.
  4. Boil all of the sugar in 4 pints of water for 2 or 3 minutes and, when cool, mix into the pulp.
  5. Add the yeast and yeast nutrient and cover and allow to ferment for a week, stirring daily.
  6. Strain and press and return liquor to a clean fermenting bin.
  7. Cover again and leave for 3 or 4 days.
  8. Pour through a fine sieve carefully into a gallon jar, leaving as much deposit behind as possible.
  9. Fill up the jar with cooled, boiled water to where the neck begins.
  10. Fit a fermentation lock and leave until fermentation has finished.
  11. Rack, as necessary, adding a Campden tablet after the first racking to stop fermentation.
  12. Syphon into bottles.

Makes 1 gallon of wine. This wine is best left for at  least year after bottling to mature.

Posted in Country Wines
12 comments on “Cherry Wine Recipe How to Make Cherry Wine
  1. Arthur Thrasher says:

    Hi how long after the Camden tablet do you add the yeast?

    • John Harrison says:

      An hour is fine, Arthur

      • Geordierobin says:

        Certainly not an hour!! The campden tablets purpose is to kill the wild yeast and micro organisms present in the must, you need to wait at least 24 hours otherwise it will kill the yeast that you add.

  2. Simon Skinner says:

    How much yeast and yeast nutrient do I put in?

    • John Harrison says:

      Yeast, being a living thing reproduces and doubles its number every 8 hours or so. If bought in sachets, use the whole sachet otherwise a teaspoon full will be fine to get things going.
      Unless the packet instructions say otherwise, a small teaspoon full will be plenty. You can omit yeast nutrient but I’ve found better results from using it. The fermentation gets going better and lasts longer.

  3. ken says:

    if I make 5gallons of wine do I use 5 campden tab

  4. Leo says:

    Do I have to take the seeds out first? Almost all recipes I’ve seen online say to do so.

    Thanks!

    • John Harrison says:

      No you don’t need to take the stones out of the cherries, they’ll be removed in step 6, straining.

  5. Wancharida says:

    Rack the cherry wine into a clean carboy, leaving the sediment behind. Re-cap with a water lock and allow the mixture to ferment for another 4 to 6 weeks (or longer).

  6. Jan says:

    Can I use all morello cherries already stoned..?

  7. Cath says:

    Hi have just decanted to a new fermentation bin but tastes very watery

  8. Paul Turner says:

    Here’s one! I am going to do this but what do you think? My plan is, local farmer grows cherries, collect with some off the floor. cherries rinsed gently, put in bucket, mashed and add sugar and small amount of yeast to ferment from natural yeast!

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