In the past, wine made from New York state fruit, like strawberries, apples, cherries and peaches, and vegetables, like rhubarb, has been considered the ugly step-child of winemaking. That was then.

This is now: Thanks to new Cornell University research, full, robust-flavor fruit or vegetable wines could be available on a wider basis. Robert Kime, food science pilot plant manager at Cornell's New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, believes he has found the alcohol-content threshold that separates fine fruit wine from cheap, inferior wine -- what the British call "plonk."

"It's a fine line," says Kime, explaining that when winemakers, commercial and domestic, allow the fruit-fermentation process to exceed an alcohol content of 10.5 percent, the wine's flavor can be ruined. Kime, who has worked with a number of wineries in the New York Finger Lakes region, notes that winemakers invariably sacrifice flavor by making fruit wine with the same alcohol content as wine made from grapes.

Grape wine can have an alcohol content as high as 11 or 12 percent and still be excellent. However, Kime says, alcohol is a solvent that can react with and dissolve flavor compounds in other fruits and vegetables when it reaches levels of 11 percent or higher.

"Higher alcohol content vaporizes the flavors, and they escape through the bubbler overnight," he says.

To prevent fruit wine from becoming tasteless or cloying, Kime suggests stopping the fermentation cold. When the fermenting fruit or vegetables reach about 10.5 percent alcohol, he halts fermentation by refrigeration at 28 degrees Fahrenheit.

In the United States, New York state is second only to California in wine production. But customers often find it difficult to buy fruit wines from New York wine producers.

Walker's Juice Co., Forestville, N.Y., a supplier of specialty fruit juice to U.S. wine producers, offers cherry, peach and rhubarb juice, in addition to grape juice, to make wines. In 1998, the company processed about six tons of rhubarb, about 30 tons of peaches and nearly 40 tons of sour cherries, according to owner Richard Walker. "Gradually, we're getting more cherry and peach juice available; the demand continues to expand," he says.

Kime says that up until recently, vinifera wines such as Riesling, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir were among the wines that most drinkers considered palatable. And yet, he says, New York is chock full of a variety of fruits suitable for making strawberry, blueberry, elderberry, gooseberry, blackberry, rhubarb, cherry, peach, plum, apricot and pear wines.

Wineries make all their vinifera wines in October and November, leaving their winemaking equipment idle the rest of the year. "The wineries have all this equipment; that's why some are making honey wines and fruit wines," says Kime. "Because fresh harvested fruit can be frozen, fruit wine can be made all year long."