Winemakers often mix fresh water and sugar with leftover grape skins to make a second-run wine. The Italian grappa is distilled out of such second-runs. There’s some flavor in the pressed stuff, and yeast. You get a light, quickly-finished wine out of it. But I do something with grape pomace that makes my fellow home-brewers wince. I take a bucketful of those squashed skins and mix them with other fruit juices. This mixture ferments and becomes a fruity wine that’s ready to drink in a few months. I’ll mix peach nectar, goiaba, or pomegranate, or apple-cranberry juice with leftovers of Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon or Reisling. Result: delicious. Just off-dry, a dark rose that should be chilled before drinking. Yet the other winemakers grit their teeth when I describe the process. These are the same guys that refuse to sanitize their equipment; I don’t get why mixing juices grosses them out. You get a bigger bang for your buck and an entirely new, original, delicious wine.
Today I bottled a gallon of Merlot with Apple/Cranberry juice. It was a problem, refraining from empying one of those bottles by myself. But you judge how it looks:
And sitting in a spill of sunshine, it looked so pretty…
