SWR: Kit Wine Kaboodle

This is something that I'm curious about. Last fall, I helped a friend to make some "Cabernet" by using an easy method: buying ready grape juice in pails and just transferring it to a demijohn, adding yeast and letting it ferment to completion. Personally I always make wine from grapes, but with all the mess and know-how involved, it's not something that would have been easy for my friend to start without perhaps seeing someone do it first. Time was an issue, so we went the juice-in-a-pail route.

The juice looked normal and all, but when it fermented out, the taste was very thin and un-Cabernet like; it tasted like white juice to which perhaps some red grapeskins were added for colour, but no flavour or tannin was present. Anyway, the strangest part is this: We see that fermentation has stopped, we repeatedly sample the wine over a few weeks - yet it still tastes sweet. What the heck? I finally do a test: I run some of the wine along the rim of the wine glass and see if, when it evaporates, it will leave a sticky residue - this would confirm the presence of unfermented sugar. Lo and behold - no residue at all. There must be some kind of sweetener in the juice. Just recently I was also served a glass of red wine made at one of those wine kit places where you can order 'x' number of bottles of "personalized" wine - and it tasted just like this stuff we made. It all started to make sense.

With me being a believer in working from grapes or fresh-pressed must only, I am even more cynical now. It seems to me that these ready juices are sweetened with some sort of non-sugar compound to give a sweet taste that will please the uninitiated wine drinker and hopefully have them order more of the stuff. I can't abide that kind of trickery and certainly will be convincing my friend to use grapes from now on!

Any thoughts on the topic? Any similar observations?

I’ve made one kit wine (RJ Spagnols Australian Cabernet) and have come to the same conclusion about the sweetness. The wine is drinkable (about the quality of a jug wine) but it did not finish dry as there seems to be some residual sugar. You may want to post the question on the WinePress forum, a board strictly devoted to winemaking. It has a sub-forum just for wine kits. You may start a controversy there as the kit winemakers are pretty adamant that you can make wine from kits that are just as good as wine from fresh grapes or juice. Also, one of the moderators, Tim Vandergrift, is a representative from one of the wine kit manufactures (Winexpert) and has written articles in Winemaker Magazine who may be able to give some insight as to the reason for the sweet flavor.

The WinePress

Thanks Alan, sounds like a good idea.

I'm passively curious about how they make those "juices" ... though one thing's for sure and that is that I'll never use them. In Niagara, a few wineries do crush and press grapes on site and sell the must in pails for quite a bit of money. It's usually for this reason that I just buy the grapes and do everything from scratch. It's time consuming but at least you know what's in your wine from vineyard to glass.

Technically, what you're describing is not a "Kit" wine. It is my understanding that kit wines are concentrates that the home winemaker then re-constitutes. Although my one experience with this type was a disappointment, from what I understand, some of these kits can make very good wine and have even won awards in home wine competitions. But, I digress... It could very well be that the juice your friend obtained was a second pressing and water, sugar and glycerine may have been added. I had a similar experience when I purchased some "California" juice in Niagara Falls, Ont several years ago. I purchased a pail each of CS and PN, however, both pails contained the same wine. I agree with you about the preference for using fresh grapes, but sometimes, when you want to make a certain wine, you have to resort to juice or must. However, not all press houses or juice suppliers are created equal. Two that I have dealt with in Ontario, Watson's and Wiley's are excellent. Others, on my side of the border have disappointed me. Besides, if I buy from Ontario, I can bring back juice and must, which are classified as groceries, whereas fresh grapes may not be allowed across the border.

Howie, you're right about fresh grapes - I called Customs one time asking if I would be allowed to bring back bushels of Catawba grapes from New York into Ontario. The answer was that they had to be profesionally packaged (as if for retail); just tossed into open bushels wouldn't be allowed. Why is beyond me ... it probably has to do with it being classified as "live plant material" or some other such thing.

You're right - it wasn't a "kit" per se, though I tend to lump all the non-fresh-grape ones together.