Making Raspberry Wine without Raspberries

[rustbucket]

My wife loves anything made with raspberries so I decided to make a RJS Rockin Raspberry Rose wine kit. Everything in the wine making process for this kit went normally and the wine is now in the clearing stage. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of reading the box label after racking the wine. There is no raspberry anything in the RJS Rockin Raspberry Rose kit.

Checking the label, I saw that the main ingredient was grape juice concentrate, with the rest of the ingredient listing consisting of a bunch of chemicals. The flavor pack ingredient list contains sugar, natural flavors (flavor not specified), and potassium sorbate. No raspberries!

While I'm not a purist when it comes to what I eat or drink, there does seem to be something innately wrong with one of the major ingredients in a wine kit not being the component named on the box, especially in a kit from a well respected wine making kit manufacturer. Knowing what I now know, I don't think that I'll be making this wine again.

Are the wine kits in the Island Mist series similarly provisioned?

 

[DoctorCAD]

The "wine" is the base. It is made from grapes because grapes make wine very well. The flavoring pack will be raspberry flavored.

Thats how all "mist" kits work, a grape wine, generally a very mild and easily overpowered flavor with a flavoring pack that makes the taste equal to the name on the kit.

Raspberries are hard to ferment and wont taste like raspberries after they are done.

 

[salcoco]

if you wish you can add raspberry to the wine now. some of their flavor will be added to the wine. I would use a couple of pounds and then monitor weekly the flavor to you taste. I would insure that sorbate has been added to the wine or the addition of the sugar in the raspberry will start fermentation again.

 

[rustbucket]

Thanks, Salcoco! I already added the sorbate but adding real raspberries at this point, as you suggest, may add a fullness to the flavor. The wine is currently clearing in a carboy.