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Pomegranate wine is easy to make at home with fresh pomegranates or pomegranate juice. It’s a traditional drink in eastern Europe and the middle east, and it’s still made today. Commercial bottles of pomegranate wine generally sell for more than $20 each and tend to be very dry and acidic. Making pomegranate wine at home costs about $2 per bottle, and you can adjust the sweetness to your own tastes.
Pomegranates aren’t quite sweet enough on their own to make wine. Though they may taste quite sweet, they’re only about half as sweet as wine grapes. They’re also considerably more acidic, and pomegranates lack the natural tannins that give red wine “body.”
That said, it’s still possible to make a great tasting homemade pomegranate wine, with all the flavor of a pomegranate and the right amount of sweetness to suit your palate. When you’re making a small batch fruit wine, it only takes a tiny amount of tannin powder to add body, a bit of sugar to bring up the alcohol level and ensure sweetness.
The acidity is another matter. Many cultures have cuisine that naturally includes a variety of acidic foods, but it’s an acquired taste. It’s not going to be quite the same as a grape wine, but that’s the point right? If you’re bothering to make pomegranate wine, it’s a conscious choice to drink outside the box.
Pomegranate wine recipes start with either fresh pomegranates or pomegranate juice. If you’re using fresh pomegranates, it’s hard to get as concentrated a flavor, and they’re a bit harder to come by. Still, if you have a pomegranate tree readily available, extract the seeds from about 10 to 20 pomegranates and muddle the seeds in with 2 to 3 pounds of sugar. The sugar will extract the juice. It’s the same method I describe in this recipe for rhubarb wine and as well as this recipe for peach wine.
Since pomegranate juice is available year round, I started with two large bottles of POM pomegranate juice, and it was more than enough for a one-gallon batch. Start by adding 2 to 3 pounds of sugar to a saucepan, and then add in about half a gallon of pomegranate juice. Whisk them together and simmer on the stove until the sugar has dissolved.
Allow the sugar and pomegranate juice solution to cool to room temperature, and then pour it into a fermentation vessel. Add in a tannin source, either a tiny bit of tannin powder for winemaking or a cup of strongly brewed black tea. A pound of raisins helps provide yeast nutrients to keep the fermentation going strong, or you can add in commercial winemaking yeast nutrient for a cleaner taste not impacted by the raisins.
If you’re using fresh pomegranates, add in a bit of pectic enzyme to help break open the fruit cells and extract more juice.
Pomegranate Wine
Equipment
- Air Lock & Stopper
Ingredients
- 96 ounces pomegranate juice
- 2 lbs sugar
- 1 tsp yeast nutrient, or up to 1 pound raisins
- 2 tsp acid blend, or 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp tannin powder, or 1 cup strongly brewed black tea
- 1 wine yeast
- water to fill
Instructions
- Add the sugar and half the pomegranate juice to a saucepan and bring it to a boil on the stove. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Once dissolved, allow it to cool to room temperature.
- While the juice is cooling, dissolve the yeast into 1/4 cup of luke warm water. Allow it to bloom for at least 5 minutes, or up to several hours.
- Pour the sugar and pomegranate juice into a fermentation vessel. Add yeast nutrient (or raisins), acid blend (or lemon juice) and tannin powder (or black tea).
- Add the remaining pomegranate juice, and add the yeast that you dissolved in water earlier.
- If necessary, top the fermentation vessel with water to bring it to within a few inches of the top.
- Seal with a water lock and ferment for 2 weeks.
- Rack into a clean fermentation vessel with a siphon and continue to ferment for another 4 to 8 weeks until the fermentation has stopped.
- Bottle and age a minimum of 2 weeks, but preferably several months before drinking.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Hi Ashley,
How to control oxidation?
Once the wine is racked, there is a lot more room left in the vessel. Won’t this cause over oxidation?
If you are concerned about oxidation you can top up the wine during the secondary ferment.
I thank you for the recipe. I am winging it as the wine yeast I purchased cam in a 1 oz packet. I don’t think I am supposed to use the entire once. I was wondering is there is another measurement than a packet? Thank you.
What size recipe are you wanting to make?
Your recipe us too complicated & too much trouble compared to my simply leaving the Pom caps slightly loose enough to naturally ferment & turn to wonderful Pomegranate Wine – Oh So Easy!!!!
Hi there
First of all thanks for the great tutorials 👌 I used fresh pomegranate and Redstar wine yeast for almost 26 liters of pomegranate must. But the problem was that since It was my first time making pomegranate wine, after adding sugar to the must, it was too sweet to the extent that I thought It won’t taste a little tart at the end, so I added about 600 ml of fresh lemon juice! 😑 even after that I thought It’s still pretty sweet. Thank god I didn’t have anymore lemon available. Now after 25 days of fermenting, it tastes bitter(no sweetness whatsoever) and veryy acidic, so much so that I can taste the lemon juice in my mouth!(60% pomegranate and 40% lemon) how can I reduce the acidity and and that sharp lemon juice flavor? Is it okay to add more pomegranate juice and sugar and yeat at this stage? Please help🙏
Here is an article with some ideas on how to reduce the acidity in your wine. https://blog.homebrewing.org/reduce-wine-acidity/
I am very excited to make this wine! The recipe calls for 1 packet of yeast for 1 gallon. Am I using the whole packet or part of the packet since 1 packet is for up to 5 gallons of wine? Thank you!
