This is Grandma’s recipe for chokecherry wine. It’s different from any other wine recipe I have seen. Jim and I have used the same formula to make other fruit wines.

One year we made currant wine which was really not very good – so it sat on the shelf for a couple of years. When Jim was making venison sausage, he decided that perhaps it might be good to add a little wine for moisture so he dumped in the last bottle of the currant wine.

Then he decided to taste what was left in the bottle, and realized that it had aged into a very nice mellow wine Well, it did make some mighty fine sausage.

The formula for the wine is:
1 part ripe chokecherries or other fruit
1 part sugar
2 parts water

Mix together in a large crock, cover with a dishtowel, and let stand in a fairly warm place to ferment. Stir occasionally. When the berries sink to the bottom of the crock, the fermentation is complete.

Make a sugar syrup of one cup of sugar to a half cup of water and heat and stir just until the sugar is dissolved. Siphon off the wine and add the sugar syrup until it is sweetened to your taste.

Pour into quart fruit jars, place new lids and screw bands on the jars, and process in boiling water just as you would if you were canning fruit. Process for 15 minutes.

This procedure prevents any further fermentation of the sugar that was just added and you have a sweet wine. The alcohol content can be potent, depending on the amount of sugar in the fruit and the sugar that was added.

Let the wine sit in a cool, dark place for a couple of months, and then, hopefully, you will have some good wine. If not, you can always make sausage with it.