How was wine made hundreds of years ago without all the chemicals we have today?

[Bartman]

Something that has bothered me about wine making since I started (which wasn't long ago in the relative scheme of things) is the number of chemicals that one is supposed to use when making wine. Some hundreds of years ago, I can't imagine that wine makers had Campden, metabisulphate, sorbate, acid testers, pH testers, hydrometers, acid blend, clarifying agents, let alone sanitizers! So how did they do it?

We're sure they were eating, drinking, and being merry and we're sure it included wine. So how could they make it with out "modern technology"?

Has anyone else contemplated this? What have you found? Why can't wine be made "simply"?

Yeah, I have to agree with early posters that said if we all just did things in the simplest effective manner, there would be little need or reason for a discussion forum. I avoid using most of the chemicals in kit wines and don't sweat the adequacy of my sanitizing efforts. It's telling that there is little/no comment from the forum folks I know enjoy the chemistry, testing and adjustment that goes into (typically) modern, mass-production wine practices/procedures. To each his own, ya know?

Two observations came to mind in reading this thread - 1) the alcohol in the wine has always been the primary preservative, and that was the 'magic' of fermenting fresh food for later consumption. What other edible liquid can be stored at room temperature for months or years without specialized canning or preservative equipment? Oil and water, but neither are both nutritious and drinkable. That alcohol (which could be called an 'added chemical' if you want to be technical) killed off the bad microbes early on and kept them at bay however the wine was stored. Oxidation, on the other hand, was probably the bugger threat, most of the time, depending on how the wine was stored.

2) Which reminded me of the Hemingway novel, "For Whom the Bell Tolls", about the Spanish Civil War a few years before WWII. In it, the fugitive guerrillas move through the countryside and one of the critical items the group would move from place to place was the 'wineskin'. Tha was often their only source of available potable fluid, but it was drunk fairly quickly soon so oxidation wasn't as much of an issue. Here's Wikipedia's description:

A bota bag or wineskin is a traditional Spanish liquid receptacle. Typically, it is made of leather (when made of goatskin it is known as a goatskin itself), and is used to carry wine, although any liquid will do.
Traditionally, bota bags were lined with goat bladders or in other cases tree sap or other resins were used to prevent liquids from seeping through. The nozzle, traditionally in horn, is fixed by a red collar. The zahato is carried across the shoulder with the red cord which surrounds it along the seam.
Modern bota bags have a plastic liner and nozzle.



I don't plan on using that 'traditional' method, but it is fascinating to see how people 'made do' in ages gone by.

 

[Arne]

Now I assume clarification was of little concern to early winemakers but when it did become the norm.....who the heck suggested they try ox blood?!!! Must be the same guy who suggested we start eating prairie oysters! Lol[/QUOTE]

I believe it was the same guy that said "Hey Oog, I believe I'll set this vat of grape juice in the back of the cave and save it. That way next spring we will have some fresh juice to drink." LOL, Arne.

 

[Craiger]

WineStream,

My grandfather died back in 1973 and he had been making Concord wine since 1936. He had a vineyard out on the farm and his wine making room was a dirt floor room in the basement of this 100 year old farm house. There was no running water down there. In fact, the only running water he ever had came from a cistern and for drinking water, he would go out a get a bucket of water from the old hand pump well. There was one light bulb in this room and he used no yeast that I know of. He had two old, dusty wine barrels and a wood framed wine press and of course a large clay crock. He never bottled his wine, it just stayed in the barrels, but that was the best Concord that I have ever had. I have never found anything that has ever come close. Some day, I will make his wine and when I do, it will be a proud moment for me. I only wish that I would have learned from him on how to grow grapes and make wine, but when you are young and stupid, you don't give any thought to these things. Now that I'm old and stupid, I kick myself for not learning a lot of things that he did out on the farm. If any of you ever hear of any old school Concord recipes, please keep me in mind.

I love that story! I started making wine without sulfites and yeast, because of the stories and traditions I heard about my great grandfather. Every time I take a sip of mine,for better or worse, (but as I've said, I've yet to have a bad bottle), it's a tribute to him, a man I never met. I hope you make your grandfather's wine some day and when you do, be sure to make the first toast to him. And yeah, you can make "better" wine by using the modern methods, but his wine is the "best"!

