Cost of real pure grape juice versus concentrate – how to choose?

[James Burton]

If anyone of you winemaking brethren have used real grape juice (from supermarket carton, but not from concentrate) to make a successful wine, please let me have benefit of your skills, and comments regarding the widely differing pricings of the options on offer, some of which are listed below.
M&S Merlot Grape Juice - one litre pressed from around 80 grapes – not from concentrate – at £2.10 per carton, would give a demijohn’s worth of pure juice, say, five litres at cost of £10.50
As a comparison, one litre of Merlot concentrate in kit form e.g. Wine Buddy/Youngs 30 Bottle Merlot (liquid content one litre) comes in at £26.35. A huge discrepancy, explained by the fact that the one litre of concentrate is to end up as 23 litres after water and sugar solution are added. The ‘kit’ also contains small sachets of yeast, finings and potassium sorbate – just a few pence-worth in total. Scaling up the real juice to 23 litres minus the quantity of 4 kg sugar, say net 20 litres, cost is £42. Well known retailers B***hoo will sell you five litres concentrate for £53.49 (inc p and p) or £42.80 equivalent for four litres: coincidence? Or £10.70 per one litre inc p and p) It appears that real juice costs the same as concentrate, at least by this comparison.
At the other end of the market on eBay, a white wine 30 bottle 7 day ‘kit’ can be had for £22.39 inc p and p, and close examination of the ingredients photo, shows the ‘kit’ to contain merely a one litre bottle of concentrate plus the usual penn’orth of yeast, etc.: yet the same one litre bottle of generic white wine concentrate can be had from the same B***hoo website for £11.99, although you do have to pay another £4 p and p.
So, grape wine: £16 quid, £22.39 or £53.49 and up?
Does the real juice make a ‘better’ wine than the concentrate, is, I suppose, at the heart of my question

 

[Chippy_Tea]

If anyone of you winemaking brethren have used real grape juice (from supermarket carton, but not from concentrate) to make a successful wine, please let me have benefit of your skills, and comments regarding the widely differing pricings of the options on offer, some of which are listed below.

M&S Merlot Grape Juice - one litre pressed from around 80 grapes – not from concentrate – at £2.10 per carton, would give a demijohn’s worth of pure juice, say, five litres at cost of £10.50

I have made hundreds of gallons of wine from supermarket juice (thread below) from concentrate and not from concentrate there is no difference in the final product whichever you use so use the cheapest.

You don't use 4.5 litres of 100% juice when making wine it would end up like alcopop we use 2.5 litres in a DJ read the thread below it explains the method etc -

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/...ne-how-to-guide-and-recipes.49462/post-456519

Whether you’ve just picked up a bottle of ‘from concentrate’ or ‘not from concentrate’ juice, it’s important to understand what your juice has gone through to get from the great outdoors to the bottle in your fridge.
While all juices go through a manufacturing process to ensure they’re all safe to drink, ‘not from concentrate’ is created by juicing the fruit and then processing it without any water removal or reconstitution, whereas ‘from concentrate’ can be a tad more complex. This time the fruit is juiced and then filtered, extracted and evaporated to remove almost all the water. Why all the trouble? This process makes the juice easier and cheaper to transport and package, and also gives it a longer shelf life.

 

[HeartOfGold]

Well, the guy of home wine making channel in Youtube said that wine made from concentrate can sometimes have a specific concentrate taste. I cannot confirm or deny.

Anyway, whatever you choose, it's gonna be far better than Welch's. Missing MLF is what has kept me from making a red wine from concentrate. I'm just not sure if a red wine kit is the same when almost all commercial red wines go through it. I plan to make a pyment with a concentrate at some point though.

 

[An Ankoù]

This stuff claims a carbohydrate content of 157 g per 100 ml, of which all is sugar. That's going to give you an OG of about 1060 and if it all ferments out to an FG of 1000 you'll get 8% abv. There's something a bit iffy about this juice, either it;s diluted with water or it contains very little sugar. You should be looking at a potential alcohol of 12-14% from merlot grapes.
Grapes are in season, buy 80 and see if you can get a litre of juice out of them. I'll bet you can't.

 

[jof]

I've successfully made red wine from Lidl red grape juice at low cost.
However, we only get that when Lidl decide the red grape juice is cheap enough for them to stock.
So, bad year, no red grape juice

 

[MashBag]

Grapes are in season,

Buy grapes and make wine.