Fig Wine Recipe: Homemade Wine From Fresh Figs

The short answer: a 1 gallon batch of fig wine uses 4 pounds of fresh figs, 7 pints of water, 1¾ pounds of sugar, 3½ teaspoons of acid blend, a crushed Campden tablet, a teaspoon of yeast nutrient and a packet of Montrachet wine yeast. You mince the figs into a straining bag, aim for a starting gravity of 1.085 to 1.100, add the yeast after 24 hours, and lift the pulp out when the gravity falls to 1.040, usually in 3 to 5 days. It ferments dry in about three weeks.

The recipe is Jack Keller’s fresh fig wine, from his Requested Recipes Collection (compiled 2020), written for a couple in Austin, Texas whose tree was producing what they called a ton of figs. Keller notes that figs turn up in dozens of wine recipes, almost always dried, and that a “pure fig wine” from fresh fruit is rarer still. This is that rare one. If you are new to winemaking, start with our guide to making wine from fruit, and see the full collection of homemade wine recipes for other trees in the yard.

Fig Wine at a Glance

Keller’s verdict on the finished wine is plain: “This is a good dry wine.” Sweeten it only if you prefer it that way.

Ingredients and Equipment

How many figs per gallon

Four pounds of fresh figs to the gallon, chopped or fed through a mincer. Keller does not name a variety, so use what your tree gives you, ripe and soft but not fermenting on the branch. Pick out any fruit that is moldy or split and sour. If your tree is generous, the recipe scales: Keller says you can multiply it for 3, 5, 6½ or as many gallons as you have containers for, and that one package of wine yeast handles 1 to 5 gallons.

The acid matters with figs

The card calls for 3½ teaspoons of acid blend in a gallon, which is a generous dose for a fruit wine. Figs are sweet and soft rather than tart, and the acid is what gives the finished wine some lift. Keep the full amount. If you want to understand the powder, our guide to wine making additives explains what acid blend is made of.

The yeast

Keller names Montrachet. Red Star sells that strain today as Premier Classique, and retailer listings describe it as formerly Montrachet. Any clean, neutral wine yeast will work if you cannot find it; our guide to the best wine yeasts compares the common strains.

Equipment

You need a primary fermenter, a large finely woven nylon straining bag, a bowl to hang the bag over, a hydrometer and test jar, a 1 gallon jug with an airlock, a siphon and bottles. The hydrometer is not optional in this recipe: Keller’s steps are timed by gravity, not by days. Our hydrometer guide covers the readings.

Handling the Fig Pulp

Use a bag from the start

Minced figs turn into a soft, seedy mass that is hard to siphon around. Keller puts the pulp in a straining bag before anything else goes into the bucket, which means the fruit can be lifted out in one piece when the time comes. Tie the bag closed so seeds do not escape into the wine.

Press lightly, every day

The daily job is to stir and press the bag lightly with a sanitized spoon or a gloved hand, which helps the juice out of the fruit. Light is the word that matters. Fig flesh breaks down into fine particles, and those particles are what make a fig wine stubbornly cloudy.

Drain it, do not wring it

At 1.040 the bag comes out. Keller’s instruction is to hang it over a bowl and let it drain, “lightly pressing to aid extraction,” and he puts the warning in capitals: do not force it, or you will cloud the liquor. A wine press is overkill here. Let gravity do the work for an hour or so while you siphon the rest, then add the drained juice to the jug. If the finished wine still holds a haze, our guide on how to clear wine covers fining.

How Strong Will Fig Wine Be?

This is one of the few recipes in Keller’s collection that gives a target gravity, so the arithmetic is easy. Using our potential alcohol formula, (starting gravity minus 1) × 131.25:

Keller has the wine ferment to 1.000 “or lower,” and a wine that ends below 1.000 is a little stronger than the table shows. Record your own starting and final readings and run them through the wine ABV calculator. If your first reading is short of 1.085, Keller’s fix is up to ½ cup more sugar, stirred in very well; the sugar calculator tells you how far that moves the reading.

Sweetening and Aging

Dry, or a touch sweeter

Keller’s card makes a dry wine. If you want it sweeter, his method is to add ½ teaspoon of stabilizer per gallon after the last racking and before bottling, then ¼ pound of sugar per gallon, dissolved. The stabilizer stops the yeast restarting on the new sugar. Our guide to backsweetening wine covers the method in detail, and you can add the sugar in smaller steps and taste as you go.

When to open it

Keller says this wine can be drunk young, after three months in the bottle, but “will improve immensely with age.” Bottle it, open one at three months to see where it is, and leave the rest alone for a good while longer.

What About Dried Figs?

Keller ends his fig card with advice for anyone whose tree overproduces: dry some of the figs for other recipes that call for dried figs. In his words they add considerable body to thin wines, but may give a brownish color some people object to. He did not object. To him that brown color meant a wine should be aged four years before drinking, by which time it takes on an almost sherry-like quality.

Dried figs play the same role in a wine as raisins do: body and depth rather than a strong fruit flavor of their own. If that is the direction you want, our raisin wine recipe shows how a dried fruit wine is built, and the same chopping and pressing rules apply.

Fig mead

Fig mead is a common follow-up question. Keller’s card is a wine, not a mead, so we do not give amounts. If you want to try one, our guide on how to make mead gives a 1 gallon base you can add fruit to. Make and drink wine responsibly, and only if you are of legal drinking age.