How to Make Wine from Grape Juice

To make wine from grape juice, pour a gallon of 100% grape juice with no sorbate or benzoate preservatives into a sanitized glass jug, raise the sugar to a hydrometer reading of about 1.085 to 1.090, add yeast nutrient and a packet of wine yeast, and fit an airlock. The juice ferments in two to three weeks; once you have siphoned it off the sediment and it has cleared, you can bottle it, often within two to three months of starting.

Making wine from juice skips the harvest, the crushing and the pressing, so it is the quickest, cheapest way to a first bottle and a good way to learn the skills you will need for making wine from fresh grapes. Below you will find the recipe, how to choose the juice, how much sugar to add, a frozen concentrate version and the five-gallon quantities.

What You Need

Ingredients for 1 Gallon

• 1 gallon (two 64 oz bottles) of 100% grape juice, red or white
• About 3/4 lb (340 g) of white sugar, adjusted with a hydrometer
• 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient
• 1 packet (5 g) of wine yeast
• 1 Campden tablet for bottling day (optional, for wine you plan to keep)

Equipment

• A 1-gallon glass jug with a bung and airlock
• A hydrometer and test jar
• A funnel, a saucepan and a long spoon
• A small auto-siphon or siphon tube, and a second jug for racking
• Five 750 ml bottles with corks or screw caps
• A no-rinse sanitizer

Our full list of home winemaking supplies explains each item, and a one-gallon starter kit bundles most of them.

Choosing the Grape Juice

The juice is the one ingredient that can stop the whole project before it starts. North Dakota State University Extension’s Getting Started With Home Winemaking (FN1638) is direct about it: use juice with no preservatives, because the preservatives in commercial juice may inactivate the yeast and inhibit fermentation.

Read the Label First

Two things matter. The carton must say 100% juice, not juice drink or cocktail, which are watered down and often sweetened with corn syrup. And the ingredients must not include potassium sorbate or sodium benzoate, which are there precisely to stop yeast from growing.

Sulfite is a different case. Welch’s 100% White Grape Juice lists potassium metabisulfite as a preservative, but winemakers add the same compound to fresh juice on purpose, and the Campden tablet makers’ directions simply wait 24 hours before adding the yeast. A juice preserved with sulfite still makes wine, as long as you add a strong wine yeast rather than hoping wild yeast will do the job. Welch’s 100% Red Grape Juice lists no preservative at all, only vitamin C and citric acid.

Which Juice Makes the Best Wine?

Sugar figures are from the Welch’s product pages. Purple grape juice made from Concord-type grapes tastes recognizably of grape juice after fermentation; whites are more neutral and many people find them the better first wine.

Grape Juice Wine Recipe (1 Gallon)

This is the standard method, written for a one-gallon glass jug with an airlock and with the sugar set by measurement instead of guesswork. It works with red or white 100% grape juice.

How to Make Wine from Grape Juice, Step by Step

1. Sanitize Everything

Juice from a sealed bottle is clean; the jug, funnel and spoon are what bring in spoilage bacteria. Wash them, rinse well, then use a no-rinse sanitizer on everything that touches the juice.

2. Start with the Juice at Room Temperature

Yeast starts slowly in cold juice. If the bottles have been in the fridge, let them warm up first. Clemson Cooperative Extension’s Basics of Home Winemaking ferments at 65 to 75°F, away from direct sunlight.

3. Measure and Add the Sugar

Float the hydrometer in a sample. Supermarket juice is made for drinking, not for wine, so it reads well below the 1.090 that Virginia Cooperative Extension’s Wine Making for the Home Gardener says gives about 12% alcohol. Dissolve the sugar in a little warm juice rather than pouring it in dry, add it, stir and measure again. The table in the next section gives the amounts.

4. Add Nutrient and Yeast

Juice has none of the fruit solids that feed yeast in a grape must, so add nutrient: NDSU warns that stressed yeast can produce a rotten-egg (hydrogen sulfide) smell. Rehydrate the wine yeast in a little warm water as its packet says, then pour it in. Clemson is clear about bread, beer and cider yeasts: they cannot tolerate the alcohol in wine and die before fermentation is complete, which leaves a sweet, weak wine.

5. Ferment Under an Airlock

Fill the jug to the shoulder, not the neck, so the foam has room, and fit the airlock. Clemson expects fermentation to begin within 12 hours. No airlock? The University of Georgia Extension bulletin Winemaking at Home describes a homemade one: a one-hole stopper with a piece of tubing whose other end sits in a jar of water, so gas can bubble out and air cannot get in. Never seal the jug tight: the carbon dioxide has to escape.

6. Rack Off the Sediment

Fermentation is finished when the bubbling has stopped and two hydrometer readings a few days apart are the same, usually just under 1.000 for a dry wine. Siphon the wine into a clean jug, leave the yeast sediment behind, and top up with a little juice or a similar wine so there is almost no air space. Our guide on how to rack wine shows the technique.

