Supermarket Merlot grape juice

[dracunculus]

Waitrose are doing a red grape juice that's made from a Merlot grape, so the Mrs tells me.

I was wondering could I use this to make a wine from on its own, i.e. like a WOW but without the orange juice? I am guessing at best it'll make a rose like wine rather than a proper red but I was just wondering if supermarket grape juice + sugar would work?

 

[graysalchemy]

I have made a passable fairly full bodied red from Welch's Grape Juice (which is made from Concord grape variety a minor red wine grape) and red grape Juice. It has taken about 2 years to mellow. Unfortunately Welch's Grape juice is expensive and it is cheaper to make a red wine from a half decent kit.

 

[tonyhibbett]

Well if it's merlot, it will make merlot wine if you add no sugar or water, just yeast. This sounds very interesting, because the 'pure varietal' kits are expensive and include sugar and other grape concentrate.
However, 5 litres will cost £8.20, plus yeast etc. Tesco grape juice has an sg of 1072, so if this is similar, then 250 g of sugar will be needed to get merlot strength of around 12% abv, so around £1.50 per bottle. Upscaling to 30 bottles, say 22 litres (if they have that much in stock) and 1.25 kg sugar would cost about £35, allowing for the discount (3 for £4.50), about £1.16 per bottle, which seems reasonable, compared with Beaverdale, for example.

 

[graysalchemy]

How much was the juice ?

 

[alanwh]

23L would cost you £42.55 plus sugar.
Quite expensive for a 23L experiment, probably worth a 5l punt though

Typical values per 100ml serving
Energy 63 kcal
Energy 267 kj
Protein 0.3 g
Carbohydrate 15.4 g
Sugars 15.4 g




"Product Launch - UK: Waitrose's Merlot grape juice

Author: Andy Morton | 5 April 2012


Waitrose's Merlot grape juice

Category - soft drink, juice

Available - From 20 March

Location - UK, in all 282 Waitrose stores

Price – GBP1.85 (US$2.92) per 1-litre

Waitrose has launched a non-alcoholic grape juice. The product is made from Merlot grapes from Italy and France.

“The Merlot grape juice has a lovely easy-drinking style with an attractive freshness of real Merlot fruit character,” said Waitrose wine manager Andrew Shaw.
"

 

[tonyhibbett]

Same sg as Tesco grape juice then. This raises an interesting point. Don't forget it's 3 for £4.50, so 21 for £31.50, plus 1 extra at £1.85. The 1.25 kg of sugar would make up the other litre, say £1. Total £34.35, plus yeast etc, which I already have. Somewhat academic anyway, as I couldn't find it my local store!

 

[alanwh]

They do home deliveries but not to my postcode :cry:

 

[sueelleker]

if you look on homewinemaking.co.uk there's a recipe for 'Richards Red'. It's similar to WOW, in that it uses 3L RGJ + a small can of RGC. I've made it using Welch's Purple, and it was very nice. I've just got some of the Waitrose Merlot to try it with.

 

[bobsbeer]

I will be very surprised if this juice will make a red wine on it's own. While it may be a merlot grape, it will still be a pressed juice and will need tanin added. The finished result will probably be a merlot rose rather than a red. I suppose you could add a can of concentrate to help with the colour, but for the price a decent kit will be the way to go. You could try the juice in a Richards Red. I have made that with Aldi juice and it was good, so a better juice may improve it.

 

[Pearlfisher]

if you look on homewinemaking.co.uk there's a recipe for 'Richards Red'. It's similar to WOW, in that it uses 3L RGJ + a small can of RGC. I've made it using Welch's Purple, and it was very nice. I've just got some of the Waitrose Merlot to try it with.

I made a gallon of this a few months ago but with 4l of welch's RGJ and a small can of youngs RGJ , tastes awful , only tastes of grape juice and not like any wine I've ever tasted!
Going to try keeping it a couple of years to see if there's any improvement ,but I think it's destined for the drain.

