Decanter.com speaks to a US company that has started making ‘wine flour’ out of leftover grapes and skins and claims that the finished product retains varietal flavour.
Finger Lakes Wine Flour has created range of varietal flours using Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Riesling and Gerwurztraminer, and a red blend.
It also makes crackers, cupcakes and truffles from the flours.
‘Initially I was trying to make bio-diesel out of grape-seed oil,’ Hilary Niver-Johnson, the creator of Finger Lakes Wine Flour, told Decanter.com.
‘I quickly learned that grape seeds are a small percentage of the overall grape pomace that is produced when a winery presses the grapes for their juice. Most of the pomace is made up of grape skins. The skins hold so many nutrients and in the US have traditionally been discarded.’
‘Here in the Finger Lakes, my small company recycles all of the pomace we receive.’
Other companies have also given wine flour a try in recent years, notably WholeVine, which was co-founded by Barbara Banke, proprietor of Jackson Family Wines.
Credit: Finger Lakes Wine Flour
Matching flavours
Niver-Johnson said that flour from grapes should be used to supplement the flour you’re already using, not completely replace it.
She added that the different flours have the flavour profiles of the respective grape.
‘We have been pairing each wine flour with a local fruit that most closely mimics the flavours of each flour.
‘We’ve paired Merlot with strawberry dishes, Cabernet Sauvignon with blackberry, Cabernet Franc with blueberry, Gewurztraminer with peach, Riesling with Apple, Red Blend with triple berry and Pinot Noir with cherry.’
She also suggested ‘adding the flours for red sauces or white sauces in spaghetti or mac and cheese’.
The company plans to release three more varieties of wine flour this autumn, she said.
At the time of writing, the company was selling a pack of eight wine flours from different grape varieties for £63.52, excluding shipping costs.
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