Myths about Fruitwine

I’ve heard a lot of myths about fruitwine. This is my evergreen collection of fruit wine myths. What do wine drinkers think about fruit wines? What to say about the drinkers of cider and sweet berry wines? Are fruit wines for younger or experienced drinkers? Are fruit wines always sweet? And are fruit wines real wines? What da you think?

More Questions about fruit wines in the FAQ-Section.

Fruitwine is for young people only

it depends… alcoholic beverages should only be consumed with caution. Drinking is never recommended for young people, e.g. teenagers.

In most countries the legal drinking age is 16. In other countries you must be 18 or 21 years old. Often spirits are Age 18+. Some Wines with more than 15%Vol. alcohol are often considered as spirits. They can be legal at an drinking age of 18 or higher. So fruit ports and vermouths are not for the (drinking) newcomers so to say. ;-)

Beer and Cider which are often around 5%Vol. They are considered to be safer to drink by young people. But the drawback is that they are easy to drink. You get addicted to alcohol way easier and you can often consume 2, 3 or more 500ml bottles. So the alcohol intake can become serious. See my article about Promille and Alcohol for more details. With spirits you get drunk faster. But that’s all.

It’s a bad habbit that fruitwines are considered for young people. They are often sold in the low-end sector. So they are affordable by teenagers and young adults. They are often produced very cheap and artificially flavoured and sometimes carbonated (Cider) and sweet like fruitjuice with alcohol.

The overall impression is not of high quality. The Image of fruitwine is very poor compared to Wine from grapes. And the worst – most people have bad remembrance of it. We are often fighting against this Image and the bad remembrance when we talk to people trying to get them to taste our product.

Fruitwine is always sweet

This is often true. Sorry, but we produce dessertwines. Fruitdessertwines have to be sweet to some degree. We use very much fruit and fruitjuice so we have lots of acids that need to be tamed. A little sweetness gives harmony. We want the sweet and sour taste in our fruitdessertwines.

But again Image. Sweet Wines are often considered of poor quality because the sugar masks faults and disharmony in the product. This works against us because we produce sweet fruitdessertwines. Some people won’t even taste – that’s prejudgement.

Fruitwines can be produced from dry to sweet. There are dry fruitwines! Yes. I’ve produced them on my own. It works. Very good with berries. But they are more expensive in comparison to red wines so it’s not a business case. Tropical fruitwines in the dry style are also very good and some sherries, vermouths and ports can also be produced dry.

What we see is that older people are more sophisticated and experienced. They tried lots of different beverages in their life and can judge if the product is good or of poor quality.

We are not selling to young people and have an 18+ policy. We want customers who like our product and want to spend money on it and help us grow our young company.

We don’t want drinking orgies with booze! The worst is flavoured cider or white wine with artificial peach flavour etc. Fruitwine is often sold in big bottles. But we want our bottles small and with high quality content. Not for drinkers but for aficinados. So we are selling to private people only who are willing to taste and visit our winery and get in contact with the people behind the business.

Fruitwines – sorry I’ll have to vomit ?!

We hear this a lot! I can’t count how many times I’ve heard this nonsens! I’ve been producing fruitwines as a hobby for over 15 years. I never had to …. So I don’t understand this myth.

A lot of people tell stories of sicknesses after drinking fruitwine. And no it’s not the unripe elderberry kind of sickness from sambunigrin. You can drink 2 or 3 bottles of beer without any reaction but you drink a bottle of strawberrywine or currantwine with 5%Vol. and you get sick? This is very mysterious. Even for me as a fruitwinemaker, beer and wine drinker.

I wonder how this works. Maybe it’s the combination of sweetness and low alcohol. I cut out methanol as a factor because drinking fruitjuice doesn’t intoxicate you neither. I don’t know. From my fruitwines I get drunk and a hangover. But you can expect this from heavy bodied dessertwines with 14-15%Vol. But you don’t drink so much from this kind of beverage because it’s heavy and you only drink a glass or two for pleasure. But no vomiting, never ever.

But I tasted different fruitwines and I often felt not very well afterwards. I think this is this cloying sweetness, acid and low alcohol content. It’s between juice and wine, maybe this is the problem. So this is propably their style of winemaking and you can only judge their winemaker for feeling sick.

Drinking too much can be an issue. Sure. But when experienced drinkers have to vomit or feel funny – something unusual must be happening. This seems to be the true myth about fruitwine. Tell me your opinion or experience – please comment

Fruitwine is not real wine

Sure – Wine is from Grapes only. But there exist Ricewine, Honeywine and different fruitwines. Beer is a wine from grains if this helps you out. They are all fermented beverages from different sources. It only depends on personal taste and preference or ethnicity what you like or what you should like, what you’ve learnt to like because you live there or there or over there. So the true answer is: personal taste!

If you want to know more about different beverages go to the History of alcohol around the World Category and read on

Kiwiwine has green colour and tastes very good like green kiwi candies

Nope. Never. Ever. Kiwi Fruitwine is of very neutral character like an Italian White Wine or Cattarato from Sicily. The Colour is yellow to golden like an applewine and the taste … well like a heavy White Wine or Champagne without bubbles. It is not that special in comparison to white wine but it’s one of those very few fruitwines you can easily mistake for a grape wine. Artificially flavouring and colouring turns the neutral taste and overall vinous expression into something unreal to fool people. What we see again is that people have learned to expect those flavourings and put them above the real thing. They expect the taste and colour of the fake product to be the Standard.

You can find those flavourings everywhere in the foodindustry from candies to icecream to yoghurt. Customers have unlernt the natural taste of natural products and we see this often. Fruit tastes like fruit but some fruitwines doesn’t taste like the fruit they are made of. They taste like fruitwine should taste. But Customers are not experienced in it because they don’t know what to expect, they never tasted and never learnt.

Maybe artificial flavouring helps out to sell fruitwines. But the gap between low-end coloured and flavoured Kiwi Wine (sometimes white Wine as a basis and kiwi aroma only) and Premium Kiwi Wine from kiwi fruit fermented on the pulp could not be bigger. In the Eyes of the Customer: Fruitwine is fruitwine, right?

What do you think?

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