Persimmon Wine & Sherry
Persimmons pudding used for baking cookies and bread is a staple product for the rural kitchens of the Midwest. Persimmon wine is not uncommon in basement winemaking setups wherever persimmons grow.
Commercial persimmon wine is rare. Successful commercial persimmon wine is almost unheard of because of the difficulty in acquiring the fruit, and the extreme difficulty of working with it. By successful I mean something that can win Gold medals internationally.
Over a ten year period, myself and my father, Ken (White Owl), developed proprietary methods for working with persimmons and other mush fruits like Paw Paws. This year our persimmon wine took a gold in the Taster's Guild International (so did our Paw Paw)
Making Persimmon Solera
It takes almost three times the persimmons to make the sherry than it does to make the standard persimmon wine. When making persimmon sherry we start with our best persimmon wine then "Fortify" it by adding persimmon brandy distilled from a portion of the original wine. We then sweeten it with persimmon honey, extracted from an original portion of the harvest.
It is aged in French Oak barrels. Every year we add the new sherry to what was not bottled the year previous. This is called the solera method. Seven years of persimmon fermentations are now blended in our current PERSIMMON SOLERA.
Most of our persimmons are harvested in the wild by foragers in the area. But we do get out and pick up some of them ourselves. It helps to get close to the fruit in the wild, it gives you a feel for the vintage to come and what processes may need to be adjusted. The persimmons are WILD FRUIT HARVESTED which is to say the product is organic in nature.
We get some of the fruit from the woods here at the winery on the family farm where I grew up. I am still eating persimmons from trees I used to climb when I was seven. That was forty years ago and I don't climb them anymore. It is a real thrill to make a product I love from a native Illinois fruit, especially one I am so familiar with in an earthy way.
The Native Americans called the persimmon the "FRUIT OF THE GODS" The persimmon is also referenced several times in many modern natural healing and herbalist books.
Brian K Neighbors - Wine Master