 

[alanwh]

I will be very surprised if this juice will make a red wine on it's own. While it may be a merlot grape, it will still be a pressed juice and will need tanin added. The finished result will probably be a merlot rose rather than a red. suppose you could add a can of concentrate to help with the colour.

.
If fresh pressed merlot juice gives a rose it makes you wonder what they add to the kit juice for the red colouring. Processed grape skins, fruit juices like blackcurrant or elderberry juice, red food colouring or all of the above ?

 

[bobsbeer]

Probably all of the above and some Mega Purple or similar.

 

[tonyhibbett]

Yes, it makes you wonder. Relatively low sugar grapes get consigned to concentrate for the likes of us, so it's unlikely we can make truly good wine from it

 

[graysalchemy]

if you look on homewinemaking.co.uk there's a recipe for 'Richards Red'. It's similar to WOW, in that it uses 3L RGJ + a small can of RGC. I've made it using Welch's Purple, and it was very nice. I've just got some of the Waitrose Merlot to try it with.

I made a gallon of this a few months ago but with 4l of welch's RGJ and a small can of youngs RGJ , tastes awful , only tastes of grape juice and not like any wine I've ever tasted!
Going to try keeping it a couple of years to see if there's any improvement ,but I think it's destined for the drain.

I made one with welch's a couple of years ago. It is still aging but it is a deep ruby red and all those sickly cherry notes of the welch's has gone :thumb: :thumb:

However I wont be making it again as it is cheaper to buy a decent kit, and however much I would like to make a decent red from scratch unless I aquire a vineyard I think I will have to stick to kits.

 

[tonyhibbett]

Growing your own doesn't necessarily solve the problem. My black grapes produced enough sugar on their own, but the colour was unimpressive and, to be honest, so was the flavour!

 

[Pearlfisher]

if you look on homewinemaking.co.uk there's a recipe for 'Richards Red'. It's similar to WOW, in that it uses 3L RGJ + a small can of RGC. I've made it using Welch's Purple, and it was very nice. I've just got some of the Waitrose Merlot to try it with.

I made a gallon of this a few months ago but with 4l of welch's RGJ and a small can of youngs RGJ , tastes awful , only tastes of grape juice and not like any wine I've ever tasted!
Going to try keeping it a couple of years to see if there's any improvement ,but I think it's destined for the drain.

I made one with welch's a couple of years ago. It is still aging but it is a deep ruby red and all those sickly cherry notes of the welch's has gone :thumb: :thumb:

However I wont be making it again as it is cheaper to buy a decent kit, and however much I would like to make a decent red from scratch unless I aquire a vineyard I think I will have to stick to kits.

Yes cost me more to make than a Beaverdale kit and I'll probably never be able to drink it!

 

[graysalchemy]

I use mine for cooking :lol: :lol:

 

[dracunculus]

I've been having a go at making this, weekend before last I assembled the ingredients: 3 litres of the juice, sugar, cop of tea for tannin. I did add pectolase but I suspect it doesn't need it. Using a Youngs general purpose wine yeast from Wilcos (which is convenienty opposite Waitrose!)

The grape juice itself is a very dark red and very sweet, too sweet to drink IMHO:

So that went in a 5l fermenting bucket (left over from a Winebuddy kit I tried a couple of years back), SG measured at 1087 and bubbled away for a week. It seemed to have stopped on Sunday so I racked it off into a demijon:

Gravity was 990 which by my calculations is just shy of 13% :thumb: Colour looks nice too. Seems to have stopped fermenting now but going to give it a couple more days and then stabilise and fine.

 

[alanywiseman.]

Keep us posted in how this turns out. I am contimplating putting one on but useing an proper red wine yeast only issue is the price of the juice.

Why did you only use 3L of the juice and not 5?

 

[dracunculus]

5 litres of juice would have given me 154 grams of sugar per litre giving an OG of around 1060 according to my tables. I suppose I could just have added sugar to the grape juice but I'm new to all this - this is my second "dark side" wine after first making a WOW.

I'll keep you all informed as to progress.