In all my years writing wine columns, one of the most common questions I'm asked is whether it's possible to find grape juice made from the types of grapes that make wine? Why? Because believe me, once you've tasted the juice of a wine grape, it's almost impossible to go back to bland old grape juice.
This'll sound snobby, but it's like the juice equivalent of 100 per cent cotton sheets. Once you've bought and slept in your first set of crisp, high-thread-count sheets polyester just makes you die a little on the inside.
So what makes wine grapes different? Well, wine grapes are grown in such a way as to concentrate and intensify the flavours in the berries - the vines are kept close to starvation so the vine channels its energy into tiny, explosively tasty berries. Conversely, the table grapes used to make everyday juice are grown for volume, with big bunches of berries swollen with watery, boring juice.
There are a few wine producers in New Zealand producing non-alcoholic grape juice from the same grapes as they make their wine, and they're great because they taste like the wine they'd normally make yet they're sweeter and contain no alcohol. The Millton Vineyard in Gisborne produces an organic juice called Amrita (nectar of the gods). This biodynamic grape juice is made from fruit picked by hand, gently pressed and made into juice on just one day of the year.
David Hoskins from Heron's Flight Vineyard in Matakana produced his first non-alcoholic grape juices for sale in 2004 and they're now hugely popular.
