Labo VinChoosing the fruits
Although the fruit choice strongly determinates the nature of the wine, one is often obliged to use available fruits and the choice is often limited.
Nevertheless, aside from some rare fruits whose composition is quite balanced and suitable for wine making (grape is the typical example), the composition of most other fruits is not balanced; that means they have an excess or a deficit in some elements. In this case, correcting the juice is necessary if you want to get good results.
The ideal is to prepare a balanced juice by mixing fruit saps that individually are not. Otherwise it will be necessary to use different additives, quite naturals again, and not decreasing at all the wine quality, quite the opposite.
Anyway, fruits must be sufficiently ripe to be rich enough in flavour and sugar (the sugar content can be monitored by a refractometer).
Among different fruits, one can distinguish juicy fruits, and fruits poor in sap. One can add a third category: flowers and leaves that can be the base of excellent wines (some flowers, rich in sap (dandelion), are rather treated as fruits).
These three categories will be differently handled in the wine making process.