Winemaking recipes were once an important part of preserving the harvest, but they can be hard to find these days. Country fruit wines have been made in backyards and homesteads for hundreds of years, no winery required. Don’t worry, it’s easier than you think!
These days, if you say “wine” most people assume you mean grape wine, but really, you can make wine out of just about any fruit (or flower, or vegetable).
Grape wine, believe it or not, is the most complicated to make, but other wines are surprisingly easy for beginners.
I’ve put together this list of just about every fruit, flower, and vegetable winemaking recipe I can find to help get you started.
Making Wine at Home
If you’re new to winemaking, I’d suggest you also read the other posts in this series, including:
- Beginners Guide to Making Fruit Wines, where I take you through all the steps in the winemaking process.
- Small Batch Winemaking can be done for micro-batches, making as little as 1 bottle of wine at a time, and the process and equipment are a bit different with super tiny batches.
- How to Make Mead (Honey Wine) is mostly the same, but there are some particularities when working with honey.
- Equipment for Winemaking, which covers all the durable equipment you’ll need to make your first batch (besides your ingredients).
- Ingredients for Winemaking, which covers all the other things you’ll need (besides yeast).
- Yeast for Winemaking can get complicated quickly, and there are dozens of common strains (and hundreds of obscure ones). Picking the right one is actually pretty important, but I’ve broken them all down for you.
- How to Make Wine from Grapes, though not necessarily for beginners, but everyone always asks about this one first!
- Meadmaking Recipes are even more obscure than winemaking recipes, but I’ve got you covered there too.
If you’d like to learn more, I’d recommend the following winemaking books:
- Artisanal Small-Batch Brewing: Easy Homemade Wines, Beers, Meads, and Ciders by Amber Shehan
- The Home Winemakers Companion by Ed Halloran
- The Joy of Home Winemaking by Terry Garey
Elderberry Wine
Winemaking Recipes
I’ve broken this list of winemaking recipes down by type of fruit, with categories including:
- Grape Wine Recipes
- Pom Fruit Wines (Apples, Pears, Quince, etc.)
- Stonefruit Wines (Peach, Plum, Cherry, etc.)
- Berry Wines (Blackberry, Strawberry, etc.)
- Citrus Wine Recipes (Orange, Lemon, etc.)
- Tropical Fruit Wine Recipes (Pineapple, Papaya, etc.)
- Other Fruit Wines (Misc fruits like elderberry, cranberry, persimmon, etc.)
- Flower and Herb Wines
- Vegetable and Root Wines
Scroll down until you find what you’re looking for; there’s plenty to choose from!
Grape Wine Recipes
Making grape wine is challenging, and not for beginners. If you’re just getting started, I’d recommend scrolling down further and making another type of fruit wine for your first batch.
If you’ve got your heart set on grape wine, then I strongly recommend making your first grape wine with a kit, using purchased wine grape juice. It’s standardized so you know it has the right sugar/acid/tannin, and the kid will come with the perfect yeast for that type of juice. You’ll be able to learn the process without having to worry about the actual chemistry of your particular grapes.
In terms of specific recipes, there is an incredible free downloadable pdf (300+ pages) with all the custom recipes that Jack Keller wrote for his readers in his lifetime. He was a winemaking icon for many years, and he sadly passed away just a few years back. All his readers put together a big printable of all his recipes, as he shared them so freely in his lifetime. It’s an incredible resource for any beginning winemaker (and free)!
There are quite a few grape wine recipes included in there, including:
- Niagara Grape Wine (pg. 56)
- Edelweiss Grape Wine (pg. 55)
- Berlandieri Grape Wine (pg. 44)
- White Grape Cherry Wine (pg. 38)
- White Grape and Raspberry Wine (pg. 68)
Fruit wines, as I said, are A LOT easier…and most recipes yield very consistent results.
Beyond Jack Keller’s recipes, here are a few more grape wine recipes:
Wild Grape Wine
Pom Fruit Wines (Apple, Pear, Quince, etc.)
