Homemade Piquette 

Living life with zero waste and sustainability has become a new normal for a lot of people. For example, I try to upcycle as much as possible. Recently, I made concord grape jam, jelly, and concord grape juice from the grapes that I harvested. Today I will be explaining more about how I made Piquette from upcycling all the grape leftovers. 

The grape leftovers (skins, seeds, stems) are known as pomace. It's been utilized to make a diluted wine called Piquette for years. Piquette is a low-alcohol drink made by mixing grape leftovers and water then going through the fermentation process. The wine becomes a nice fizzy drink. With an alcohol content of 4 to sometimes over 10 ABV depending on how long the wine is left to ferment. I make Piquette and have gotten the alcohol content of 10 ABV and sometimes over that. Technically, Piquette is not wine, but it closely resembles it once it's a finished product.

So how did I make Piquette? 

I went through the process of making my grape juice, jam, and jelly first. (For those interested in learning more about how I made those, you can go back to those articles where I gave instructions.) I saved all the grape leftovers. Then I used them by adding water and began the fermentation process in gallon containers. Once the fermentation stopped (no more gas bubbles), I took the Piquette and strained it to get the pulp, seeds, and leftover stems out. Then bottled it up. The process was simple.

After about a month of fermentation, I ended up with a pretty, rose pink Piquette. The flavor and aroma are unbelievably delightful!