Pomegranate Wine Recipe: Homemade Pomegranate Wine

The short answer: a 1 gallon batch of pomegranate wine uses 10 to 15 ripe pomegranates (10 if they are big, 15 if they are small), ½ pound of barley, 1¾ pounds of sugar, the juice of one lemon, 1 gallon of water, wine yeast and yeast nutrient. You free the seeds from the fruit, pour simmered barley water over them with the sugar and lemon, ferment on the seeds for five days, then strain into a jug and let it clear. Plan on tasting it at six months and opening it at one year.

The recipe is Jack Keller’s, from his Requested Recipes Collection (compiled 2020), where he adapted it from C.J.J. Berry’s First Steps in Winemaking. Keller calls pomegranate “an excellent medium wine.” This page is a recipe, not a shopping list: if you want to buy a bottle, this is not the place, but if you want to make one, read on. New to winemaking? Start with our full guide to making wine at home, then come back. More fruit and flower recipes are in the homemade wine recipe collection.

Pomegranate Wine at a Glance

The effort is front-loaded. Keller says the hard part is peeling the fruit and liberating the seeds without damaging too many, and that “the rest is just routine.”

Ingredients and Equipment

How many pomegranates per gallon

Keller’s rule is by size: ten fruit are enough if they are 5 to 6 inches across, and you need 15 if they are 3 to 4 inches. Weigh nothing; count and judge the diameter. He also warns that if you have to buy pomegranates the wine will be expensive, so this recipe is best when you or a neighbor have a tree, or when the fruit is at its seasonal low in the store.

Why there is barley in a wine

The ½ pound of barley is simmered in the water for about five minutes and the liquid is strained over the seeds. It is an old English country wine habit that adds body. If you cannot find barley, do not guess at a substitute in this recipe; use it as written.

Equipment

You need a primary fermenter with a lid, a pot for the barley water, a strainer, a 1 gallon glass jug with an airlock, a siphon and bottles. A thermometer helps, since the must needs to be cool before the yeast goes in. If you plan to adjust the sugar, our sugar calculator turns any gravity reading into pounds to add.

Getting the Arils Out Without the Bitterness

Keep the white membrane out

Keller’s instruction is to remove the seed-juice sacs from the “bitter white membrane dividers.” That is the whole bitterness rule in his recipe: the juicy seeds go in, the pithy white membrane stays out. The wine is only as good as the fruit prep, so take your time here rather than rushing to the yeast.

Protect the seeds and your hands

Keller writes that the hard part is liberating the hundreds of seeds without damaging too many, and that you should wear latex gloves because the stain is insidious. Gloves are not optional; the juice stains skin, counters and cloth. Work over a large bowl so nothing is lost.

Do not crush them

Keller’s method pours the barley water over whole seeds and ferments on them for five days, then strains. He does not call for mashing the seeds, so we do not either. Leave them whole, and the straining at the end does the separating.

If you would rather start from juice

You can make pomegranate wine from bottled juice instead of fresh fruit, as long as it is 100% juice with no preservatives such as potassium sorbate or sodium benzoate, which will stop your yeast. We do not give quantities here, because Keller’s card is for whole fruit. Our guide to making wine from grape juice covers the method, and the same principles apply to any juice. For the general fruit method, see making wine from fruit.

How Strong Will It Be?

Keller does not give a starting gravity or an alcohol figure for this recipe, so we can only work from the sugar. Using the arithmetic on our sugar calculator (one pound of sugar in a gallon adds about 46 gravity points), 1¾ pounds of sugar adds roughly 80 points, which is a starting gravity near 1.080 before any sugar from the fruit. Our potential alcohol formula, (starting gravity minus 1) × 131.25, turns that into about 10.5%.

Treat that as a floor to check, not a promise. The pomegranate seeds add their own sugar and the juice adds volume, which pull the number in different directions. Take a hydrometer reading before you add the yeast and use the wine ABV calculator on the real figure.

Pomegranate and Hibiscus Variation

Keller’s collection also has a hibiscus flower wine, and the two share a red, tart character. This card is his hibiscus recipe, not a blended pomegranate recipe: it is a separate wine you can make alongside the first, or a way to use up dried flowers. Keller buys dried Hibiscus sabdariffa flowers, which he considers the most edible species and which keep their color best, and notes that red or purple flowers make red or purple wine.

Hibiscus wine card

• 1 to 2 oz dried hibiscus flowers, tied in a nylon straining bag
• 2 lb sugar
• 7 pints water
• 1½ tsp acid blend
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 packet Côte des Blancs yeast

Boil the water and sugar until dissolved. Put the bagged flowers in the primary, pour the boiling sugar water over them and stir in everything except the yeast. Cover until the liquid is at room temperature, then squeeze the bag to get the most flavor and discard the flowers (or use them for tea). Add the activated yeast, cover again and stir daily for 7 to 8 days. Rack to a secondary, top up with water and fit an airlock. Ferment 30 days, rack to a clean jug, rack again after another 30 days, wait two more months, rack, stabilize, and after 10 to 14 days bottle in dark glass. Keller says you may drink it immediately, but it improves in six months.

If you want a pomegranate and hibiscus blend, Keller does not give one, so we do not give amounts either. Make the two wines separately and blend a small glass of each to taste before you decide on a ratio.

When It’s Ready

Keller’s timeline is short and honest. Once the wine clears, rack it and bottle it. You may taste it at six months, but he says it improves at one year. There is no hurry, and a first sip at six months tells you what the extra six will do.

Clearing and racking

After five days on the seeds, strain into a jug and fit the airlock. Do not bottle until the wine is clear and no more bubbles are rising. Our guide to how to rack wine shows the siphon method.

Sweetening

Keller’s recipe makes a wine you can drink as it comes. If you want it softer, stabilize first so the sugar does not restart fermentation, then read how to backsweeten wine. For yeast choices, see the best wine yeasts. Make and drink wine responsibly, and only if you are of legal drinking age.