Jam from Red Vineyard Peaches

One of the unusual fruits that ripen this time of year is the "roter Weinbergpfirsich" or red vineyard peach. This is a red flesh peach that is grown in vineyards along the Moselle. It is not a particularly sweet peach, but is highly prized  by some for its use in jams, liqueurs and compotes. We picked up a couple of kilo and made a really tasty jam with them and in the process learned a thing or two.

First is the juice from these peaches is a really intense red. Peeling these peaches results in red hands, and if not careful ruined clothes. The hands can be cleaned with the use of lemon juice. But use of the clothes will be limited to working around the house (voice of experience here). But this is also what gives you this ruby colored result.

The other interesting thing is learning how homemade jams are done here in German. It seems a more popular hobby there than in the USA, at least it appears that more shelf space in the grocery stores seem to be devoted to it than in Columbus. We used one product that I haven't seen in the USA. This is a sugar that already has the pectin mixed in called Gelierzucker. Gelierzucker is offered in two strengths, 2:1 and 3:1. 3:1 Gelierzucker would require a 3 to 1 ratio by weight of fruit to sugar to make jam.  It only requires 3 minutes of boil for the jam to set. Cannot get much simpler than this. Peel and stone the peaches, weigh the resulting flesh, divide by three, add that much Gelierzucker, bring to boil for 3 minutes, put the jam in your jars.

These peaches should be available for a couple more weeks. I would still like to try making a peach liqueur before the season ends. Magda claims that once you have a fruit compote made with these peaches, you won't want to use any other fruit. So we will have to try that too. But more on that later.