Homemade Peach Wine Recipe

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My Homemade Peach Wine recipe is a great way to keep summer flavours available year round.

Homemade wine is easy to make, and super tasty - Here’s everything you need to know about the ingredients, and detailed instructions for making your own sweet peach wine!

Originally posted on November 6, 2020, updated on 7/21/2023.

Did anyone else NOT have “Georgia saves the USA from falling to fascism” on their 2020 Bingo cards?

Weird way to start out a food blog, but the today’s news definitely put me in the mood to share another peach recipe. I - somewhat recently - posted a roundup of Peach Recipes, but have been waiting to post our Fresh Peach Wine recipe.

Today started out with my friend Houston messaging the phrase “Well, slap my peach and call me papa.”... something that still has me laughing, hours later.

From there, I decided that the morning called for peach jam on *toast*, for breakfast.

I decided to serve it the way I always to - cream cheese topped with the jam - and a friend later pointed out that if it was Philly cream cheese, that was just a whole other layer of appropriate.

I hadn’t even considered it!

Anyway, while peaches aren’t in season, and any wine you put on now won’t even be potable for a few months... it feels like the time to share this recipe.

And hey, if you happen to have anything to celebrate, this also makes a really great sparkling wine! More on that in a bit!

How to Make Peach Wine

If it’s your first time making wine, don't be intimidated! Check out our primer to home brewing:

- Wine Making At Home, Part 1: Why?

- Wine Making at Home, Part 2: Equipment to Get Started

- Wine Making at Home, Part 3: The Brewing Process.

- Wine Making at Home, Part 4: How to Stabilize and Back Sweeten Wine

Just a small handful of entries, and you'll be good to go to get your own wine started!

Peach Wine Ingredients

Aside from fresh fruits, this wine recipe requires only a few ingredients to make - super simple!

Here is some information about those base ingredients that will help you make the best wine!:

Peaches

You can use fresh or frozen peaches to make this wine. There are just a few differences in how to use them, and things to keep in mind:

Fresh Peaches

When using fresh peaches, be sure to use very ripe, flavourful fruit only. More ripe peaches = better peach flavor.

Ideally, use something in-season, as off season fruit never seems to taste as good!

I like to macerate the peaches for several hours before I start making the wine. By that, I mean I’ll pit and chop up the peaches and put them in a large bowl or pot, and stir in the sugar.

Then, I cover and leave it for a while, to let the sugar do its thing.

The sugar draws the natural juices - and flavour! - out from the peaches. I find this gives the best base to the wine, rather than starting with chopped fruit and water.

Frozen Peaches

When using frozen peaches, you can skip the maceration process. Freezing and thawing peaches - or pretty much any fruit - breaks them down in a way that ends up with a result similar to maceration.

Be sure to use a good brand of frozen peaches, and that the peaches are good and flavourful when they thaw. If your peaches don’t have much flavour, neither will your wine.

White Sugar

While sugar is technically optional when making wine, NOT adding any sugar will result in an INCREDIBLY dry peach wine.

When you’re making wine from peaches - much like with any other light coloured, non-grape fruit - you’ll want it to have at least some residual sweetness to it, or it just won’t taste like much.

The sugar helps to bring out the peach flavour - it’s much better as a semi sweet or sweet wine.

To be honest, I wouldn’t even recommend doing it up as a semi-dry wine.

Anyway, sugar is an important part of wine making, and there are a few aspects of sugar to keep in mind:

Type of Sugar

In terms of type of sugar, we prefer to use plain white granulated sugar for this wine.

Sometimes we’ll use brown sugar for part of the sugar content to give it a bit of a deeper flavour - more like a peach cobbler flavour - but generally stick to white sugar.

How to Make Peach Mead

If you’d like to make a mead rather than a wine, you can swap the sugar out for honey. We’ll usually use 4-5 lbs of honey for this.

A couple notes:

- I say “Peach Mead”, as that’s what most people would understand... but mead with fruit is technically called “melomel”.
So, swapping sugar out in favour of honey would give you a peach melomel. The more you know!

- When you’re using honey instead of sugar, you’re going to want to be careful in your choice of honey. Where white sugar is fairly neutral in flavour, honey can be aggressively flavoured.

I recommend picking something lightly coloured and lightly flavoured - a clover or orange blossom honey, for instance.

Something like a wildflower or buckwheat honey is likely to completely overwhelm the flavour from the peaches.

Alcohol Content

Aside from flavour, there’s the matter of alcohol content.

Your wine’s final ABV will vary wildly dependent on a few things: The initial sugar content of the peaches you use, the amount of sugar you add, and what kind of yeast you use (more on that in a bit)

Any amount of sugar will result in a higher alcohol content of your wine, than making the same wine without sugar added.

Sugar - both in the base wine itself, and from the added sugars - is what feeds the yeast, the yeast eats up the sugars and gives off alcohol as the byproduct of that process.

