Colour and flavour are both important challenges for bayberry wine production because of a shortage of selected strains. The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain YF152, separated from a natural Chinese bayberry fermentation mash [alcohol tolerance capacity (18.0%), SO2 (200 mg/L), sugar content (40%) and pH (2.50)] was employed to brew Chinese bayberry wine. Response surface methodology was used to simultaneously analyse the effects of the fermentation conditions on Chinese bayberry wine. The optimum conditions were found to be a temperature of 26.5 °C, an initial sugar content of 22.0°Brix, an inoculum size of 4.0% and an initial pH of 2.90. Under these conditions, the final alcohol content of the bayberry wine was 13.4%, the anthocyanin content was 77 mg/L and the residual sugar content was 1 g/L. These numbers agreed well with the predicted values. The major characteristic flavour components of the wine were 3‐methyl‐1‐butanol, 2‐phenylethanol, ethyl acetate, 2‐methylbutyl acetate and acetic acid. Copyright © 2016 The Institute of Brewing & Distilling