Some Plum Wine Recipes That I Have Compiled:

Basic Plum Wine Recipe (One gallon recipe)

The plums should be good and ripe but not rotten.

3.5 qt. water
2 lbs sugar
4 lbs. ripe sweet plums or 3 lbs. wild plums
5 tsp. acid blend (Do not use with wild plums)
1/8 tsp. tannin
1 tsp. yeast nutrient
1 Campden tablet (recommended)
1/2 tsp. pectic enzyme
Champagne or Montrachet yeast

Boil water and sugar. If using honey, skim the scum.
Wash, stem, and pit the plums. Cut into small pieces saving the juice.
Put in straining bag in bottom of primary fermenter and mash.
Pour hot sugar water over fruit and fill up to 1-gallon mark.
When cooled add acid, tannin, nutrient and Campden tablet. Cover and fit with air lock.
After 12 hours add the pectic enzyme.
24 hours later add yeast and stir.
Remove straining bag after a week.
When must reaches Specific Gravity of 1.030, rack to secondary fermenter.
Rack again in 2-3 weeks. 
Rack again in 2-6 months.
After it ferments out, stabilize with Campden tablets or stabilizer and add 2-6 oz of sugar to sweeten if needed.  Fruit juice concentrate can be added to give additional flavor. 
Bottle and age 6-12 months.

Versatile Plum Wine Recipe
(per gallon recipe, adjust as needed)

You can use these recipes for any plum-type fruit -- home grown or store bought; Italian, Damson, Yellow, Greenage, or any sweet plum. With wild plums, which are generally high in acid, use acid tester or cut down to 3 lbs. per gallon.

4 lb Plums, pitted
6 pts Water
2 lb Sugar
1/2 tsp Acid Blend
1/2 tsp Pectic Enzyme
1 tsp Nutrient
1 Campden, crush
1 pkg Wine yeast

Wash, drain and remove stones. Chop into smaller pieces.
Put in nylon straining bag, crush and squeeze juice into primary
fermentor. Keeping pulp in bag, tie top, and place in primary.
Stir in all other ingredients EXCEPT yeast. Cover primary.
After 24 hrs., add yeast and cover primary.
Stir daily, check Specific Gravity, and press pulp lightly to aid extraction.
When ferment reaches S.G. 1.040 (3-5 days) squeeze juice lightly from bag.
Siphon wine off sediment into glass secondary and attach air lock.
When fermenting is complete (S.G. has dropped to 1.000 -- about 3 weeks) siphon off sediment into clean secondary and reattach air lock.
To aid clearing siphon again in 2 months and again if necessary before bottling.

To sweeten wine, at bottling add 2 tsp. stabilizer, then stir in 1/4 to 1/2 lb. dissolved sugar per gallon.

PLUM WINE

Put water on to boil. Wash the fruit, cut in halves to remove the seeds, then chop fruit and put in primary. Pour boiling water over fruit. Add half the sugar and stir well to dissolve the sugar. Cover and allow to cool to 70 degrees F. Add acid blend, pectic enzyme, tannin, nutrient, and energizer, cover, and wait 12 hours before adding yeast. Recover primary and allow to ferment 5-7 days, stirring twice daily. Strain, stir in remainder of sugar to dissolve, siphon into secondary, and fit airlock. Rack after 30 days, top up, refit airlock and repeat every 30 days until wine clears. Wait two additional weeks, rack again, stabilize wine, bottle. This wine can be sampled after only 6 months. If not up to expectations, let age another 6 months and taste again. [Author's notes and adaptation from Dorothy Alatorre's Home Wines of North America]

 

Plum wine can be difficult to make, but it can turn out quite well.  I have found that adding other fruit to the mix can enhance the flavor.  I added some very sweet and less sweet grape juice from some vines in my garden and from grapes collected from friends.  I also added blackberry juice which is easy to extract from the abundant blackberry bushes around Oregon.   I have also read that plum wine is notoriously slow to clear.  I actually rack my wine more often and frequently than suggested in these recipes which may reduce your yield, but aids in clearing.  This was not an issue last year due to our abundance of Plums.  The flavor, aroma and bouquet of finished plum wine is really a treat, and the plum base compliments other sweet fruits. 

Some explinations of chemicals used in wine making.

Ammonium sulfate or "yeast nutrient", is necessary with most fruit wines.

Tartaric acid adjusts the acidity to a pleasant level for reasons of taste, much as you use salt to bring out flavor in foods (not exactly the same, but the analogy will do.)

Pectic enzyme is needed to break down something in the fruit that is good for jams and jellies, but you don't want that consistency in wines. You often add more pectin when making jelly. You don't want any when making wine.

The Campden tablet (1/16 tsp. sodium bisulfite) is "sulfite", added at the beginning to kill off weak wild yeasts and prevent bacterial growth. You add this at the beginning, wait 24 hours, and then it is safe to add your winemaker's yeast, as the sulfite should have dissipated into the air as sulphur dioxide, which prevents anything from spoiling your wine. Some people add more at each racking and again at bottling time.