Cranberry Wine From Frozen Concentrate?
Dec 13th, 2007 by Erroll
I noticed some cranberry juice concentrate on sale the other day, and since I’m thinking about making cranberry wine I bought some. Can you make wine from cranberry juice concentrate? Yes, but “cranberry wine” might not be the best way to describe it. Most cranberry juice products are cocktails that contain cranberry juice. This frozen concentrate, for example, has more apple juice than cranberry juice.
What, you thought the “Cranberry” and “100% Juice” on the label meant that it was 100% cranberry juice? Silly you. The first ingredient is apple juice concentrate, followed by water, then cranberry juice concentrate. We’re not quite done. Next comes grape juice concentrate, black currant juice concentrate, and aronia berry juice concentrate. Aronia? It’s deciduous shrub, sometimes called black chokeberry that’s popular in Siberia. Really! Anyway, there’s still a few things in this “cranberry juice:” natural flavors, citric acid, and ascorbic acid.
I don’t want to knock this product. A blend of juices like that sounds promising, and might make a nice wine. In fact, I will make wine from it. Any ideas on what I should call the wine? “Apple Cranberry Grape Black-Currant Aroia wine” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue …
Hi Erroll,
If the juice is “100% juice, cranberry” maybe the wine should be “100% wine, cranberry”? Seriously though, you’ve probably already seen it the Trader Joe’s here has pure cranberry juice for about $4 a quart, the best price I’ve seen recently. Can’t wait to here how it turns out.
Aaron
I like it Aaron,
Makes me want to pay with “100% money, dollars!”
The juice aisle in Trader Joe’s, with all that unfermented wine, is a dangerous place for me. The apple juice is a real bargain. A gallon, in a glass jug, sells for less than an empty gallon jug in the homebrew shop. But yeah, I should check out their cranberry juice.
Erroll
I’ve made several batches of Cranberry from both various types of cranberry concentrates. Some mixed, some not.
An interesting problem with making Cranberry is that it has some sort of built in component that causes it to ferment very slowly. I’ve had some where it was still slowly fermenting a year or more later. My next batch I’m going to ensure I put more yeast nutrient and yeast energizer. A year in the bottle and Cranberry is awesome. Just have to pay attention because it is a real cork popper. — I have no problem using mixed fruit concentates. I just look for the 100% pure juice and no preservatives.
Hi Brad,
The slow fermentation you mention reminds me of a similar problem with blueberries. My first batch of blueberry fermented slowly, stuck, resisted my efforts to restart, before finally fermenting to dryness. After that, I did some reading and it turned out that other people found blueberry tough to ferment. I started thinking it was something in the blueberries – some peculiar bit of chemistry that inhibited yeast. The funny thing is that my second batch of blueberry was much more concentrated (almost 100% blueberry instead of 3-4 lb per gallon) and it fermented quickly with no trouble. Now my thinking is nutrient deficiency or a pH crash (I didn’t measure pH in either batch, so I can’t be sure).
After reading about how good your cranberry wine is, I’m getting really impatient to bottle mine!
Erroll
Hi I to would love to make a cranberry wine ,where we live there are lots of hi bush cranberries, but any recipe I have read takes a year to make does that sound right ?? I mean I know it takes time for things to work I am short on patients, So if you couls provide me with a recipe I would love and I’ll give it a whirle. Thanks Bill.