Finalizing Bell Pepper Peach Wine for Consumption

Last December, I decided that I wanted to make something to enter into the local fair, per the suggestion of Crush It! As I had mentioned before, I was going through my freezer and realized I had bell peppers and peaches, and decided to ferment them together, and that would be what I entered.

It hasn’t exactly been a smooth ride with this project, but in the end, I did have a unique product. I don’t know if it is blue ribbon material, but I have to try and I have to start somewhere.

It finished fermenting a long time ago, and has been aging for a few months. A few weekends ago, I decided it was time to bottle, even though the peaches in it were still causing a little bit of a haze and fall out. I hope the judges don’t hold that against me.

My husband and I tried it out with three sweetnesses. The first was completely dry, which had a good body, but admittedly tasted a little off. I tried adding a little sugar, but it seemed to make things worse, so I added more sugar, and things got much better. However, to dissolve sugar in wine, you have to first boils some water to dissolve the sugar in and then add it to the wine. That added water did two things. First, it lowered an already low alcohol wine further. Second, it made the wine thinner, loosing some of that body. However, my husband and I felt that despite the lack of body, the taste was much better, and so the trade off was made.

I think if I was to make this wine again, I would definitely boost up how much alcohol would ferment.

Bell Pepper Peach Wine

Every once in a while, I mention that I have a bell pepper peach wine that I currently have bulk aging. I’m kind of proud of it, and I hope to enter it into the country fair. My husband was a bit spooked by the idea, but he has since then smelled it when I racked, and thinks it has great potential, too.

I have seen pepper and peach jam before, and I really like Newman’s Own All-Natural Bandito Chunky Peach Salsa. One day in December 2009, I was digging though my freezer and realized I had both frozen red bell peppers and frozen peaches that my mother had processed. While the jams and salsas used other peppers, I decided to give bell peppers and peaches a try.

I used a ratio of 2 lbs of bell peppers to 1 lb of peaches. My recipe was as follows:

2 lbs of frozen red bell peppers
1 lb of frozen peaches
1 gallon of water
2 lbs sugar
3 tsp acid blend
tannin
pectic enzyme
sulfites
Montrachet yeast

I boiled the water with sugar and poured over the frozen fruit, which pretty much got my temperature to room temp. The SG ended up being 1.072, and the acid blend forced it down to about 3.4 pH.

The color of this is the color of peaches, not the red from the peppers. The peaches made it cloudy at first, but the longer it has sat, the more it has cleared up. I’ll probably bottle it in July so that I can enter it into the fairs.

One thing I haven’t decided on is back sweetening or not. When it finished fermenting and was completely dry, I wasn’t too fond of it. The bell pepper was very strong and sharp, so I thought that it might need sugar to balance it out and make the peach perk up. However, the longer it has aged, the smoother it has gotten, so I’m not so sure anymore.

If one were to attempt this, since you would not have my mother’s frozen produce, I would recommended using fresh bell peppers and frozen peaches, or wait until late summer when peaches are good and ripe. I’m also debating about doing a truer 50/50 ratio of 1.5 lbs each.