The best cherry wines are made with Tart (sour) cherries or a combination of tart and sweet cherries. I will not go so far as to say that the worse cherry wines are made with sweet cherries alone, but unless carefully and properly ameliorated with malic acid, sweet cherry wines often lack balance. I mention this because most dried cherries are sweet.
The conversion factor for dried cherries is 1 pound dried sweet cherries = 4 pounds fresh sweet cherries, and 1 1/8 pounds dried tart cherries = 4 pounds fresh tart cherries. This is just an approximation, but seems pretty close to me.
Soak cherries in 2 quarts water for 24 hours. Bring water to a boil, lower heat and simmer 8 minutes. Strain, stir sugar in liquid until dissolved, cover and set aside to cool. Add remaining ingredients except yeast, stir and recover. After 12 hours, add activated yeast, recover, and stir daily until specific gravity drops to 1.010. Transfer to secondary, attach airlock and ferment to dryness. Rack when fermentation ceases, top up and reattach airlock, Rack, top up and refit airlock every 60 days for 6 months. Stabilize and sweeten to taste, wait additional 3 weeks and rack into bottles. Age another 6-12 months before tasting. [Author's own recipe]
My thanks to James Roberts of Sheridan, Arkansas for this request.
