Making a sparkling wine with wild blueberries is accomplished in six steps: primary fermentation, clarification, tirage bottling, disgorging, closing, and labeling. Large scale production requires automation but making a few thousand bottles is possible with very little specialized equipment: a pump, press, gravity filler, crown capper, and a disgorging key. Total equipment costs should fall between $5,000 and $15,000 for a minimal set-up.
Why make a sparkling wine? Wild blueberries, with their moderate sugar (~12 Brix), good natural acidity, and soft tannin, make a base wine that is more like a sparkling wine than a still red wine, despite the color. Sparkling wine, using only the single ingredient of wild blueberries, naturally aligns with the composition of the berry.
Wild Blueberry Sparkling Wine Winemaking Manual
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Please join the WBW trade group and participate in our workshop to learn the complete protocol for making wild blueberry sparkling wine.