Blackberry Wine Recipe

The short answer: for one gallon of blackberry wine, crush 4 pounds of ripe blackberries in a nylon straining bag, add about 7 pints of water, roughly 2¼ pounds of sugar (enough to reach a specific gravity near 1.090), ½ teaspoon each of acid blend and pectic enzyme, a teaspoon of yeast nutrient and a crushed Campden tablet. Wait a day, add a red wine yeast, ferment on the fruit for about five days, then finish under an airlock in a dark jug and rack until it is clear. Plan on a year before it tastes its best.

Blackberry is the fruit wine home winemakers come back to most. Jack Keller, the wine judge whose recipe collection most hobby recipes trace back to, notes that in a survey of favorite non-grape wines, blueberry came second only to blackberry. The berries bring color, acid and tannin of their own, so the recipe stays short.

Where This Recipe Comes From

The ingredient list is Jack Keller’s medium-bodied dry blackberry wine from his blackberry recipe collection, which he adapted from Raymond Massaccesi’s Winemaker’s Recipe Handbook: 4 pounds of blackberries, 2¼ pounds of sugar, ½ teaspoon each of pectic enzyme and acid blend, a crushed Campden tablet, 7 pints of water, wine yeast and nutrient. Keller describes the result as a nice semi-sec after a year.

The process around it follows Virginia Cooperative Extension’s Wine Making for the Home Gardener, which raises every fruit must to a specific gravity of about 1.090 for roughly 12% alcohol, adds the Campden tablet and waits 24 hours before the yeast goes in. Because the sugar already in your berries varies, measure rather than trusting the weight on the card. Our sugar calculator does the sum.

How Many Blackberries per Gallon

Keller’s four classic blackberry recipes run from 3 pounds per gallon for a light, sweet wine to 6 pounds for a heavy-bodied one, with 4 pounds in the middle. North Dakota State University Extension’s Getting Started With Home Winemaking (FN1638) gives the same general range for fruit wines, 3 to 5 pounds per gallon with water making up the rest.

If you work in metric, the card comes to about 1.8 kg of blackberries, 3.3 liters of water and 1 kg of sugar for a 3.8 liter (US gallon) batch.

Wild and cultivated berries both work. Blackberries ripen in late summer and early autumn, and wild brambles grow along hedgerows and field edges across Europe and much of the US. Keller’s notes for Texas Brazos blackberries say to pick only the deep black ripe ones and not to worry about berries a few days past ripe. Frozen berries are fine too: NDSU notes that freezing and thawing softens fruit and helps juice extraction, while heating fruit can release too much pectin and leave a haze.

The Best Yeast for Blackberry Wine

Keller’s blackberry recipes simply call for wine yeast; for his blackberry port he names Lalvin K1-V1116. For a dry blackberry table wine, a red wine strain suits the fruit. Two options, with figures from Lallemand’s product pages:

• Lalvin RC 212: 16% alcohol tolerance, 18 to 30 °C (64 to 86 °F). Lallemand pairs it with red fruit aromas and color stability, which is what you want from a dark berry wine.
• Lalvin EC-1118: 18% tolerance, 10 to 30 °C (50 to 86 °F), neutral and dependable. Pick it for a stronger or sweeter style, or if a blackberry must is slow to start.

A 1.090 must lands near 12%, well inside both. Our best wine yeasts page compares more strains.

How to Make Blackberry Wine, Step by Step

Step 1: Sanitize

Clean and sanitize the bucket, straining bag, spoon, hydrometer and jug. Virginia Tech uses a solution of potassium metabisulfite and citric acid for equipment.

Step 2: Crush the berries in a bag

Sort out moldy or unripe berries, rinse the rest, and put them in a nylon straining bag in the primary. Mash them in the bag with a potato masher. Thawed frozen berries crush almost by themselves.

Step 3: Build the must

Add the water, then stir in sugar a little at a time until the hydrometer reads about 1.090. Add the acid blend, nutrient, pectic enzyme and the crushed Campden tablet, cover with a cloth and leave it for 24 hours.

Step 4: Ferment on the fruit

Sprinkle on the yeast and keep the bucket at room temperature. Stir every day and press the bag to push color and flavor out of the pulp. In Keller’s recipe this stage takes about 5 days.

Step 5: Into a dark jug

Lift the bag out and let it drain, then siphon the wine off the sediment into a 1 gallon jug and fit an airlock. Keller uses dark glass for every blackberry wine, or wraps a clear jug in brown paper, because light fades the color. Store it somewhere cool; his recipes use 60 to 65 °F.

Step 6: Rack, wait, bottle

Rack after about 3 weeks and again after 2 months, topping up each time. When the wine is clear and the gravity has stopped moving, stabilize it if you plan to sweeten, then bottle. Keller allows six months to age and a year to mature. Our guides to how long wine takes to ferment and bottling and corking cover the last two steps.

Scaling Up: 5 Gallon Blackberry Wine

Multiply everything by five and keep the same gravity target.

Use a 7 to 8 gallon bucket for the primary so the fruit has room, then a 5 gallon carboy. Our carboy vs bucket guide compares the options.

Common Mistakes With Blackberry Wine

Letting light at the wine

Blackberry wine loses its color if it sits in clear glass in a bright room. Keller ferments, ages and bottles it in dark glass, or wraps the jug.

Skipping the pectic enzyme

Berries carry pectin, and pectin haze does not settle out on its own. Virginia Tech explains that pectic enzyme breaks it down; add it at the start.

Sweetening without stabilizing

Virginia Tech points out that adding sugar to a finished wine makes it unstable, because fermentation could start again. Use potassium sorbate with a Campden tablet first, then sweeten.

Rushing it

A young blackberry wine can taste harsh. Keller’s recipes all wait a year for it to mature, and his heavier versions improve for longer.

For the method behind every fruit wine see how to make wine from fruit, and browse the recipe collection for more. Make and drink wine responsibly, and only if you are of legal drinking age.