Aldi Pomegranate Wine

First things first, an update on the sweet potato wine is in order, and I have to say it is clearing out much better (and more orange colored) than I expected. It's still early of course, but it is looking so far like it may rival the rust orange color of the carrot wine, very pleased to this point. It's still fermenting fairly well in the secondary, it should be a very different looking wine in a couple weeks.

As I mentioned earlier, next up would likely be pomegranate, and it is, of a sort. I hit up multiple grocery stores in the Upstate SC area, and there was not a single pomegranate fruit to be had anywhere. They're either really popular and sold out, or really unpopular and most places do not carry them. Only the Wal-Mart produce area even had an empty spot labeled for them, so I tend to think either they're difficult to get right now or maybe not a big seller. That being the case, I decided rather than waiting until I could find the fruit I would try making the wine from bottled pomegranate juice. At my local Aldi I found 100% pure pomegranate juice, with no preservatives added. It was a very understated red color so I decided to add some red grape juice, also purchased at Aldi, to liven up the color a bit and because I just wanted to. The recipe is on the recipe page if you're interested, but basically it is 3 quarts of pomegranate juice, 1 quart red grape juice and 3 cups of sugar (yes, the sugar is Aldi brand as well, hence the post title. What can I say, I like Aldi!) I did add some wine tannin, acid blend, and yeast nutrient in quantities I felt appropriate. The initial SG was right at 1.105, a little higher than I expected, likely from the addition of the grape juice, so I will likely not ferment this batch completely dry and leave some residual sugar instead of sweetening it before bottling. If I manage to time it right it should end up around 13% ABV, a little higher than my usual fruit wines but certainly not excessive. My intention is to make an analogous batch with pomegranates when I can find them and compare the end product. I have made wine with both bottled juice and the actual fruit numerous times, and sometimes even made a hybrid using both, and maybe it's to some degree psychological but the natural fruit wines just seem to have more body and more complex flavors than those made with bottled juice. Bottled juice wines do clear faster as they are filtered and clear to begin with, but I believe the filtering process removes a lot of the natural components that freshly pressed fruit juices retain, and those components add to the flavor profiles of the finished product. There may be a little bit of winemaker snobbery at play here too, it almost feels like I'm cheating when I use bottled juices instead of starting with the whole fruit, certainly some of the country winemaking experience is lost when the pressing part is already done for you. When I make traditional grape varietals like Syrah or Riesling I use juice that was already pressed, sourced from vineyards in California, Oregon, and other common winemaking regions, but they don't filter the juice for bottling, and in some cases the skins are still included, so that doesn't really feel the same as using bottled juice from the local grocery. Anyway, I like the process of preparing the fruit as part of the winemaking experience, but if you would rather skip that work and take the easy road you can still make a very drinkable wine without all the effort and mess. And it's usually way cheaper too.

Not sure what's next in the fermenter, feel free to let me know if you have any ideas. Apples are pretty much always available, so I'm thinking I may try an apple wine and add some caramel flavor and see how close it comes to a caramel apple taste. I've also been thinking of trying a coffee wine, I'm not much of a coffee drinker usually but I have a lot of friends and family who are so I doubt I'll have trouble finding taste-testers. I'd like to make a traditional Sake as well at some point, maybe that'll make the cut for the next batch. I'm also thinking I'll start a 5 gallon batch of carrot wine, it is really looking good and I think it's worth going ahead with a larger batch.

Enjoy your week, and be sure to drink wine regularly, it's not healthy to keep things all bottled up!