Valroza varietal wine grape brandy - number of distillations recommended?

[jnco_hippie]

So, Im not at all a beginner to distillation.

Wife is an experienced winemaker & all-grain home brewer. I am a decade long all-grain homebrewer.

Our current project is a Valroza wine grape wash, fermented with EC-1118. final gravity will give us a ABV of around 16% or 17%. my question and concern is about how to produce a high quality, clean brandy while still representing/presenting the flavor of the original grape as much as possible without stripping it away via too many passes through the pot still.

We have a very basic 5 gallon stainless pot still with a 18" vertical 1/2" diameter condenser head, which 45°over into a 18" copper drip spout. a total copper/vapor/spirit contact surface of about 32".

how would you recommend processing this?

when distilling all-grain whiskey I generally pour 3 gallons into the pot, distill it, remove heads, and go deep into tails. then I dump out the spent wash, and refill the pot with another 2 gallons of undistilled wash, then add back into that the first roughly distilled sprit. I then distill this combined wash ONCE, cutting off the heads again then stop distillation when the proof of the spririt at the drip drops to 50. this usually ends up with a finished spirit of around 95-120 proof, captures the essence of the all-grain mash and provides a clean whisky.

I recently made a strawberry brandy using the same method. my results were ok... but not near as good as the product I get with all-grain beer being distilled into "scotch" or whisky. The strawberry brandy lacked prominent strawberry flavor. it also seemed to have a bit of a 'dirty" flavor as if I could taste the tails.

I would like better results on this brandy since its a higher quality fruit.

should I distill it 3 times or would that strip out all that the grape offers?

I would of course cut it proof down to a drinkable strength, probably around 95, using distilled water.

the largest portion of this brandy will be used to fortify a port wine that we are making, but any that is "left over" afterward will be aged on Hungarian oak.

enough of me rambling. what are yall's thoughts?