Difference Between Grape Juice & Grape Wine?

by Jaffar Saeed Fri Dec 01, 2017 6:43 pm

The difference between grape juice and wine is the fermentation process. In this case, the sugar in the ripe grape juice joins with yeast and bacteria and begins to ferment. This turns most of the grape sugar into alcohol. Conversion of sugar to alcohol will begin almost immediately unless kept quite cold or prevented from fermenting through a process such as pasteurization. If allowed to ferment the process will begin and some people love to drink it when the alcohol level is barely at 2%. However, wine does not stabilize for storage until it reaches a range of alcohol content between 9% to a maximum of 17% alcohol. There will always be a small % of sugar remaining in “dry” wine but this will be usually less than 1.5%. Semi-sweet wines usually run between 1% and 5%.
Grapes that are sweet and flavorful enough enough to be made into dessert wine, on the other hand, will start its fermentation process and when finished its fermentation will have low alcohol and way higher sugar and in this case the sugar will act, along with alcohol as a preserving agent for the wines. These occasionally reach a sugar level above 30%. The alcohol level is required to be printed on the label for commercial wine and the residual sugar level is customarily printed on the label of dessert wines. Winemaking is both a natural process and an art.