ATTN: Pittsburgh Winemakers - Possible Group Buy from M&M Wine Grape Company

[jacksmith]

If you are a winemaker in the Pittsburgh, PA area and you are interested in procuring some high quality, Premium California wine grapes from regions such as Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, Suisun, Paso Robles, etc., you may be in luck!

I have spoken with the M&M Wine Grape Company about the potential to have them ship fresh grapes to our region via a freight truck. If we can get a large enough order together, we can make this happen.

If you make wine from grapes and you want to step up from the Central Valley grapes that we can get here in Pittsburgh, please contact me and we can try to get make this group buy happen! You can reply to this thread or you can PM me, either way. But if you're interested, please let me know soon so we can get this put together in time for this fall's harvest.

 

[Sirs]

oh I so wish I was close enough to be able to get in on this

 

[jacksmith]

You could try to organize the same in your area. Just contact M&M and see if they'd be willing to ship to NC.

 

[jacksmith]

I've received a bit of interest in this. If you're interested in going in on this group buy and haven't contacted me yet, please get in touch asap and let me know which varieties you are interested in and what quantities you are looking for. Then I'll be able to find out if we have enough interest to make it happen. I'd like to have a go or no-go this week so that it doesn't hold up anybody's plans for getting grapes elsewhere in case it's no-go.

 

[jr98118]

Hi Jack -

I'm interested. It has to be better than Premier Produce in the Strip district at 4am! I haven't thought about varieties - It'll depend on what's available. I usually buy 300-400 pounds - depends on the price.

 

[Rocky]

jr98118, When I saw the original post, I was wondering if the produce companies in the strip still existed. I lived in Pittsburgh until about 1976 and we used to buy all of our wine grapes there and there were several suppliers. (Permanti's original shop was there, too!) We used to always buy Muscat and either Zinfandel or Alicante and made an Italian table wine by blending these two grapes. I can remember when a 42 pound box sold for $.75. When the price went to $1.00, there was almost a riot! When I left Pittsburgh in 1976, the price was about $6 a box and the boxes were reduced to 36 pounds. I can only imagine what the cost today.

 

[jacksmith]

jr98118, I will PM you...

Rocky, good to hear from a former Pittsburgher. Consumers and Premier are still there in the strip, still selling grapes. I got my Chilean grapes from Consumers back in May. They were nice. Primati's is still in its same old spot on Smallman. The ones on Cherry Way and in Market Square downtown are still there, too. They've expanded into the suburbs now. The suburban shops just don't have the same feel; they're actually kind of nice! As for the prices of those grapes, they've certainly gone up, and it's safe to say by more than just inflation. $6 in 1976 is about $22.50 now. They go for more than $22.50 a box.

 

[jacksmith]

There was a good bit of interest in the group buy, but alas it is not going to happen. Unfortunately the prices when including the cost of freighting the grapes here from Hartford are too high for most of those who were interested, myself included.

To those of you who were interested, I'm sorry that it didn't work out. However, there's still plenty of time to order your grapes from other local suppliers. Grapes are just now coming online for order, and many offerings aren't even posted yet.

Thank you for your interest, in best of luck with your 2011 vintage!