Rainier Cherry Wine

I love all kinds of cherries and Rainiers are no exception.  When I started that batch of cherry wine last week I used all Bing cherries which are dark red and will make a dark red wine.  Last year's batch almost looked black because it was so dark.  I wanted to see what color my wine would be if I used nothing but Rainier cherries so I started another small batch of wine with those this week.  I am only aiming to make one gallon of this variety, so I only needed to get about eight pounds of cherries this time.  I still got them for a great price from the local organic orchard that I buy them from.  Maybe if this batch turns out well I will share a bottle with the farmers that grew the cherries in a few months when it is ready.

I started by washing all the cherries and removing the stems and any blemishes.  The cleaned cherries went into my fermenting bucket and I squished them by hand before I added sugar to the mix.  On top of that I added boiling water.  Once everything cooled down I added the special ingredients like pectic enzymes and tannin to help break the fruit down further.  Tomorrow morning I will be adding the yeast to begin the actual fermentation process.

In five days the fermented mixture will be strained out of the primary fermentor and the liquid will go into a glass carboy with an airlock where fermentation will continue until the yeast run out of sugar to convert into alcohol.  During this time I will rack the wine once or twice until it clears.  Once it clears it will wait a few weeks longer before it finally gets sealed into bottles.  I am hoping that the yellow cherries will make a nice light colored wine with a sweet cherry flavor that my friends and I can enjoy on a chilly winter's evening.

With this batch of wine I will have all of my available airlocks in use so I am hoping that some of my wines will finish by the time plum season comes around.  If not I may invest in a couple more airlocks and gallon jugs so I can make more small batches throughout the summer with different fruits.  I am enjoying experimenting with different varieties of fruit wine this year and I think small batches are the way to go with those.  If they turn out poorly I won't have wasted too much effort or money making only one gallon at a time.  I will still make a couple of large batches (five to six gallons) of my tried and true recipes, but I think I will enjoy having a variety of flavors of wine to choose from throughout the rest of the year.  At the moment, my selection will include strawberry-dandelion wine, bing cherry wine, rainier cherry wine, and my semi-sweet plum wine from last fall.  This year I also hope to make a large batch of regular plum wine, and possibly a second batch using golden plums if I can find any.