Condensed Grape Juice for Wine Making;

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 160, 28 August 1886, Page 2

Condensed Grape Juice for Wine Making;

Condensed milk has, for many years, been a well 1 known article of human consumption, but the idea of condensed wine, or rather grape juice, is something new to look forward to. The vacuum pan system affords a means of evaporating water from juices which is at the present time being adopted in California to reduce or condense grape juice so that it can be put up in tins without danger of fermentation, and thus be sent all over the world just as condensed milk is exported from Switzerland and England. In this way a small tin of concentrated and unfermented grape juice can be sent to any .country where the wine making industry is thoroughly understood, and there converted into so many quarts or gallons of the best, wine. A hogshead of Australian or New Zealand wine in posse c6uld in this portable form be transported to Europe at a great saving of cost, and .free ,from the risk that at present exists, in the case of manufactured wine, of spoiling on the voyage. As a contemporary truly remarks, the perfection, to which evaporation of water from, juices ie brought by the use of the vacuum pan. system, opens a big field for vine-growers." " The juice need not be fermented, but by merely straining, after crushing the grapes, it can be drawn into a vacuum pan, with such additions of syrup or sugar as may be necessary. In the pan it can be deprived of so much w ater as to remove all risk from, fermentation, and this can be done at such low temperature that no burning, scorching or discolouration of the juice takes place. There need be no 10.-s of aroma, ov the most delicate flavour of the finer variety of; grapes, and the syi up in that form n.ighfc be .sent to any part of the world for conversion into wine or other purposes. There is really no limit to the possibilities of reducing fruit juices by means of evaporation in vacuum. For wine making upon a great scale^ and with ths skill and appliances necessary to make first class wines, this method of treating the juice appears as the great advance of the time.'* The pro&pect of being able to buy con~ centrated grape juice, pure and unfermented, should be welcome to our antiliquor friends, for any one can then have unfermented and therefore non-intoxicating wine by simply diluting the condensed juice, just as one can have ordinary milk by mi ung water with the condensed Swiss milk we are all so familiar with.