Dehydrated Red Wine

Without revealing my sources lets just say I had some dehydrated wine appear at my home one day last week. Sold in Europe and not FDA-approved in the USA this may be tricky to obtain – but – is it worth the effort?

Lets do the taste-test

First the goods – comes nicely packaged in a foil pouch. Weighing in a 2.1 oz – considerably less than your average 1 liter bottle, it's looking good so far

wint

Emptying the powder into a bowl, it has a distinctive musty smell – kind of like old cork. Can't be bad, right? Perhaps it's a vintage year?

The directions call for mixing with 6 oz of cold water, and letting stand for 5 minutes.

I was rather hoping it would make more than this but I'm still hopeful maybe the powder/liquid ratio helps the alcohol content, and the taste will be more divine this way

After about 6-7 minutes of stirring – trying to get the powder to dissolve and get rid of the lumps, I finally give up and reach for the strainer.

Strained into a wine glass, the wine now has a delightful white scum layer floating on top ok I'm starting to get nervous

I try and overlook the rotting beetroot smell as I bring the glass to my lips for the taste test mind over matter, I really really want this to work out. It's dehydrated wine for heavens sake – cut it some slack.

A nice fruity bouquet, wonderful legs, earthy structure, revealing layers of ripe berries, currants and vanilla oak. 

These aren't the words I would use. I tried really hard – but the following is the BEST I could come up with.

Clumpy, musty odor, like drinking beetroot juice spiked with cheap vodka that has spoiled at the bottom of the ocean for three hundred years.

Needless to say this sucker won't be going in my pack on a trip anytime soon.

I wonder if I can sell the other two packets on ebay to recover my losses

14 thoughts on “Dehydrated Red Wine

  1. brett Post author

    i can’t say that i’ve ever tasted dandruff to spot the linkage, but the idea of dandruff pop-rocks really doesn’t sound too appealing. i’ll pass 😉

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  4. Kerrythis

    In the day of Prohibition it was common practice to buy wine this way and of course when you got home .. you had wine! not so new… I understand the wine bricks were not so light …

  5. Marcel

    Hey Brett, I might be interested in buying one of those from you! I have a “How low can you go” wine tasting coming up. I saw an email for this some time ago and have been trying to find some.

  6. Mike

    My wife and I were just sitting here after a 10 mile hike today discussing how we were going to deal with no wine when we did the AT. So we started looking for dehydrated wine. Knew it had to exist, however we had a few good yuks over your article. Thanks.

  7. DK

    I take the 151 proof vodka (not the famous rum) and powdered orange juice. Its great. There is even a stronger version that I have not tried. It taste just like the 80 proof that we normally buy but goes twice as far.

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