You can just use 1/4 of the yeast packet.
Hi
I started this recipe on
25 October using 6kg pomegranate (obtained 2,5lt juice) and 1kg sugar.
On 8 November rack into a new fermantation vessel (smell was not good. mostly yeast smell) I filtered instead of siphon)
on 2 january I filtered again and this time it smells very good.
next week I will filter again and bottle.
I will share the results.
thanks for the recipe.
Hi
I started this recipe on
25 October using 6kg pomegranate (obtained 2,5lt juice) and 1kg sugar.
On 8 November rack into a new fermantation vessel (smell was not good. mostly yeast smell) I filtered instead of siphon)
on 2 january I filtered again and this time it smells very good.
next week I will filter again and bottle.
I will share the results.
thanks for the recipe.
So glad you enjoyed the recipe. Thanks so much for sharing.
Hi again
on 9th of January I bottled my first batch. Since the smell was very good I could only wait till 16February. result was wonderful. I have three more bottles being aged and I started a new batch.
Thank You very much for the recipe.
So glad to hear you had such good results! Thanks for sharing.
I tried subbing in honey for the sugar because I love mead. I was very neglectful and just left it in primary fermentation for months. It turned out awesome though, and I’ll be trying again soon! But I’ll be more attentive this time and actual rack it into secondary…
Mead is incredibly forgiving when forgotten I’ve found! So glad it was tasty =)
Honey on average takes much longer to ferment than white sugar or even fruit sugars. Leaving the must in primary for several months does absolutely no harm and will increase the likelihood of a complete and clean fermentation. The only downside(?) is a much drier, less sweet mead. This can be remedied with the addition of extra sweetener to taste.
I just opened my first bottle of the pomegranate wine and it is wonderful. Thank you so much for the recipe.
I just opened my first bottle of the pomegranate wine and it is wonderful. Thank you so much for the recipe.
Wonderful, so glad you enjoyed it!
Its the 8th day and my Pomo wine has these strange white grape looking balls formed .can you advice what’s happening. I suppose it’s the raisins but I’m really nervous
Oh, just seeing this comment after your first one. The raisins puff up because they’re fermenting, so if you put white grapes in they will puff up into yellow looking balls (you know, like grapes). That’s normal if it’s the raisins. If it’s something else…then I honestly have no idea.
Its the 8th day and my Pomo wine has these strange white grape looking balls formed .can you advice what’s happening
You’ve got me on that one…not really sure what that could be? Are they above the waterline? If so, then maybe mold. Either way, take them out?
I followed the instructions and fermented for 2 weeks. Yesterday I racked it into a clean fermentation vessel. Since then I’ve not seen any outgassing? Do you know the reason? Thanks.
This is normal. You often won’t see it bubble for a long time but it’s likely bubbling about once every 5 minutes or so.
I will have about 3 – 5 gal. of juice from my Pom tree this year and first attempt making wine. Will aging in small oak barrel for a year or more improve the final product and be worth the effort. I have wine making friends in Napa.
Aging in oak will change the flavor, and I’d imagine for the better in the case of Pomegranate wine. You can also add oak chips to the carboy (in secondary) to get the same flavor.
Hi,
My husband and I have been studying this recipe for the last few days. We think we are ready. We will begin our first fermentation steps in two half gallon mason jars with a pickle pipe instead of waterlock. But we don’t know what the second one should be. Can you please advise something simple that isn’t plastic? I know to rack it you need to have something like a tea canister with the spout above the sediment, but if we are using mason jars how do we do this?
You can just continue in mason jars, no worries. When you rack the wine, just gently pour it into a new mason jar without disturbing the sediment. If there are chunks of fruit or raisins, pour it through a fine-mesh strainer when you move it over.
There are mason jar specific instructions here (I’m using quart jars): https://practicalselfreliance.com/make-1-quart-mead-micro-batch-method/
Here’s more info on making it work with minimal equipment with a small batch: https://practicalselfreliance.com/small-batch-wine/
Good luck!
Hi, we made pomagranate wine using your recipe but adapting it for less juice, we only had about 1,8l
I would like to know if you have an approximate alkohol content. We wanted to measure it and a friend lent us his hydrometer but unfortunately we didn’t measure the “wine/juice” mix at the strart. The finnished wine has a sweet taste and we classified it as a dessert wine.
Can I use ordinary brewers /bakers yeast?
Baker’s yeast will give the wine off flavors, and make it taste a bit like a loaf of bread. Believe it or not, a lot of the flavor in a wine comes from the yeast and the volatile compounds they release during fermentation. Champagne yeast is very neutral, while bread yeast in a wine tastes more or less like bread dough smells when it’s rising.
Other recipes i have seen add the same amount of water as juice, does this wine come out differently since it has less water?
With the relatively small amount of sugar your recipe adds, and with nothing to halt fermentation, it seems to me that this would be a very dry wine. Is that correct?