Flat & Sweet: Wine Wizard

, QMy pear wine is watery and flat, I have already bottled it. Is there anyway to save it? It was my first attempt at winemaking and I don’t know what went wrong. The only thing I can tell you is that I made it from fresh fruit and followed all directions in my recipe. Pat EvansPitt Meadows, British Columbia AThough making fruit-based wine is a little different from making grape-based wine, you always want to make sure you’ve got enough sugar, acid, tannin and aromatic and flavor compounds to result in a stable (over 10% alcohol), zippy (over 6.0 g/L total acidity) and flavorful beverage. The “numbers” are relatively easy to shoot for and can be adjusted up or down depending on how your initial fruit comes in. Always use a juice with an initial sugar content in the realm of 21–24 ºBrix to be sure of producing a final alcohol above 10% by volume. Initial total acidity profiles to result in a finished wine of 6.0 g/L should start around 6.5-7.0 g/L as some of the acid will