Wine grapes into jelly - without 'wasting' good grapes



I also make jelly from wine grapes (zinfandel and cabernet sauvignon), and no 'wasting' of good wine grapes... cuz I extract the pomace to get my 'juice' for jelly. This Wine Jelly tastes better than any grape jelly I've ever tasted.

After pressing, I put the pomace in a double-boiler configuration, 8 quart stainless steel spaghetti cooker (with the insert being a perforated 'colander'). I put about 1/2 cup of water in the pot, fill the colander with pomace, put on the lid, bring to a boil, then simmer on lowest heat for about 1/2 hour to 1 hour. The gentle steam extraction of the pomace from a 7 gallon fermentation batch yields 4-8 cups of wine-flavor extract. It does such a good job extracting the flavor that the pomace tastes pretty bland after extraction.

While making the wine grape jelly from this extract, I add lemon juice to bring up the acid to where I want it.
To maximize the flavor in the jelly, I sweeten less. I use about 2/3 the sugar compared to 'standard' recipe, and I double up the amount of pectin to get it to jell (there's not enough sugar to get it to jell without extra pectin). Typically I use a box of Sure-Jell plus a box of pectin to guarantee that it will jell, but I've also had success using two boxes of pectin (occasionally I get a 'spread' rather than a 'jelly' when I only use pectin).


The extract also makes great tasting wine sorbet. And the extract makes a pretty good syrup to pour on pancakes or ice cream.

Regards,
Gene

Ray Calvert wrote:
<clipped>

As far as jelly is concerned, the best grape jelly is made from grapes that are too acid to make wine or eat either. Wild grapes do the best. Don't waste your good wine grapes making jelly!


All in my humble opinion!  ;o)

Ray

<clipped>
Because I can not find out what type of grape this is, I can not buy more. This vine only produced enough grapes for 5 gallons of wine and just enough juice to make 4 gallons of jelly, plus what my dog would eat. I caught him picking grapes off the vine and eating them. My question is what is the best way to get more plants from this vine?

Thanks,

Roy
.



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