Bitter-sweet symphony
Verjuice is a charmer when cooking - and drinking - writes Genevieve Barlow.
MAYBE verjuice is suited to these post-GFC times. After all, it's pressed from unripe grapes, it tastes sour and it was born commercially - in this country at least - in a difficult era. It's also non-alcoholic, leaving imbibers clear-headed.
Maybe that's just what's needed as we apparently wade out of financial turbulence.
The name comes from the French terms ''vert'', meaning green, and ''jus'', meaning juice. Hints of its origin are found in winemaking countries worldwide. In Italy, it's known as agresto, in Spain as agraz and in Lebanon as hosrum. One maker claims European peasants pressed verjuice from grape thinnings - grapes they'd taken off vines to allow others to mature. Rather than leave them to rot, they'd collect and press them.
South Australian foodie, farmer and vigneron Maggie Beer commercialised verjuice in Australia when, in 1984, she found herself unable to sell the grapes she'd grown. A thorough reading of French provincial women's cooking led her to verjuice and so, as farmers do when faced with challenges, she diversified. She pressed 200 kilograms of grapes, bottled the unfermented juice and released it to a virgin market completely unschooled in its use.
Cognisant of the nation's ignorance about the substance, she set about educating cooks, running demonstrations daily at her now famous Pheasant Farm and releasing her recipe collection, Cooking with Verjuice. The free demonstrations continue to this day and Australians, it seems, are beginning to savour the merits of the unfermented juice of the not-quite-ripe grape. And they're not merely using it for deglazing pans and making sauces but for preserving and poaching, as peasants did in Roman times.
''When preserving food, you have to have a lower pH,'' Beer explains. ''The big thing about verjuice is that it's a gentle acid. It doesn't overtake the flavours you are adding it to. It heightens them.''
Winemaker Ron Snep, who grows about seven hectares of vines south of Maldon in central Victoria, has been making and selling verjuice commercially since 2004.
This year, he pressed 9000 litres from 20 tonnes of grapes at his Welshmans Reef vineyard. He makes some under contract for other growers, using a purpose-built, Italian-made filtering machine that removes bacteria and yeast from the juice, processing 1200 litres an hour.
He says that in the past, winemakers preferred not to make the juice because it can be difficult to stabilise. Fermented juice might risk reputations. He prefers to use cooler-climate grapes because they produce a higher acid content.
''We've made verjuice from Riverland grapes but it doesn't have the same intensity,'' Snep says. ''Grapes grown in warmer regions have a lower acid content at the same ripeness stage as grapes grown in cooler areas, so it's best made from grapes that are grown in cooler climates.''
They are best picked at veraison - just as they are about to change colour - then pressed. The skins are removed then the juice is settled, filtered and bottled. It's ready to drink within five days.
Yes, drink. While cooks have generally revived verjuice's popularity, cocktail drinkers and those using it as a non-alcoholic mixer are helping out too.
Matthew Rees, who manages Richmond's Der Raum cocktail bar, says verjuice cycles through the bar's seasonal selection, most recently as a souring agent in the 2am Lockout, a tribute to the Prohibition-era Scofflaw cocktail.
Favoured as a citrus substitute, it works especially well with brandy, according to Rees, whose boss at Der Raum, Matt Bax, came up with the verjuice martini in Maggie Beer's honour.
Snep says verjuice, once bottled and sealed at making, will keep well for years. But once opened, it needs to be refrigerated and used within a few days.
He makes two versions: a clear chardonnay grape liquid and a rose-coloured merlot version, both of which he likes to drink on the rocks. He has friends who opt to mix verjuice with soda or tonic water.
This year, Beer pressed 50 tonnes of the 800 tonnes of grapes she grows into verjuice. That's quite a leap from 200 kilograms. Her verjuice is also being produced in France in small quantities.
''It's only taken 20 years to be an overnight success,'' she laughs. ''It was 2000 before it took off and to my pleasure, a lot of companies are following suit and making it - not only in Australia but the rest of the world. It's no longer my whim.''
The Age, 2010