7. Let It Clear, Then Stabilize If You Want It Sweet

Give the wine a few weeks in a cool, dark place until you can read print through the jug. If it stays hazy, see how to clear wine. A dry wine can go straight to the bottle. If you would like it sweeter, add potassium sorbate (Northern Brewer’s directions are half a teaspoon per gallon, with sulfite) before any sugar, as explained in how to backsweeten wine.

8. Bottle and Wait

Siphon the clear wine into sanitized bottles, cork or cap them, and store them somewhere cool and dark. You can drink it at bottling, but NDSU recommends at least two months of aging and says a year is better; juice wines in particular lose their raw, yeasty edge with a few months. Our guide to bottling and corking wine covers the details.

How Much Sugar to Add to Grape Juice

NDSU gives the conversion: 11 grams of sugar per liter of juice raise the specific gravity by 0.004. That is about 10.4 grams per gallon for every point (0.001) of gravity. Here is what it takes to bring one gallon up to 1.090:

The Welch’s labels work out to roughly 146 to 150 grams of sugar per liter, which reads around 1.056 to 1.058. Fermented without added sugar, the University of Georgia rule of thumb (sugar yields about half its amount as alcohol) points to a light wine of around 7%, too weak to keep well. Our sugar calculator handles any starting reading and batch size, and the hydrometer guide explains how to read it.

Scaling Up: 5 Gallons of Wine from Grape Juice

Sugar figures assume juice starting near 1.056 and a target of 1.090; measure your own juice first. A five-gallon batch needs a six-gallon bucket for the first days, so the foam has room, and a five-gallon carboy afterwards. One 5 g packet of EC-1118 is rated for up to 23 liters, a little over six gallons.

White Grape Concentrate Wine: A 1-Gallon Recipe

Frozen 100% white grape juice concentrate is one of the cheapest ways to make a clean, light white wine. The method is the same as for bottled juice; the difference is that you decide how much water goes in, which means you can raise the strength without adding as much sugar.

Concentrate vs Fresh vs Bottled Juice

All three make wine; they differ in flavor, effort and how much you have to adjust.

Bottled 100% Juice

The easiest start: open, measure, add sugar and yeast. Because it is made for drinking, it carries less sugar than ripe wine grapes, which is why the recipe adds some. It is also already clear and pasteurized, so it ferments cleanly.

Frozen or Winemaking Concentrate

Concentrate lets you control the strength: dilute it a little less than the can directions and the gravity rises without added sugar. Winemaking concentrates sold by homebrew shops are made from wine grape varieties and give a wine closer to one made from a kit.

Fresh-Pressed Juice

Juice pressed from wine grapes or bought from a local vineyard gives the most character, and it is the starting point of our full guide to making wine at home. It also carries wild yeast and bacteria, so treat it with one crushed Campden tablet per gallon a day before adding your yeast.

The Quick 5-Liter Bottle Method

The simplest version of all uses nothing but a large water bottle as the fermenter. It makes about a gallon of wine with no jug or airlock, and it is how many people make their very first batch:

1. Empty a 5-liter (1.3 gallon) water bottle, sanitize it, and pour in 1 liter of room-temperature 100% grape juice and a packet of wine yeast. Cap it and shake hard for a few minutes to dissolve the yeast and add the oxygen it needs to multiply.
2. Loosen the cap a little and leave the bottle in a dark place. When the juice starts to bubble, usually the next day, add 2 more liters of juice.
3. Dissolve 500 g (about 1 lb) of sugar in 1 liter of water and add it after four or five days, together with the last liter of juice. The bottle should be filled to just below the neck. Leave the cap loose.
4. Let it ferment until the bubbling stops completely, which can take two to three weeks.
5. Move the bottle to the fridge for a few days so the yeast settles, then pour or siphon the clear wine off the sediment.

With 4 liters of juice and 500 g of sugar the must starts at roughly 19% sugar, which by the UGA rule gives a wine of about 10%; add a little more sugar if you want it stronger, measuring with a hydrometer. Two warnings make this method safe. First, never tighten the cap while the wine is fermenting: the gas has nowhere to go. Second, chilling slows the yeast but does not kill it, so check with a hydrometer that the wine has fermented dry before you bottle it, or it can start again in the bottle. And if the wine will sit for more than 14 days after that, Clemson recommends moving it to glass, which lets in far less oxygen than plastic.

Wine from Other Fruit Juices

The same method works with most 100% fruit juices, with the same rule about preservatives. What changes is the balance. UGA notes that apple wine is low in acidity and benefits from about one tablespoon of lemon juice per gallon before fermentation; very tart juices go the other way and need water and extra sugar. Apple juice and cider have their own guide, how to make hard cider, and our homemade wine recipes cover cranberry, pineapple, cherry and more. For whole fruit instead of juice, see how to make wine from fruit.

Troubleshooting Grape Juice Wine

Is It Legal to Make Wine from Juice?

In the United States, yes, for personal use: federal rule 27 CFR 24.75 lets adults make up to 100 gallons a year, or 200 in a household with two or more adults, as long as the wine is not sold. State and local rules can be stricter. Our homemade wine guide covers the legal and safety questions.

Grape Juice Wine FAQ