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Husk Cherry wine (Ground Cherry Wine)
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Ground Cherry Wine (and Mead)

Ground cherry wine is a tropical treat for northern gardeners, and it gives you a delicious sweet pineapple/strawberry-flavored drink in a glass.
Prep Time30 minutes
Cook Time10 days
Secondary Fermentation28 days
Total Time38 days 30 minutes
Author: Ashley Adamant

Ingredients

Instructions

  • Remove husks from ground cherries and freeze fruit.
  • When ready, thaw ground cherries and move to a wide-mouth carboy.
  • Dissolve sugar in water and pour over the fruit. Add acid blend, pectic enzyme, wine tannin and yeast nutrient and stir to mix. 
  • Rehydrate your wine yeast in a bit of room temperature water for 10 minutes before adding it to your wine. (Always add wine yeast last.)
  • Top with enough water to leave 2 inches of headspace and seal with a water lock. 
  • Ferment in primary until you see fermentation slow and stop. (About 7 to 10 days.)
  • Siphon wine to a clean fermentation vessel for secondary, leaving fruit behind, and add enough water to bring the level to just below the neck of the carboy. 
  • Seal with a water lock and ferment in secondary at least 4 weeks for wine and 8 weeks for mead.
  • Taste the wine and adjust as necessary. See notes for backsweetening.
  • Bottle your wine with fresh corks and allow it to age for at least a month before drinking.

Notes

Fruit

You’ll need about 3 pounds of ground cherries to make a nice flavorful batch of ground cherry wine. Fruit is best frozen for around a week before making wine. Freezing helps to break down the fruit and their pectin content. 

Yeast

For ground cherry wine, you'll need a wine yeast with a moderate alcohol tolerance. Lalvin 71B is a nice choice for ground cherry wine, helping to mellow flavors and enhance the fruity characteristics of the wine. 

Stabilizing and Back Sweetening

If your wine tastes too dry at the end of secondary, you can always backsweeten it. Be sure to siphon to a new container and stabilize the wine by adding 1 Campden tablet and ½ teaspoon potassium sorbate to kill the yeast. Wait 24 hours before adding sugar to taste. 
Make a simple syrup of 1 part sugar and 1 part water to sweeten (½ cup sugar is a good place to start for a one-gallon batch of ground cherry wine) and add this to your wine. Put back into ferment for another week or two before bottling.