Grape juice supplier Welch’s expands presence in wine industry

Grape juice supplier Welch’s Global Ingredients Group has moved further into the wine industry with the launch of a new product designed to be a “cost-effective by high quality” filler or base wine.

The product, made from the juice of Niagara grapes, has been “de-characterised” to make it more suitable for fermentation and blending with wines made from more traditional varieties, according to the company.

This ‘de-characterisation’ may well be owing to the fact that, left unprocessed, the grape is described as the “foxiest American hybrid of them all” by Robinson, Harding and Vouillamoz in Wine Grapes.

A hybrid vitis labrusca variety produced by crossing Concord with Cassady, Niagara, named after its county of origin, is a white grape principally grown in New York and Michigan in the US, Ontario in Canada, and in Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. It is described as fruit-forward, floral and light-bodied with lower acidity than most US hybrids, and is used for juice, soft drinks, table grapes and wine.

Research and development specialists at Welch’s developed the de-characterised version for use by winemakers looking to reduce raw material costs “without impacting quality”.

Welch’s has plant locations in New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Washington State along with over 40 million gallons of bulk storage.

In addition to the Niagara juice, Welch’s also already supplies Concord grape juice to the wine production industry.

Vice president and general manager at Welch’s Global Ingredients Group, Kevin Kilcoyne, said: “We’re excited to be expanding our capabilities to provide a cost-effective ingredient solution for the winemaking industry. This will be an important market for us going forward, and we have further winery-specific innovations in the pipeline”.

Welch’s is the processing and marketing subsidiary of the National Grape Cooperative. The latter, which is located across America and in Ontario in Canada, is a cooperative which boasts roughly 825 farms which grow the Concord grape for use in Welch’s juices and grape-based products.