Preparation of plum wine with reduced alcohol content: Effect of must treatment and blending with sand pear juice on physico-chemical and sensory quality

Plum (Prunus salicina L.) with attractive colour and flavour, but highly perishable fruit is grown all-over the world including India, holds promise to prepare wine. Attempt to optimize a technique for preparation of low alcoholic plum wine was made. Fruit of Santa rosa plum cultivar were used to produce wine by different methods, viz. conventional method (T1), must ameliorated with honey (T2), removal of alcohol from wine by distillation (T3), inoculation with Schizosaccharomyces pombe to reduce the acidity followed by fermentation withSaccharomyces cerevisiae (T4) and inoculation with Schizosaccharomyces pombe (T5) only for deacidifying the must. A comparison of RF (Rate of fermentation) revealed that the must fermented by conventional method (T1) had the highest RF (0.97) while that of T5 recorded the lowest RF value. Must ameliorated with honey compared well with the cane sugar based on different parameters of wines examined. On the basis of physico-chemical characteristics, all the treatments except that with Schizosaccharomyces pombe in the pulp (T5) can successfully be used for wine preparation with better physico-chemical characteristics. Blending of base wines with different proportions of sand pear juice showed that blending at 20 % and 30 % of pear juice not only reduced the alcohol content but also made the blend acceptable with respect to sensory qualities