Cherry Season: Wine Making Edition

I have been cruising the local farmers market the past few weeks and was happy to see that the summer fruits are ready again.  Cherries are the first to appear and this year's crop is tasty!  I bought a couple bags for snacking and then I made a deal with the farmer that grows these lovely red fruits.  This last farmer's market they had a box of cherry seconds for me for a great price.  Seconds are just as good as firsts, though some may be blemished or on the small side.  I didn't care how big they were or what they looked like because I was going to turn them into wine anyway.  I traded two bottles of last summer's plum wine for over twenty pounds of cherries.  I'm pretty sure I got the better deal (but I have been told that my wine is pretty tasty too).

When I got these lovelies home I set about transforming them for wine production.  I picked through all of them and removed any that were squished or too soft and then removed their stems and washed them well.  Little by little they filled my fermentation bucket and I mashed them every few layers to help release their juices.  One I had cleaned all the cherries I added sugar to the whole mix and then topped it all off with boiling water.  I followed a recipe on Jack Keller's wine making page to make a variety of sweet cherry wine.  This recipe calls for a couple of additives like tannin and enzymes to help break down the fruit.  The next day I added the yeast to begin the fermentation process.

For the next five days the cherries will be stirred up twice a day.  Once the primary fermentation is finished I will filter out the juice and put it in a glass carboy where it will finish becoming wine over the next few months.  I was hoping to get enough to make a full six gallons of wine, but the one box only had enough cherries for a two to three gallon batch.  I may see if I can get a box of Rainier cherries next week and try my hand at another batch of wine.  I would be interested to find out how different the flavor and color of the final product would be using a different variety of cherry.