Apple wine is the easiest country wine to make in quantity, because in October the fruit is lying on the ground asking to be used. Windfalls, the bruised apples that are no good for the fruit bowl, are perfectly good for wine once you have cut the damaged parts away, and a carrier bag of them plus sugar, water and the ingredients in our Hedgerow Wine Making Kit becomes a gallon, about six bottles, in eight to twelve weeks. The recipe table in the kit gives the quantities. What follows is everything around those quantities: which apples, what to cut out, and why apple wine tests your patience at the clearing stage.
Which apples make good wine?
Almost all of them, and a mixture is better than any single variety. The reason is that wine wants three things from apples, and few varieties provide all three.
Eating apples bring sugar and perfume but can be bland on their own. Cooking apples such as Bramley bring acidity and structure. Crab apples, which most people walk past, bring tannin and sharpness, and even a handful in the mix gives the finished wine a backbone it otherwise lacks. If you have access to all three, use all three.
What you are avoiding is a wine that tastes of nothing in particular, which is the usual complaint about apple wine and is almost always a symptom of using one sweet, mild variety and nothing else.
Are windfalls actually safe to use?
Good windfalls are. A bruise is just damaged flesh, and cutting it out costs you a few seconds. What you should not use is fruit that is genuinely rotten, mouldy, fermenting where it lies or full of insect damage all the way through, and the test is simple: if you would not put it in a crumble after trimming, do not put it in a demijohn.
Work through the bag one apple at a time. Cut out bruises, brown patches, anything soft or wet, and any part that has gone woolly. Quarter the rest. There is no need to peel them, and the cores can usually go in as the recipe directs, but pick out any leaves, stalks and grass that came in with the haul.
Chopped apple browns within minutes, and that is cosmetic rather than a problem, but if it bothers you then working reasonably quickly and getting the fruit into the liquid keeps it paler.
Why does apple wine need pectolase so much?
Apples are high in pectin. That is why apple jelly sets without anything added to it, and it is also why apple wine is the batch most likely to end up with a haze that never clears.
Pectin holds fine particles in suspension in a gel that will not drop out however long you leave it. The pectolase in the kit breaks those chains down, which both releases more juice from the fruit and lets the wine clear properly later. It goes in early, as the recipe book directs, and it should never meet a hot liquid, because heat destroys the enzyme. If a recipe has you pouring boiling water over chopped apple, let it cool to comfortably warm first.
Even done properly, apple wine is often slower to clear than a berry wine. The answer is time and a careful racking, siphoning the wine off the sediment without disturbing the layer at the bottom, rather than adding anything else to it.
Apple wine and cider are not the same thing
Cider is made from apple juice and nothing else, fermented as it comes, and it finishes at the strength the apples themselves can support. Apple wine takes the fruit, adds sugar and makes the volume up with water, so it finishes at wine strength: a fully fermented country wine typically lands somewhere around 11 to 14 per cent.
That difference explains the flavour too. Cider tastes of apples straightforwardly. Apple wine tastes more like a dry white than most people expect, with the apple showing as a clean, sharp note rather than as the whole point. Neither is better, but if you were hoping for cider, a wine kit is not the route.
The four stages, and what to expect
Apple wine follows the same shape as every other country wine. The chopped fruit goes into a first fermentation in a five litre food grade bucket with a lid, where it sits in the liquid for about three days. Then you strain the fruit off, move the liquid into a five litre demijohn or a second bucket fitted with an airlock for a longer second fermentation, and finally siphon it into bottles to mature. Reused screw top wine bottles work perfectly well.
Keep it somewhere with a steady temperature between 22 and 27 degrees Celsius, out of direct sunlight and away from cold draughts, and out of the garage. Do not bottle until fermentation has completely stopped and stayed stopped, because bottling a wine that is still working risks burst bottles.
The kit contains wine yeast, yeast nutrient, pectolase, finings, citric acid, a stabiliser tablet and a steriliser (sodium metabisulphite), along with the recipe table. You add the fruit, sugar, water, bucket, demijohn, airlock, siphon and bottles. The allergen line is contains sulphur dioxide and sulphites, every ingredient is listed on the pack, and if you have an allergy question, email hello@sandyleaffarm.com before ordering. Wine making is for adults aged 18 and over.
Apple wine FAQs
Can I use bruised windfall apples for wine?
Yes, once you have cut out the bruises and any soft or brown patches. Avoid anything genuinely rotten, mouldy or already fermenting on the ground.
Do I need to peel and core the apples?
No peeling is needed. Quarter them, remove damaged parts, and follow the recipe table in the kit for how to handle the cores and the quantities to use.
Why is my apple wine still cloudy?
Apple is high in pectin, so a persistent haze usually means the pectolase was left out or added to liquid that was too hot. Otherwise it is simply time: rack the wine carefully off the sediment and be patient.
Is apple wine the same as cider?
No. Cider ferments apple juice alone, while apple wine adds sugar and water to reach wine strength, usually somewhere around 11 to 14 per cent. It tastes closer to a dry white than to cider.
How long does apple wine take?
Eight to twelve weeks from start to glass with our hedgerow wine kit, and longer suits it. Drink the finished bottles within a year of bottling.
Got more windfalls than you can stew? Have a look at our wine making kits.
