Grape Juice: Taste, History, How to Make It, and What to Pair It With

Juice made from grapes alone is too sweet and intense, so we blend it with apple juice. One fifth of the juice in the box comes from grapes grown on our own vines, and the rest from apples from our orchard — both are not-from-concentrate (NFC) juice. The grapes make the juice more aromatic, while the apple’s tartness keeps the taste fresh.

Contents

• The taste of grape juice: depth and a tartaric tang
• Grapes: from a “wine garden” to juice that doesn’t ferment
• Ingredients and nutrition facts
• Pressed separately, pasteurized together
• How to make grape juice at home and for winter
• Grape juice in the kitchen: granita, jelly, mulled wine
• Frequently asked questions

The taste of grape juice: depth and a tartaric tang

Our juice tastes deeper than pure apple juice and a little sweeter: 11 g of carbohydrates per 100 g versus 9.5 g in apple juice. Grapes have their own tartness, too — it comes from tartaric acid, their “signature”: most other plants accumulate mainly malic and citric acids.

Grapes: from a “wine garden” to juice that doesn’t ferment

Grapes have been grown in our lands for more than two and a half millennia. And the Ukrainian word for grapes, “vynohrad,” originally meant a vineyard: it’s a calque of the Gothic weinagards — literally “wine garden” — that reached us through Old Church Slavonic.

Pasteurized grape juice has a church history: in 1869, an American Methodist dentist from New Jersey heated it in his own kitchen using Pasteur’s method so that Communion could be served with a drink that doesn’t ferment.

Ingredients and nutrition facts

The makeup of our apple-grape juice in numbers: 80% direct-pressed apple juice and 20% grape juice.

Pressed separately, pasteurized together

We press the grapes and the apples separately and then blend the juices. We pasteurize the finished blend before filling the boxes.

How to make grape juice at home and for winter

For homemade juice, people in Ukraine often use Isabella grapes: they’re aromatic, and their juice comes out dark and rich. In dark grapes, the pigment sits in the skin, so the color depends on the method: a juicer gives lighter juice, while a steam juicer or crushed and heated grapes give darker, more aromatic juice. You don’t have to add sugar to homemade juice: grapes are sweet on their own. For winter, the juice is poured hot into jars; the process is shown step by step using apple juice for winter as an example.

Homemade grape juice can surprise you: after it sits somewhere cool, small hard crystals sometimes appear at the bottom of the jar. This is wine stone, or tartrates: tartaric acid combines with potassium and crystallizes. The crystals simply lie at the bottom, and you can carefully pour off the juice above them. By the way, purified wine stone is the very cream of tartar that bakers know.

Grape juice in the kitchen: granita, jelly, mulled wine

1. Granita

Pour 500 ml of juice into a shallow dish in a 2–3 cm layer and put it in the freezer. Every 30–40 minutes, use a fork to break up the ice that has formed — in 3 hours you’ll have granita, a refreshing dessert to enjoy instead of ice cream.

2. Jelly with grapes

Stir agar-agar into 500 ml of juice — as much as the package says, usually about a teaspoon. Bring to a boil and cook for 1–2 minutes, stirring. Place halved grapes in dessert bowls, pour the hot juice over them, and leave to set: agar sets even at room temperature. This jelly is plant-based, with no gelatin.

3. Non-alcoholic mulled wine with grape juice

Made with grape juice, mulled wine comes out deeper. Add a cinnamon stick, 3–4 whole cloves, and a few orange slices to 1 L of juice and warm it over low heat until it starts to steam — the juice shouldn’t boil. For other variations and proportions, see our page of non-alcoholic mulled wine recipes.

4. Fruit salad with grape juice

Dice an apple, a pear, and a banana, and add a handful of halved grapes. Mix 100 ml of juice with a teaspoon of lemon juice, pour it over the fruit, and let it sit for 10 minutes to soak in. Sprinkle chopped nuts on top.

Looking for something to serve instead of kompot at a holiday table? Set out a pitcher of grape juice with a few grapes and ice.

Fresh-pressed apple-grape juice, 3 L. The minimum order is two boxes, and you can mix flavors; all our juices are in the “Juices” section. We ship within 1–2 business days via Nova Poshta and Ukrposhta across Ukraine. We explain how we make our juices in the article “Fresh Apple Juice: How We Make It”, and how to open the box and how long it keeps in the article “Juice in a Bag-in-Box with a Tap”.
Fresh-pressed apple-grape juice in our shop →