Fruits in the apple family are usually known for making hard cider and perry, but they also make delightful wines.
While hard cider is more like beer (with a low alcohol level, and usually very dry), apple wine can be anything you choose. If made right, it can be anywhere from dry to very sweet, like a dessert wine.
The same goes for other pom fruits, like pears, hawthorn, quince, and rosehips.
- Apple Wine
- Hawthorn Wine
- Pear Wine
- Rosehip Wine
- Quince Wine
Apple wine
Stonefruit Wine Recipes (Cherry, Peach, Plum, etc.)
Winemaking works well with stone fruits, especially clingstone varieties that are difficult to pit without mashing them to pieces. Since you can make wine with chunks of fruit (pits included), it’s a great way to use up a bumper crop in a hurry.
When our summer plums come in each year, we make a big batch of plum wine with them. If we were in the south, we’d do the same with peaches too.
- Cherry Wine
- Peach Wine
- Apricot Wine
- Plum Wine
- Greengage plum wine
- Damson Plum Wine
Berry Wine Recipes
A true delight, berry wines capture the fresh flavors (and colors) of summer in a sweet sipping wine that’s perfect year-round.
I’m especially fond of raspberry wine made with fresh summer raspberries, but they’re all good!
- Blackberry Wine
- Blueberry Wine
- Raspberry Wine
- Strawberry Wine
Raspberry Wine
Citrus Wine Recipes
Citrus fruits have a refreshing flavor that works wonderfully in wine.
They take a bit of extra care to ferment, since they’re so acidic, but it can help to use a winemaking yeast with a high tolerance for acidic ferments.
Good wine yeast choices include MA33 Country Wine Yeast because it can reduce the acidity of wine and tolerates highly acidic environments, and Lalvin K1-V1116, because it works well in all manner of extreme conditions.
Tropical Fruit Wine Recipes
Generally, when tropical fruits come in season, they’re available in bulk and inexpensive. For us in the northern hemisphere, that’s usually mid-winter when there’s little else in season (and little other winemaking going on).
They’re a great way to stay busy in the off-season, and downright delicious.
- Banana Wine
- Kiwi Wine
- Pineapple Wine
Pineapple wine
Other Fruit Wine Recipes
These other fruits don’t fit neatly into a category, so I’ve lumped them all together.
If there’s a particular fruit wine recipe you’re hoping to find, please leave me a note in the comments, and I’ll try to find one and add it for you.
- Cranberry Wine
- Elderberry Wine
- Persimmon Wine
- Pomegranate Wine
- Rhubarb Wine (I know, it’s a vegetable, but it’s used like a fruit)
- Watermelon Wine
Homemade rhubarb wine
Herbal and Flower Wine Recipes
You don’t have to have fresh fruit to make homemade wine!
Believe it or not, you can make amazing wine from flowers and herbs. Usually, the sweet-scented petals are used from flowers, a the tender leaves of culinary herbs.
- Dandelion Wine
- Rose Wine
- Lilac Wine
- Coltsfoot Wine
Rose Petal Wine
Vegetable and Root Wines
While fruit wines are, of course, more common, you can actually make wine out of vegetables too.
Root crops are popular because they tend to be full of natural sugars, but wines were historically also made from waste products like corn cobs and pea pods.
You can even make savory cooking wines from things like garlic and onions. They’re not meant for drinking straight, but they contribute a lot of flavors to braised meat or risotto.
- Beetroot wine
- Parsnip wine
- Carrot Wine
- Corn Cob Wine
- Pea Pod Wine
- Onion Wine
- Garlic Wine
- Tomato Wine
Parsnip wine
Fermentation Ideas
Brewing up more than just wine this year? Expand your horizons with these recipes:
- How to Make Mead (Honey Wine)
- 50+ Mead Recipes
- How to Make Homemade Beer
- How to Make Hard Cider
- How to Make Pear Cider (Perry)
