Apricot-Plum Champagne
One of my friends is getting married on the Salmon River in May, and I told her if she could pick enough blackberries I would make her blackberry champagne (which I have never done before). She missed the berry season, but a mutual friend gave me 6 quarts of steam canned apricot juice that she had picked from the Riggins area. Toby and I picked a few pounds of plums from the same area, and we’ll just have to see how it all turns out…
Making Champagne (sorry…Sparkling Riggins Brut) is similar to making still wine, but you want to start out with higher acidity and brix.
Apricot-Plum Champagne
6 qts apricot juice (steam canned)
pinch k-meta
1 tsp pectolase
1 tsp yeast nutrient
2 12 oz cans white grape juice concentrate, frozen (Old Orchard)
Add all ingredients into 3 gallon primary fermentation bucket. Measure brix (13) and acidity (0.8%). The high acidity is perfect for a sparkling wine, but the brix should be about 16, so (16-13)*.125 *1.75 = about .75 lbs sugar. (The liquid level was just under 2 gallons).
Day 2: Boil 2 3/4 lbs plums, 3/4 lbs sugar, 2 cups water. Add to bucket. (Note: possibly some whitish mold appeared on floating pulp? May just be discoloration.)
Day 3: Vigorous spontaneous fermentation…yikes! Could be bad or good. Smells wonderful. Added pinch k-meta and stirred heartily with sanitized spoon...so much carbonation. Plums are known to pack around their own yeast.
Day 5: Racked into 2 1 gallon glass carboys. Smelled amazing. NEARLY makes two gallons. 
Day 23: Carboy #1 – 1.000 gravity, tastes VERY apricoty, dry. Pleasant plum skin tang. High acidity still, could make great Champagne! Added 1/2 cup grape concentrate mix to top up.
Carboy #2 – Floating cloudy mystery scum at the neck of the bottle. Smells awful…feet? Added a pinch of k-meta and stirred vigorously…searched for answers and found none. Added new yeast. Unfortunately it is not stray acetobacter coming to turn it into delicious and usable stonefruit vinegar. 🙁 Cry a little over how good the other carboy is.
Day 25: Carboy #1 – Has cleared quite a bit from Day 23. May benefit from oak and slight sweetening.
Carboy #2 – Still smells strongly of feet, has been relegated to the step in the garage away from the rest of my precious carboys. It’s not looking good for Carboy #2.
Day 28: Carboy #1 was a crowd favorite! The flavor has stabilized and the wine continues to clear.
Day 46: Added 1/5 packet of chitosan, stirred vigorously.
Day 48: Added 1/5 packet of keilosol, stirred for 30 seconds.
Day 62: Racked into new carboy. Flavor – amazing. Strong plum aftertaste, apricot base. No detectable faults.
Day 77: Bottled apricot champagne into 5 750 ml champage bottles, topped with plastic and cage tops. Will be slowly turning them over in a redneck version of Methode Champenoise, which may or may not be successful in time for the wedding, which is on Day 238. Yikes!
4/1: A sad day! The bottles are getting more carbonated and one lost nearly all of it’s contents overnight! The cap is still on tight and the bottle is intact, so it must have just been a slow leak. The other bottles are all okay, with maybe a little drop in fluid level. I hate to lose any of these, since the flavor was so amazing as a still wine. What a waste. 🙁 I’ll just have to hope the rest of the bottles don’t have the same thing happen.