More sugar = more food = more alcohol... to a point, anyway. About that...

Back Sweetening Your Homemade Peach Wine

Sometimes - usually, even - you’ll find that the yeast went a bit too far with their peach wine smorgasbord, and you end up with a final product that’s not as sweet as you’d like it.

... and that’s when it’s a good idea to back sweeten it!

You can read my How to Stabilize and Back Sweeten Wine post for information on how to back sweeten fruit wines with a simple syrup.

Wine Yeast

Because I cook the fruit - rather than use a campden tablets - to kill off any wild yeasts present (As well as being the best way to kill off any bacteria!), you’ll want to use a yeast packet to get fermentation started.

The type of yeast you use will impact the alcohol content of the final product.

Yeast organisms don’t have an *unlimited* capacity to process sugar into alcohol. At some point, the environment they’re living in - the brewing wine - becomes too high in alcohol for the yeast to survive. They die off, the fermentation stops.

Different types of yeast have different tolerances for alcohol in the environment. That is, some yeast will be able to survive higher amounts of alcohol in the wine, so they’ll continue producing it longer than some other types.

Some types of yeast will bring you to something like an 8% ABV, while others will let things run wild until close to 20% ABV.

It’s good to know what you have in mind, when you choose your yeast.

Note: I’m going to refrain from using brand names in this section, as what’s available varies wildly between suppliers and regions!

Ask your local homebrew supply shop for recommendations based on what you’re looking for.

In general terms, though:

If you want a sweeter wine with a low-ish ABV - without having to back sweeten it (more on that in a bit) - choose a yeast with a lower tolerance for alcohol.

If you’re looking for a dry wine with a low ABV, choose a yeast with a lower tolerance for alcohol, and less sugar.

If you want a sweet wine with a higher alcohol content, use a bunch of sugar with a high-tolerance yeast... and be prepared to backsweeten it.

If you want a dry wine with a high ABV, use a fair amount of sugar and a high tolerance yeast.

Making Larger Batches of Wine

This recipe makes about a gallon of peach wine, though you can easily scale this wine recipe up.

In fact, there's a function inside the recipe card itself to do the math for you!

One note, though: You don't need to multiply the yeast, but the software doesn't know that. We will use one pouch of yeast for anything from a 1 gallon batch, to 5 gallons, and then 1 pouch for every 5x batches beyond that.

As a related note: The recipe software is definitely geared towards cooking, not wine making. Therefore, you can pretty much ignore all of the info it gives you: The nutritional info is calculated on everything that goes into the wine.

It does not take into account how much sugar will be fermented out, how much volume is lost to racking, the fact that the fruit pulp is removed before the final product, etc.

Everything Else

Rounding out this recipe, you will need:

Spring Water - we use bottled water for its neutral taste

How to Make Sparkling Peach Wine

As I’d mentioned earlier - like other sweet white wine types - peach wine is especially nice as a bubbly beverage.

There are two main ways to accomplish this, both of which happen AFTER fermentation has ceased.

Note: Consult your local homebrew store for what your options are when it comes to bottling sparkling wine.

As this ferments a bit in the bottle, normal wine bottles aren’t a good idea - they can explode from the extra pressure.

We’ll usually use beer bottle and caps for any sparkling wine or sparkling ciders that we make, but there are options more along the lines of champagne bottles.

Selection and brands tend to vary wildly by location.

Anyway!

For Naturally Carbonated Sparkling Peach Wine

In a small pot, mix together 1 cup of water with 1 cup of sugar or brown sugar. Use a sanitized funnel to pour this into a sanitized large carboy.

Rack the wine over into this carboy, swirling it as you go.

Bottle the wine into appropriate bottles, following directions for whatever kind of cap/closure you will be using.

Allow wine to age at least a month or two – residual yeast will ferment the added sugar, carbonating the wine. Serve chilled.

For Force-Carbonated Sparkling Wine

Alternatively, you can rack the wine (without the added sugar syrup!) into a keg and force carbonate it, if you have the set up for that - That’s what we tend to do with our ciders.

More Home Brewing Recipes!

While you've got your current homebrew fermenting away, why not consider putting a batch of something else on, to occupy your wait time? Here are a few of my best wine, cider, and mead recipes:

Wine Recipes

Banana Wine Recipe
Blackberry Wine Recipe
Blackcurrant Wine Recipe
Blueberry Wine Recipe
Cherry Wine Recipe
Cranberry Clementine Christmas Wine Recipe
Cranberry Wine Recipe
Faux Lingonberry Wine
Lychee Wine Recipe
Mango Strawberry Wine Recipe
Mango Wine Recipe
Mint Wine Recipe
Lychee Wine Recipe
Partridgeberry Wine Recipe
Passionfruit Wine Recipe
Stone Fruit Wine Recipe
Strawberry Wine Recipe
Ube Wine Recipe
Watermelon Wine Recipe

Mead Recipes

Black Cherry Mead Recipe
Blueberry-Clementine Mead Recipe
Blueberry Mead Recipe
Clementine Mead Recipe
Pumpkin Mead Recipe
Wildflower Mead Recipe

Cider & Miscellaneous Homebrew Recipes

Hard Apple Cider Recipe
Home Brew Hard Iced Tea Recipe
Maple Hard Apple Cider Recipe

Share the Love!

