I also make jelly from wine grapes (zinfandel and cabernet sauvignon), and no 'wasting' of good wine grapes... cuz I extract the pomace to get my 'juice' for jelly. This Wine Jelly tastes better than any grape jelly I've ever tasted.
After pressing, I put the pomace in a double-boiler configuration, 8 quart stainless steel spaghetti cooker (with the insert being a perforated 'colander'). I put about 1-2 cup of water in the pot, fill the colander with pomace, put on the lid, bring to a boil, then simmer on lowest heat for about 1-2 hour to 1 hour. The gentle steam extraction of the pomace from a 7 gallon fermentation batch yields 4-8 cups of wine-flavor extract. It does such a good job extracting the flavor that the pomace tastes pretty bland after extraction.
While making the wine grape jelly from this extract, I add lemon juice to bring up the acid to where I want it. To maximize the flavor in the jelly, I sweeten less. I use about 2-3 the sugar compared to 'standard' recipe, and I double up the amount of pectin to get it to jell (there's not enough sugar to get it to jell without extra pectin). Typically I use a box of Sure-Jell plus a box of pectin to guarantee that it will jell, but I've also had success using two boxes of pectin (occasionally I get a 'spread' rather than a 'jelly' when I only use pectin).
The extract also makes great tasting wine sorbet. And the extract makes a pretty good syrup to pour on pancakes or ice cream.
Regards, Gene
Ray Calvert
