Mango Wine Recipe: 1 Gallon From Fresh Mangoes

The short answer: a 1 gallon batch of mango wine uses 3 to 4 pounds of fresh mango, 1 pound 13 ounces of sugar, 7¼ pints of water, 1½ teaspoons of acid blend, ½ teaspoon of pectic enzyme, 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient, ¼ teaspoon of tannin and a Montrachet or Champagne wine yeast. You mash the diced fruit in a straining bag, ferment for 10 days, rack several times over six months and age the bottles for a year.

The recipe comes from Jack Keller’s Requested Recipes Collection (compiled 2020), which he adapted from Terry Garey’s The Joy of Home Winemaking. Keller describes mangoes as making “a fragrant, golden wine as unmistakably unique as dandelion wine.” If you have never made wine, start with our full guide to making wine at home. For other fruit recipes, browse the homemade wine recipe collection.

Mango Wine at a Glance

Keller says the two recipes taste pretty much the same. The first is the easier one for a beginner because it needs no juicer and no invert sugar, so it is the one we put on the recipe card.

Choosing and Prepping Mangoes

What to buy

Keller’s list says only “fresh mango,” so we do not give a variety. Our recommendation is to buy ripe mangoes that give slightly when pressed and smell sweet at the stem end, and to skip fruit that is moldy, sour smelling or fermenting in the skin. Weigh the fruit before you peel it, then plan on losing some weight to the skin and the seed.

Peeling and dicing

Keller’s instruction is to peel the mangoes, cut the flesh away from the large seed, and slice and dice the flesh. Put the diced flesh in a nylon straining bag, tie the bag and set it in the primary fermenter. The seed and skin stay out of the must.

Frozen mango

Keller’s recipe is written for fresh fruit and says nothing about frozen. We have not tested a frozen version and give no quantities for it. If you try it, thaw the fruit first and treat the thawed flesh like fresh.

The stronger, sweeter variant (recipe 2)

Keller’s second recipe is his own and works from juice. Changes from the card above:

• Use 4 pounds of fresh mango, peeled and pushed through a juicer instead of diced and bagged.
• Use 2½ pounds of sugar, prepared as invert sugar, instead of 1 pound 13 ounces. Keller refers to a separate invert sugar method, which we do not reproduce here.
• Keep the same 7¼ pints of water, 1½ teaspoons of acid blend, ½ teaspoon of pectic enzyme, 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient and ¼ teaspoon of tannin.
• Pour the juice into the primary with the invert sugar and additives, cover and wait 12 hours, then add Lalvin ICV D-47 yeast.
• Ferment until the specific gravity drops to 1.010 (about 8 days), then rack to a secondary and follow the same racking, stabilizing and aging schedule.

The extra sugar gives it more potential alcohol, which is why we call it stronger. Keller does not give a target alcohol for either recipe, so measure your own.

Acid and Pectin: Why Mango Needs Both

Both of Keller’s recipes call for the same two corrections, so we treat them as part of the recipe and not optional extras.

Acid blend

Each recipe adds 1½ teaspoons of acid blend to the must, alongside the tannin and yeast nutrient. Keller does not say anything more about mango acidity, and neither do we beyond what the recipe tells you to add. Measure the dose level, not heaped, and add it before the yeast. For the full list of acid and tannin products, see our wine making additives guide.

Pectic enzyme

Each recipe adds ½ teaspoon of pectic enzyme after the must has cooled, then leaves it covered for 12 hours before the yeast goes in. Skip that wait and the enzyme has less time to work before the yeast starts. The listing for the pectic enzyme in our kit says it breaks down fruit pectin for easier straining and a clearer wine.

Nutrient and tannin

Yeast nutrient (1 teaspoon) and tannin (¼ teaspoon) go in with the acid blend. Add the pectic enzyme separately, once the must is cool.

Estimating the Alcohol Content

Keller gives no starting gravity for these recipes, and the sugar in mangoes varies from fruit to fruit, so the alcohol content has to be measured on your batch. Take a hydrometer reading of the must before you add the yeast (original gravity) and another when fermentation is done (final gravity). The standard formula used by our wine ABV calculator is (original gravity minus final gravity) times 131.25.

As an arithmetic example only, not a prediction: a must that starts at 1.090 and finishes at 0.998 works out to (1.090 minus 0.998) times 131.25, or about 12.1% alcohol. If your reading differs, put your own numbers into the calculator.

Clearing a Cloudy Mango Wine

Three steps from the recipe do most of the work: the pectic enzyme, a night of settling before the first racking, and the repeated rackings that leave the sediment behind. Keller’s schedule is the first rack after letting the strained wine settle overnight, a second after 30 days, then every two months for six months.

If a batch is still cloudy at bottling time, give it more time before you add anything, and keep it away from heat. Our guide to how to clear wine covers fining agents and what to do when time alone is not enough. Stabilize before sweetening, as the recipe says, so the sugar does not restart fermentation in the bottle.

Want more fruit to compare? Pineapple wine and banana wine are the closest tropical recipes in the collection. Make and drink wine responsibly, and only if you are of legal drinking age.