colour of wine

[cabsav]

so I have read that to obtain red wine you have to ferment the juice toghether with the the rest of the grape (seeds,pulp etc)
My question is ...

How come the juice that I buy in 5 gallons pale's is allready rich dark red ?
color has been added ?

Since on the bucket it says 100% pure juice not from concentrate.
juice from lodi gold, deltapacking if you guys are familiar with it.

Cheers,
G.

 

[TheTooth]

As I understand it, the juice processors macerate the juice with the skins for a period of time before packaging it and sending it off. So while you don't have control of the maceration process yourself, it has been done.

 

[Racer]

They use enzymes to extract the color.

 

[Manimal]

Hot pressing

Both previous posters are partially correct... they use enzymes and a short period of maceration, but the real difference between what these juice processors do and those using fresh grapes is that the juice producers use hot pressing. ie. they press the grapes using heat and pressure to quickly extract more phenolic compounds such as pigments and tannins. Not bad for simple wines, but you don't get the full benefits of fermentation on the skins... also, many compounds are more easily soluble in alcohol, so the skins continue to give up their goods once the alcohol content of the wine increases during fermentation... obviously, if the skins aren't present during alcoholic fermentation, these alcohol soluble compounds won't be in the finished wine... or at least not in very great quantities. So while they can get some decent colour and tannin extraction from hot pressing, it can never really equal maceration and fermentation on the skins.

 

[TheTooth]

Thanks for the great explanation, Manimal!

 

[cabsav]

thanks,
that makes sense, my wine has little tanin indeed.
The color is very nice though....rich dark red.