The Future of Winemaking: Not All Wine is Made From Grapes

You probably know most wines are in fact, from grapes made. Technically, the definition of wine is “a drink made from fermented fruits”, so in reality, grapes are not paramount to make one.

With summer here and many fruit harvests to come, some people may be wondering if they can make homemade wine from their bounty of local orchards or gardens. The reality is that you can! But before trying to make wine from fruit, it’s important to understand why most wine is made from grapes. Grapes contain the right balance of sugars, acids and tannins to make a fermented beverage that will keep and also taste good.

Still, many winemakers have mastered the art of making other fruits into wine. On their own, most other fruits do not have this perfect balance. However, you can add sugar, acid or tannins to balance the juice from any fruit and ferment it into a delicious fruit wine.

There is still some bias in the wine community towards fruit wines, mostly because people widely believe that they can only be sweet. Some winemakers, though, have achieved making fruit wines without them being sweet at all, and showing the intricate flavors of the fruit.

Most fruit wines are often made by adding lots of cane sugar, both to jack the alcohol and to sweeten the wine. Large sugar additions make it very difficult, though, to represent the complexity and character of the fruit.
Recently, though, serious vintners have begun to ferment their local fruit beyond typical wine grapes in dry styles. The results are balanced, thoughtful wines that might surprise even the most traditional wine lovers.

And thus, the new era of fruit wines has arrived. The future of winemaking, if you will. The possibilities are endless!

Such is the case of Peter Schnebly, owner of Schnebly Redland’s Winery, the southernmost winery in the United States. The Redlands is known for its amazing diversity in exotic tropical fruits, rich in fruits that cannot be found in the rest of the country. This rural area is called the Redland thanks to its red soil, soil that reaps the most sumptuous fruits.

Instead of producing wines with grapes, Peter Schnebly, founder of the winery, creates wines out of indigenous tropical fruit. This means wines made out of mangos, lychee, passion fruit, guava, star fruit, coconut and even the first wine ever made from avocados!

But can “snobby” wine drinkers be converted to get to know and love these novel tropical fruit wines? Of course. Most fruit winemakers believe that as long as they can get people to their tastings, they can almost always be converted.
Schnebly’s, for example, offers wine tastings daily at their winery, plus a novel approach to wine tastings through pandemic times: Virtual wine tastings.
So what are you waiting for? Not all wine is made from grapes, and some of the best wines are made from a wide variety of fruits…which does not mean they are sweet.

Visit https://www.schneblywinery.com/ to find out more about the winery and wide variety of exotic fruit wines!