Before you chow down, be sure to take some pics of your handiwork! If you Instagram it, be sure to tag me - @CelebrationGenerationCA - or post it to My Facebook Page - so I can cheer you on!

Also, be sure to subscribe to my free monthly email newsletter, so you never miss out on any of my nonsense. Well, the published nonsense, anyway!

Finally, if you love this recipe, please consider leaving a star rating and/or a comment below, and maybe even sharing this post on social media!

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4.63 from 16 votes

Homemade Peach Wine is a great way to keep summer flavours available year round. My peach wine recipe is easy to make, and super tasty!

Prep Time3 hours hrs

Cook Time1 hour hr

Resting time120 days d

Total Time120 days d 4 hours hrs

Course: Beverage

Cuisine: French

Servings: 1 Gallon

Calories: 5790kcal

Author: Marie Porter

Equipment

Large pot
Slotted Spoon
Large wire strainer
2 gallon fermenter bucket and lid
1 air lock and stopper
Long spoon / paddle
2 1 gallon carboys
Siphon, siphon tubing.

Ingredients

4 Lbs Fresh peaches
6 cups Granulated Sugar
1 gallon Spring Water
1 cup Golden Raisins
1 teaspoon Acid Blend
1 teaspoon Yeast Nutrient
½ teaspoon Pectinase / Pectic enzyme
Yeast

Instructions

Prepare the “Must”:

Wash peaches and chop them into small chunks, discarding any brown patches.
Add peaches to a large pot. Add sugar, stir well. Cover and let it sit for a few hours, stirring every once in a while.
After about 2-3 hours, the sugar should have nicely macerated the peaches, and have extracted as much juice as possible. Add as much of the water as your pot can handle, bring ALMOST to a boil.
Once water starts bubbling, turn the temp to low and simmer for 1 hour. Think more “keep it warm”, than any kind of active simmer.
While the pot is simmering, prepare your primary fermenter bucket:
Wash and sanitize a 2 gallon plastic fermenter, lid, stopper, air lock, and nylon straining bag. (The bag is optional, we don’t bother!)
Place raisins, acid blend, yeast nutrient, and pectic enzyme into the plastic fermenter.
Affix the stopper to the lid of the fermenter, cover and set aside.
Once the hour is up, remove peaches from heat, allow to cool. It doesn’t have to be all the way to room temperature, just cool enough that if it splashes on you, it won’t hurt - that’s a good guideline
Carefully pour peaches and water into the fermenter - into the nylon bag, if using. Tie off the bag - if applicable - and top up with any remaining water.
Affix air lock to lid, cover the bucket, and allow to fully cool over night.
For the sake of consistency in readings - and therefore accuracy in ABV calculations - this should be done where you plan to let the wine ferment for the next few months - usually a basem*nt.

Primary Fermentation:

The next morning, check the Specific Gravity and write it down in your notes, along with the date.
Add yeast to the fermenter bucket, stir with a long, sanitized spoon. Affix the lid, allow to sit for 24 hours.
The next day, check to make sure that the yeast has started fermenting - there should be bubbles in the airlock, and/or foam in the liquid.
Put the lid back on, allow to ferment for one week.

Secondary Fermentation and Beyond:

After a week or so, use your sanitized siphon setup to rack the must into a freshly sanitized one gallon carboy. Put the carboy - your secondary fermentation vessel - somewhere cool (not cold!), and leave it alone for a month or so.
Using sanitized equipment, rack the peach wine off the sediment, into a clean, freshly sanitized carboy. Cap with sanitized airlock, leave it alone for another 1 month.
Rack one more time, leave it for another 2 months or so.
When your wine has been racked a few times and shows NO more fermenting activity for a month or so (no bubbles in the airlock, no more sediment being produced, you can move on to bottling.
Follow the instructions on your selected type of wine stabilizer to stop fermentation from restarting. For potassium sorbate, this needs to be done 2-3 days before bottling.
Using sanitized equipment, take a gravity reading, then rack the wine into clean, sanitized bottles. Cork.

Notes

IMPORTANT: Software generates nutritional information based on the ingredients as they start, and is unable to account for the sugars consumed in the fermentation process.

As such, the calories, sugars, and carbs are shown WAY higher than reality. Additionally, the listed value is for the entire recipe, NOT per serving.

Nutrition

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Homemade Peach Wine Recipe - Celebration Generation (2024)