BUMPSIES: Update and discussion on bitters/aperitif in comments
This particular little wine was supposed to have the fruits in it for ten days. I forgot all about it over Christmas stress so the fruit has been soaking for over a month. I racked it today and boy does it have an aftertaste of the zest. Do you think it can be recovered? Will the zesty bitterness reduce from aging? Or can I do something else about it?
There are lots of bittering compounds and best bet for you is some kind of sweetening it. Because they didn’t dissipate by ageing.
Maybe look into artificial sweeteners -combinations of them mask each other bitter after taste. But it wouldn’t be exactly natural.
Quick search pointed me to some paper about how to prevent it in juice and lots of papers about medical use.
Main compound that may be your problem is limonene (Wikipedia has good article) but I can’t tell how to get it out.
Thanks. That’s a bit discouraging that it will not dissipate.
But it just hit me now - maybe I could embrace the bitterness somehow instead. Like, figure out how to make a proper bitter, something related to a Fernet-Branca, but wine.
It will probably need to be stronger so it is more aperitif. So maybe little bit of some sort of “moonshine” (it is legal in my country to make some distillates) and sugar and drink it.
I did some sort of this few times mostly by maceration of fruits and herbs.
That’s true. Distillation is illegal here in Sweden, and honestly it’s too much of an effort for me personally anyway. So I’m thinking if I could build upon this into an interesting bitter brew of some sort, I could always mix it with vodka before bottling like when you make a liqueur.
I’d much appreciate any experience or recipes for herbs and methods if you’d like to share.
I tried to make some liqueur with currants and wine and it was disaster so not much help with that.
Now I usually let them sit in some “slivovice” for half a year and have much better results.