White grape juice woes

So I'm making an almond wine recipe that calls for grape juice concentrate. I'm assuming white grape juice concentrate because a red wine that tastes like almond just doesn't sound quite right.

So I found some Welches white grape juice concentrate, but the label says "Contains sulfites to maintain freshness," but the ingredients say "white grape juice concentrate, ascorbic acid, citric acid."

Is this ok to use in my recipe? I'll be using 5 cups of this stuff for my 5gal batch. I already had to settle for golden raisins (5 pounds!) that have a sulfite added (but I am washing these thoroughly to hopefully remove most of it).

Incidentally, the recipe calls for adding campden tablets to the must and letting it sit for 24 hours before pitching the yeast. Won't all these sulfites harm the yeast?

Help! (if you can't tell I'm new to wine making). Thanks.

You can use that, no problem. But are you sure your recipe wants you to use that, or does your recipe expect "white grape juice concentrate", the winemaking stuff?

The sulfites won't harm the yeast- they are routinely used when you mix up the must to knock out wild yeast and bacteria, and are routinely used thereafter as a preservative and antioxidant.

Yooper said:

You can use that, no problem. But are you sure your recipe wants you to use that, or does your recipe expect "white grape juice concentrate", the winemaking stuff?

Click to expand...

Hmm, I don't know... It's from the book "Making Wild Wines & Meads," and the recipe simple says (for 1 gal batch):

1 cup (240 ml) grape juice concentrate

I skimmed through the beginning chapters to see if the authors identify what they mean by that when used in recipes but didn't see anything.

What do you think?

I've used Welches canned concentrates before in recipes that called for concentrates, like some off of Keller's site.

This is what I use these days: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/winexpert-white-grape-concentrate-1-litre.html

with wine ingredient quality is paramount since there isn't much "process" that controls flavor unlike brewing beer, and I think the winemaking concentrates just taste better.

Either way you go your intention is to add body and fermentables to the wine so the final gravity of your must would determine the quantity used. Don't go 100% by some old recipe. If the target gravity is around 1.080(or whatever) add all your other ingredients leaving it just shy of the volume and add concentrate to meet your grav.

Thanks for the link! I think I'll just go ahead with the Welches for this recipe, since I bought it and all, and order up some of the good stuff for next time.

Thanks for the replies.

There are sulfites in raisins, so you will already be adding some.