I'm a home wine-maker first and foremost, while I (and my wife and kids) love eating fresh figs, I have been rather disappointed in the relatively low °Brix of my fruits, and the rather bland flavor left after fermentation.

I can make an ok fig wine (took a bronze medal at a recent competition) but it just doesn't have that nice rich fig flavor I'm after.

Sandsquid, I do not know a lot about wine making.  When I was in college I made a rice wine using raisins.  I was wondering if using dried figs would bring out the flavor of your wine.

I might take you up on your offer on visiting your tasting room.  I am a little over three hours from Memphis.  I go through Memphis a couple of time a year on my way to visit my parents in NJ.

Vern

Our kitchen (aka "tasting room") is always open to fellow fig freaks

Sandsquid and Vern,

I have been making fruit wines for more than 30 years and have largely been able to make the wines to the flavor that I love. And of course, I don't sell my wines, I simply give them away to friends who drop by. Todate, I have made more than 300 kinds of wines from various tropical and temperate fruits, and also flowers, honey, tea, coffee, orchids, sugar cane, rootcrops, grains, and most anything that have carbohydrates and or sugars. I love my fruit wine sweet and high ABV, which you cannot buy from the stores (except maybe for Port, Kahlua and Sherry), that is why I make my own.

Although I can write a book (no time though) just to answer your question, I will have to summarize the simplest technique of reviving the lost flavors during fermentation of fruits when you finalize your wine.

One expensive technique is to set aside the most ripe of your fruits, in this case figs, during the start of your fermentation while you process the rest as you would in your recipe. The set aside fruits, you cut them up (no blender), then put in a glass jar. If you want a sweet version, you can add 1/3 part by loose volume white sugar. Cover with brandy to the fruit level, then seal tight. The alcohol (and the optional sugar) is will steep the flavors of your figs into the brandy, and by itself will make a good port style drink on its own if aged for more than a year or so. This is commonly known as fruit liquer.   Back to your main wine, as soon as you finish your wine fermentation, after the secondary fermenter is done, after you rack off your wine,  you strain the fruit liquer, and mix it into the wine batch before aging your wine. You can optionally eat the cut-up figs that were steeped in brandy, it would be a nice treat too. The whole process should revive some original fruit flavor and infuse it into the final wine. You can then clarify your wine, and bottle them up, and you will have distinct fig flavor.

You can generally do this for various kinds of fruits.

I will post some other time the other cheaper methods of infusing back the original fruit flavors.

Glad you made it here, Joe! :)

I invited Joe to address this question because I've been the recipient of many of his fine fruit wines.  I believe Jon had some also when he came up last September for fig tasting and we met at Joe's house.

You're welcome Harvey!

Still another technique that can be applied to figs, and is often cheaper, is that when you make wine, select and set aside super-ripe figs and store them in freezer while you proceed with the fermentation in the primary fermenter. After 3 to 4 days of vigorous fermentation, take out the frozen figs and thaw them quickly by microwave so that it is the same temperature than the primary broth, or a few degrees warmer. Dump them into the primary fermenter, and then ferment for 2 days more before transferring into the secondary fermenter, and then proceed normally. Adding fruits in the later stages of fermentation will help revive the flavors into the wine. The process of freezing and thawing macerates the figs so that flavors are released much better and are infused into the wine during the later stages of fermentation. The later stages of fermentation is slower, so you don't volatilize a lot of flavors, and has a higgher alcohol content, hopefully you hit 10.8% ABV or more to achieve biologically stable wine, all of these helps to retain original fruit flavors.

Joe, Sandsquid,

Do you peal your figs before fermintation or leave the skins on? I made wine for the first time last year and left the skins on for color. The wine came out a dry rose but no real fig flavor. It was drinkable but not good enough to share. I only made 3 gal. Hope to do better this year.

for figs, I have always used montrachet. it ferments very fast provided you put in proper acid balance and yeast nutrient, in aboutjust  three days, you get to about 10% ABV. If I had time, I would remove the skin. the skin would impart some hints of fermented grass lawn clipping aroma, :)  but it depends on the cultivar. Thin skinned with high brix usually won't have the problem.

BTW, figs when fresh have low sugar content. You can increase this by partially drying the fig.

Figs also have very low total acid content. Most wine grapes contain 3 to 5 times total acids, so you have to add acids. Among the acid of figs, malic is dominant. You will have to add tartaric and some citric acid. Grapes dominant acid is tartaric, a more stable form of acid. But you can choose not to add any acid for your fig. Increasing acid in low acid juices will help you make wine that age better through time.

Figs have medium to high tannin content, so you may need to remove some of the tannins during the fining process.

I cannot post a general recipe as each cultivar and stage of fruits harvested vary greatly. I have to evaluate the taste of the fruit before whipping up a recipe that will work for each batch.

That's one of the reasons why I went with Harvey to the pomegranate tasting at Wolfskill to gauge the variation and uniformity of the tastes of various cultivars. I might do the same and go with Jon when fig tasting comes.

thanks for the replies. I will try to mash some over-ripes and marinate in some brandy and see what that dois this year.