Google only shows me Welch’s: their regular and their different flavors which are not made of different grapes but just different strengths or different juices blended in.
Are there grape juices sold in America that are made out of grapes other than fox wines and California seedless: as much as I like fox grapes to eat, their flavor in a juice is overwhelming, and california seedless has the opposite problem of being insipid.
Do these differing-variety-grape juices even exist in America and if so where could I get them?
Do you happen to know if Whole Foods like places would be likely to carry them? I looked a few days ago and couldn’t find a Whole Foods near me (nor a Trader Joe’s).
What about a store that carries different kinds of “fox” grapes?
as far as I know, Welch’s sells only Concord Grape juice and something they call “white grape juice”, but which might simply be concord grape juice without the coloring matter from the skins.
There are a LOT of different kinds of Labrusca grapes, and they all taste different (although all taste “foxy”). You may not like them, but I do, and I have never seen Catawba or Niagara or Diamond or Alden or any of these other varietal juices.
The Wikipedia page on grape juice says that White grape juice is usually Niagara but who knows if that’s right.
It’s been awhile since I’ve had white grape juice, but I do enjoy the taste of a Niagara wine. I’ve also had a good Muscadine wine, and while I’m sure there are good Concord wines, I’ve never had the pleasure of tasting one.
But what I haven’t had either is non-niagara-concord fox grape juice.
It was trendy for a while. Lots of grape growers were selling fresh juices, usually wine varietals like Zinfandel or Shiraz. They were in all my usual supermarkets here in the Bay Area, even Safeway and Lucky.
Haven’t seen them for a while, though. Sorry friend.
update: I went to a local “whole foods” style place and they did indeed have a non-concord grape juice: however, it was Muscadine. I say “however” because it is a variety of fox grape, and yet it is regional to the Southeast so it might not be in Cal’s range. The name was Paulk’s Pride Muscadine Juice. It did indeed taste better than concord, less overpowering, but I tasted a definite overtone of plum that I’ve only tasted before in the brand of Merlot wine they serve at the poker room at Best Best Jacksonville: it is so similar that I am now wondering if their merlot source slips some muscadine into the recipe (or conversely if Paulk’s perhaps slips some Florida Merlot grapes into their juice?)
It’s really uncanny. It tastes much closer to the Jacksonville Merlot wine than to either Concord Grape juice or to Muscadine wine.
The place I went to was sort of a combination between a natural-style food store and a health food store. A third of their place was a cafe, a third was food products, and a third was supplements, and their schpiel on their website emphasized their healthful connection. But I’d think that in general, a health food store might be useful if I wanted the grapes for their purported health benefit rather than the taste: I could probably get grape extract there for instance.
As a matter of fact, the store I went to did have merlot and cab dried grapes in a package as well as the wine from said grapes. It was very odd that I could get the grapes and the wine but not the juice.
I start to suspect that you may be looking for a unicorn, unfortunately. Scanning through Amazon, and Google, shows me nothing but Concord juices (even the organic ones are made with organic Concord grapes).
My suspicion is that the market for other varieties of grape juices is probably vanishingly small, and limited to local vineyards who make it and sell it locally.
Many Jewish stores have a variety of grape juices, but I don’t know if those are the type you’re looking for, or if you’re in a location where a Jewish grocery store/supermarket exists.
Huh. I used to buy vatietal grape juices sometimes, but now that you mention it, I haven’t seen them in a while. Most of them weren’t very good, imo, so I suppose I haven’t looked hard.
There is a common “Jewish” brand of grape juice, Kedem, but it is also Concord grape juice. It’s a little higher quality than Welch’s.
(And at Passover, I found that Welch carried two slightly different formulations of grape juice, one of which was significantly better flavored than the other – as verified by a blind taste test in my kitchen, with half a dozen family members. The variety that isn’t usually available was almost as good as the Kedem. The regular Welsh’s was noticeably less “grapey” and tasted more cooked.)
Concord is certainly their most popular and well-known grape juice, but they make numerous other kinds. “Gold” (which I recall being called “Muscat” in my youth), “White”, “Blush” and “Peach” are just some of the Kedem grape juice varieties that my local Jewish supermarkets carry. The Gold is my personal favorite, very sweet, almost like apple juice.