GRAPE AND OTHER FRUIT JUICES Grape and other fruit juices have become, of recent years, articles of commercial importance; their manufacture is recognized as a noteworthy industry; and the sale of fruit for this purpose is of sufficient volume to be an influential factor in establishing the market price. Grape juice is now manufactured and sold as a beverage, for its nutritive and tonic value in sickness, and for its use for flavoring other foods and drinks. Other fruit juices are sold largely for their uses as flavors, particularly to the soda-fountain, baking and confectionary trades. The amount of grape juice made probably exceeds many times the amount of all other fruit juices, although of recent years there has appeared in the markets an unfermented apple juice and an unfermented orange juice in considerable quantities.
Distribution and extent of the industry.
The greatest manufacture of fruit juices in the East is in New York state, and in the West in California. The manufacture of apple juice, pro perly so-called, being a different product from cider, in that it contains no product of fermenta tion and no alcoholic content, is being practiced in increasing measure in several sections, particu larly in the western New York apple-belt and some other apple-growing sections. Orange juice is put ap in California on a somewhat extensive scale.
The manufacture of grape juice grew up as a commercial enterprise entirely apart from the wine industry, contrary to the general impression that the wine industry is the parent of the grape juice business. It can be said to have had its beginning at Vineland, N. J., with Dr. Thomas B.
Welch. In 1869, Dr. Welch put up a few bottles of grape juice for use at the communion table of the Vineland church of which he was a member, and each succeeding year found a larger demand for his product. It was made in the kitchen of his own home. Sugar was used for preservation; but even in the earliest days it was seen that much sugar destroyed the more delicate flavors of the juice, and its use was gradually lessened until later methods of perfect sterilization make its use unnecessary with grapes of ordinary quality. When the vineyard inter
ests of Vineland and the surrounding sec tions of New Jersey began to fail, the Welch business, then grown to fair-sized propor tions, was moved to Chautauqua county, N. Y., and the factory of the Welch Grape Juice Company was established at Westfield.
Prior to the removal of Welch to West field, in about 1890, other persons, in a more or less experimental way, had begun to make grape juice in that section, and today there are several large factories other than the Welch factory located there. Notable among these experimenters was M. B. Gleason, of Ripley, who evolved a secret process. W. H. Bigelow, of Dunkirk, N. Y., was another pioneer, producing a staple unfermented juice by a secret process as early as 1892.
In other states, of recent years the industry has grown. In Ohio, there are two or three factories, notably the one at Sandusky, which gets its supply of fruit from the Kelley island group. In Michigan there are several factories, and in New Jersey the industry still exists on a small scale at Vineland. In Georgia there is a small grape-growing area, and the manufacture of unfermented juice is practiced. In California, since 1900, several fac tories have started, and one or two companies have been in the business for over twenty years. The extreme sweetness of the California grapes, which are of the European varieties and much different in flavor from those grown in the more northern climates, makes the juice from them very unlike that made and sold in the eastern factories.
The total production of unfermented grape juice for the year ended December 31, 1906, for the United States, is estimated at 1,000,000 to 1,200, 000 gallons. Of this, the western New York sec tion produced over 750,000 gallons.
Principles involved in making fruit juices.