Since ancient times, English cider producers have referred to the waste products of fruit processing as “pomace,” which is derived from the Latin word “pomum,” which means “apple.”
In white winemaking, the pomace is the sweet, pale brownish-green mass of grape skins, stems, seeds, and pulp left after pressing.
In red winemaking, the pomace is a similar mass of grape debris coloured blackish red left after the free-run wine has been drained. Because red wine pomace is what is left after fermentation rather than before, it also includes dead yeast cells and contains traces of alcohol rather than sugar.
In larger wineries, the significant amount of sugar which remains in white grape pomace may be washed out of the solid mixture and fermented to produce material for distillation into pomace brandy. Similar to this, large wineries may use distillation to recover the lesser levels of alcohol found in red grape pomace.
Oenocyanin, a food colouring agent, can also be recovered from red wine pomace, a practice that is very common in Italy. In some regions around the world, the solids from several wineries may be amalgamated for processing to recover tartrates and, occasionally, grapeseed oil.
The French people call both pomace that has been drained dry and pomace brandy: the “MARC”. Some English speakers may call the ‘dry pomace’, the ‘press cake’.
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