Pekmez - concentrated fruit molasses from Turkey. Would it work for wine?

[maenad]

Has anyone ever tried using pekmez as the basis for wine? I live in Turkey and it's widely available. I can't imagine why it wouldn't work, unless if the boiling-down process changes the sugar negatively somehow.

I've never seen it made, but basically people do this:
1. Get fruit and stomp on it to remove the juice.
2. Sometimes it's mixed with a kind of soil - clay and calcium carbonate - to neutralize the acid and clarify it.
3. Boiled once, to let the sediment sink.
4. Rest.
5. Boiled again, to caramelize the sugar and darken it and thicken it.

Pekmez has the texture of anything from maple syrup to blackstrap molasses, but is always very dark purple.

If I decide to try it, I'll have to choose between grape, mulberry, carob, fig, and pomegranate.

Any advice? I'm most concerned about the caramelizing of the sugar - would that affect wine badly?

Thx!

 

[madscientist451]

Run some experiments with it and try using whatever regular grape juice you can get as well.
It may be useful as an additive to cider. I'd probably make a mead and use it as a flavor addition.
The boiling process will have an effect on the flavor, it may be good, maybe not.

 

[maenad]

Yeah, honey's expensive in my country so I'll give mead a miss. I'll try making a very small batch and see what happens. Will update in a couple of months!

 

[madscientist451]

Can you get regular grape juice in the store? Maybe try adding the Pekmez to bring the ABV up?
BTW, how much does it cost? How much is honey?

 

[maenad]

It's pomegranate I want, not grape. The problem with grape juice in Turkey is that they don't list certain preservatives in the ingredients, so you have to test it out first.

Pekmez is very cheap - only about 3 USD for a litre. (Side note: most foreign cooks in Turkey mix pekmez into white sugar to approximate brown sugar, which isn't widely available here.) Honey is more expensive - about $8 a kilo, but you can never be sure that sugar hasn't been mixed in with it.

 

[Janeypoos]

Hi maenad, did you ever make wine with pekmez? I live in Turkey and was just wondering if I can make wine from pekmez

 

[Erik the Awful]

I prefer to simmer my fruit rather than boil. In my experience boiling can make it bitter and also tends to make a cloudiness that doesn't go away unless you let the wine age a couple years.

 

[soondolking]

If anyone is still interested check Paxarette. molasses can be made into wine and will have different taste compared to wine but its gonna work.
Besides that, Is there any one kind enough to tell me where i can buy Pekmez ( no sugars added ) in large quantities that ship to South Korea?

 

[Protos]

I wouldn't bother trying to make "wine" of pekmez. The fruit matter is hyper-boiled, it won't make a real wine anyway. Having lived in Turkey for years, I came to like pekmez for what it is, it's a nice thing in its own right, I think there's no need to waste it for a substandard Ersatz-wine.

What you can really do with the surplus of pekmez is rakı. I've tasted some pekmezden yapılmış rakı, in the countryside. To my personal taste, rakı is a pretty crappy drink as far as spirits go, but among the different kinds of it I've tasted in Turkey the rakı distilled of pekmez was one of the least offensive.

OOPS, just noticed I'm necroanswering a necroquestion, sorry

 

[soondolking]

I am trying to make a cheap version of Paxarette with pekmez

 

[canerak]

@maenad did you try pekmez for winemaking? i'm thinking of trying pekmez also.