I thought I'd already answered that? Here is the relevant part again:

That could be problematic as yeast
needs other things that just sugar to grow - vitamins and minerals -
you won't have those in sugar syrup.

So essentially, you're running a risk of weakening the yeast culture,
which kind of defeats the whole purpose of making a starter. The juice
will be fine for the relatively short time it will take to build the
starter.

Pp

On Jan 22, 3:41 pm, Wine Enthusiast > wrote:
> I mean simple syrup (granulated sugar and water), but I don't want to
> replace the juice. The instructions suggest to use juice in the starter,
> but I want to know if syrup, which is usually added to the majority of
> must/juice, could be fermented in the starter before the majority of the
> juice would be added. In other words, the rest of the juice is all I
> want to add to a strong starter in order to speed up fermentation. Possible?
>