Verjuice

Verjuice, in its original medieval French vertjus, literally ‘green juice’, was first made from sorrel juice and then from unripe plums. From the sixteenth century it has been made from crushed and strained unripe grapes and has been an inexpensive culinary by-product of wine-growing areas ever since. It remains a neat way of using up grapes in cold wet summers, when they do not ripen sufficiently to make good wine; although it can just as well be made from the sediment left over after the young wine is first racked.