This year for the holidays I decided to try a new jelly. Earlier in the year I was disheartened to learn that my batch of apple butter had spoiled. We could no longer use it as gifts and I needed something to replace it. 

I used the Wine Jelly recipe from my America’s Test Kitchen DIY Cookbook. It covers a lot of ground in a relatively small book, including basic cured meats, pickles, jelly and cheese. If you are unfamiliar with their work, I would highly suggest it. The recipes are extremely detailed, I often find that it’s best to prep all your ingredients before starting the recipe. While that step may take longer than you want to spend, I assure you that it’s worth it.

Back to the jelly! Although I’ve made raspberry and strawberry-rhubarb jams, this is the first true jelly. I had no trouble finding the type of pectin required despite the fact that it was sort of hidden on the very bottom shelf. Without realizing it I had picked the wine the author recommended for this recipe, Merlot. It takes the whole bottle, so don’t think you can get away with a glass while making this.

At first I was unsure on why one would want to make a wine reduction for this when I read through the ingredients. I tend to read the ingredient list first, make sure I have everything, then read the instructions and explanations.  There they explain why they do a wine reduction. It’s to help bring out the wine flavor more. Yes, it works well. After all that cooking, sugar and such it does lose a bit of the wine flavor, the reduction adds it back in. Neat trick.

Once the jars cooled down I made labels for them using my dye cut, a paper punch and mod podge. They complimented the final look well. As a bonus the labels are easily removed once the jar is empty.

Of the jars we gave out for Christmas gifts, two reviews have come back from my giftee and both were glowing. One person it out at their family gathering and she told me everyone loved it, so much so that they hardly had any left at the end of the night.