Green wine

I have heard of a lot of wines that are made form green fruit and vegetables of various types, but none I know of actually come out green. After all white wines are not really made from white grapes. They are red or green. I have even seen wine made form green peas but it was not green. I think you had better conceder using food color. And I am not sure that it will work to put it in and try to age it for a year in the wine, you may need to add it on the day you serve it for best results but I am not sure of that. In low concentrations, food colors tend to break down over time. You could open the bottles on the day they are to be used, add the food color, then put T-corks or tasting corks in them. Just a suggestion.

Ray

I think most of the green pigment in plants is chlorophyll, which probably won't last through fermentation. If you insist on natural colouring, you could try making spinach wine (spinach is very high in chlorophyll- we use it the organic chemistry lab to isolate the green stuff). Just don't offer me any.

If you actually want a green wine, your best best would probably be to add a few packages of green Kool-Aid to a wine, probably after fermentaion.

---The Mad Alchemist---

Make a white wine, like a Niagara and add one drop of blue coloring.

Hi, Ray's right. I've made pepper wine, it does not come out green, just as watermelon wine doesn't come out red. You'd think it would, but it doesn't. Anyway, a little food coloring won't hurt anything. Don't they add food coloring to beer on St. Patrick's Day. Darlene Wisconsin

The name of the game is that you add the food grade colouring just before serving -- well an hour or so before -- BUT -- be very circumspect with how much you add! Most colour additives are extremely potent in colour terms.

If you add before bulk/bottle aging then there is likely to be a deterioration in the quality of the colour and goodness knows what effect it will have on the taste, long term.

I even make my own "Crème de Menthe" liqueur ( and several others and part of my process is where I marinate mint leaves in 40% abv vodka with good flavour extraction -- but there is virtually no colour extraction. I presume that chlorophyll just isn't green at what molecular level it all combines at. I do use food grade colours in my liqueur efforts and have never had any degradation in colour long term. Colour extraction for my strawberry liqueur is normally enough from the natural fruit without the use of colour additives.

As an experienced cook, at chef standard, I have frequently used food grade colourings to produce "special effects" without effecting the flavour of any particular dish. It is, however, quite amazing how strange colours effect the taste buds -- it's all in the mind!

that's not

I was thinking about this in re: to beer, and i had the bright idea that green tea would work, you would probably want to put the tea bags or loose tea in the secondary. I have used other teas in beer and it would turn out the colour of the respective tea, such as roisboi makes a wonderful red beer.