Grape juice is a liquid obtained by pressing grapes.
Grape juice can be red or white. To make it, the whole grape is crushed including the seeds. The juice must then be pasteurized immediately so that it won’t ferment into wine. The juice must be 100% juice to be called grape juice in America.
Kosher grape juice is grape juice that has been handled only by Sabbath-observant Jews.
History Notes
The Welch’s Company first made grape juice from Concord grapes in 1869. The process of making it was invented by a dentist in New Jersey, Dr Thomas Welch. He called it, “Dr. Welch’s Unfermented Wine.”
He first sold his juice to the Protestant churches that didn’t want to use wine for their communion. The problem with Grape Juice is that nature intended for it to turn into wine. Dr Welch stopped that process by pasteurizing the bottles.
He picked a good time to start making grape juice — the first National Prohibition league in America was formed in 1869, and heady days indeed were ahead for the league over the next few decades.
Literature & Lore
Some Christians who don’t approve of drinking say that when the Bible refers to wine, it means unfermented Grape Juice. That simply wasn’t possible until pasteurization was discovered — freshly pressed Grape Juice begins fermenting almost immediately.
They also pointed to preserved grape juices used by the Romans and Greeks, such as Defritum and Sapa, to say that wine in the new testament was not necessarily alcoholic and to debunk in their minds the theory that the ancients couldn’t preserve grape juice without its turning alcoholic. They miss the point, though, that these things were grape syrups. They weren’t for drinking, they were condiments. Drinking them would have been the equivalent of a glass of Worchestershire sauce.
