Plum wine is a great way to enjoy an abundance of plums.
We made plum wine a couple of years ago using yellow plums, and this year as we have a very large Italian plum tree we’ll be doing the same this summer using a different plum wine recipe. I imagine the taste and color will turn out quite different.
If you use only sweet plums you’ll get a dessert wine, so it’s good to get a mix of tart and sweet plums for a more balanced wine.
How to Make Plum Wine (Step-by-Step)
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- 4 lbs Plums pitted
- 6 pts Water
- 2 lbs Sugar
- 1/2 tsp Acid Blend
- 1/2 tsp Pectic Enzyme
- 1 tsp Nutrient
- 1 Campden crushed
- 1 pkg Wine Yeast
Ingredients
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- Wash, drain, remove stones, chop into smaller pieces.
- Put in nylon straining bag, crush and squeeze juice into primary fermenter. Keeping all pulp in the bag, tie top and place in the primary.
- Stir in all other ingredients EXCEPT yeast. Cover primary.
- After 24 hours, add yeast. Cover primary.
- Stir daily, check S.G and press pulp lightly to aid extraction.
- When ferment reaches S.G 1.040 (3-5 days) squeeze juice lightly from bag. Siphon off wine sediment into glass secondary, attach airlock.
- When ferment reaches 1.000 (about 3 weeks) siphon off any sediment into clean secondary. Reattach lock.
- To aid clearing siphon again in 2 months and again before bottling*.
- To sweeten wine, at bottling add 1/2 tsp Stabilizer, then stir in 1/4-1/2 lb dissolved sugar per gallon.
You can use any plum-type: Damson, Yellow, Greengage or sweet plum. With wild plums, that are generally high in acid, use an acid tester or cut down to 3lbs per gallon. You need to know some winemaking basics to make recipe. Learn some basics here.
We also used a champagne yeast instead of wine yeast to try and make it sparkly (which didn’t work out too well). The second time we made this plum wine we used Italian plums. The color is far prettier than the yellow wine!
The Italian plums create red wine, the flavor changing depending on the plum balance.
Italian plum wine can be super sweet if you only use very ripe plums. I prefer a mix of tart and sweet plums.
This recipe is from the Winemaker’s Recipe Handbook.
Plum Wine Recipe Supplies
- Primary Fermenter *
- Secondary carboy Fermenter *
* The size of your primary and secondary fermenter will depend on how much wine you plan on making. The above recipe is for a 1-gallon size.
We used a 5-gallon size (so we multiplied the plum wine recipe by 5). We just bought a 5-gallon winemaking kit, (you can also get the smaller 1-gallon winemaking kit), as it was easier than shopping for all the individual supplies.
- Nylon straining bag (the size will depend on your primary fermenter)
- Siphon Hose with Shut-Off Clamp
- Hydrometer & Test Jar
- Bubbler air-lock & carboy bung
- Bottles
- Corks
- Corker (we have this one) but this is the size that takes up way less space!
Was the plum wine recipe useful? Have you made plum wine before?
What type of plums did you use?
How did your Italian plum wine turn out? I have both Italian and Greengage plums. I was thinking of taking my purple plums to a local wine maker to have them make it. I am not a huge fan of sweet wine. Do you think I would be happy with the results?
We made two batches, one earlier in the season which was less sweet and more dry. The second was much sweeter! I liked both, I even blended them sometimes. If you don’t like sweet wine it’s good to mix with a lot of almost ripe plums instead of fully ripened/sweet.
We mixed the sweet one with sparkling cranberry juice or spritzer lemon water too and it was refreshing as a sangria sort of thing.