It's just occured to me......

When I was a kid, there used to be a brewery, just north of Portsmouth called "George Gale & Co". As well as a good range of beers, then also made a good range of "country" fruit wines.

I'd been lucky enough to taste some of them and my over riding memory is of fruit wines that actually tasted something like the fruit that they'd been made from, but with a base sweetness and a "kick" (which'd have been the alcohol).

Gales was taken over by "Fullers" some years ago, so I don't know if they're still making the fruit/country wines.

My problem is that I like my fruit wines like that. Fruity and sweet tasting, and not necessarily very "winey". Wines that taste, well, like wine, are to my view, made from grapes. Yes it's fair to say that I don't really know much about them, but I tend to remember some of the names and roughly where they come from. They tend to be very fruity, tannic and quite "heavy". Burgundies and Bordeaux - there are also 1 or 2 that I've enjoyed that were made in Australia, whereas the ones I've tasted from other wine making areas, well I can take them or leave them. It may be that I just haven't tasted any of the "good" ones.

I'm also finding that I'm not particularly keen on "white" country wines either. Yes, there's one or two that I don't mind but I seem to vastly prefer the red country wines, and even then they have to be quite strongly tasting of the original base fruit.

I just can't really make my mind up, but I'm thinking that I'll be having to go along the lines of just making traditional meads and then if I want some fruit flavour, to then add it after it's been made i.e. soaking the fruit in traditional mead etc to give it some fruit flavour without the actual fruit sugars being fermented.

I'll just have to put some thought into it won't I.......