 

[BobR]

Craiger,
Yeah, I think that some people are tired of the hi-tech rat race that we now live in and I think more are wanting to return to their roots. Not just in wine making, but I have seen people who enjoy organic gardening, growing your own herbs and getting away from hybrid plants. There are soap makers and woodworkers out there who only use hand tools. I'm not saying that old school wine making is the best, it's just nice to find a group that has an interest in that type of stuff. It brings back memories of playing in my grandfathers vineyard, eating the grapes and having someone slip me a little Concord wine.
Back in the early 1900's, the town that I grew up in was an Italian emigrant coal mining town. My grandfather lived in town until he bought the farm in 1936. These "old timers" all had big yards, big gardens, a few fruit trees and most had a Concord vineyard and they made homemade wine. The "transplants" that would arrive later called it **** red and they enjoyed every drop of it. Oh my gosh, my neighbor would make wine in his basement and he would open all of the windows when it was fermenting. That smell, on a good day it would fill the whole neighborhood. During my high school years, I cut grass for these old timers and even by then, the Concords were still there. In 1988, we moved outside of town, out next to the old farm, in which most is still in the family. In 2007, it dawned on me, all of those Concords were now gone. I was able to find a few families that still had a few vines left. By now, the kids of these families are in their late 80's to mid-90's. Since 2009, I have been trying to preserve this old Concord variety that was planted from 1902 to 1918. I have been getting some cuttings every year, but have not had a great success rate on getting them started. I'll try again next month, but with these people now dying off, I think that the days of the remaining Concords are numbered. Oh well, it's been fun and I do have Concords from four families and the rows are named after each Italian family where the cutting came from. Nope, not trying to change the world....just trying to enjoy it.

 

[jswordy]

How was wine made hundreds of years ago without all the chemicals we have today?

Unevenly. People who made it consistently and well in Jesus time were considered to be sort of magicians with a direct connection to God to do this. That is why changing water to wine at the wedding was a cool thing Jesus did in the Bible.

My grandfather made it without chemicals or even packaged yeast in the '60s, and there are lots and lots of immigrant and second-gen families (particularly in the Midwest) who still make it that way today.

The "chemical way" is entirely intended to help assure you good and directly repeatable results, then make it so you can store it longer. That is why it evolved. You're right, it is not necessary to making wine. When I was 9, I made wine out of Hi-C grape juice in a jar with bread yeast. It is also not necessary to making good wine. My grandfather made an excellent white with no chemicals.

But making wine without the "chemical way" is extremely difficult, and somewhat like catching lightning in a jar when it comes to repeatability across batches. It's demanding because you must be a slave to tiny details to get repeatability, and if you go all the way and use just the wild yeast present to start off, it requires careful attention to the grapes you use, where they come from, and how they are handled. All of those can make a bad batch, whereas with the "chemical way," you start off fairly sterile and create the yeast population you want.

The chemicals have stripped away the "magician's" role and turned basic winemaking into something that is as easy as following a recipe. It has opened winemaking to a much larger crowd.

As I have posted before, I always tend to when people talk about not wanting any bad chemicals in their wine, since the primary chemical being produced is:

http://www.nafaa.org/ethanol.pdf

 

[BobR]

My grandfather made it without chemicals or even packaged yeast in the '60s, and there are lots and lots of immigrant and second-gen families (particularly in the Midwest) who still make it that way today.

Getting harder to find these people. Last summer I attended an Italian Festival in Peoria, IL. I bumped into a few old timers that had been wine makers in their day and none had a written recipe and when I showed them one that I found on line, they looked at it like it was Greek to them. Oh well, it would be nice to hear from anyone who had success stories to tell.

 

[mmadmikes1]

part of the magic of fermenting with wild yeast is simple. The same strain of yeast live in the same vineyards year in and year out making a consistent wine possible. I learned to make wine from my grandfather. He made lousy wine. Always had some oxidation. Never enough to make it undrinkable. Part of living in a place called Grapeview was wine grapes. Most of the wineries there are gone now. Fond memories

 

[BobR]

Yeah, I hear ya on the fond memories!

 

[JohnT]

If I may weigh in here..

I like the old saying... Those that do not learn from the past are condemmed to repeat it. Quite simply, the good old days were not so good. Take the phylloxera epidemic of the 19th and 20th centuries. Why, without modern science and techniques, there would not be a single vitis vinifera grape anywhere in the world.

Think of it as benefiting from thousands of years of experience. From time to time, I have seen posts that recomend action based on folklore and not scientific fact ("do not rack during a full moon" for example).

I can not begin to measure the true debt I owe the wonderful people on this forum. With their help, I eventually was able to seperate folklore from fact. It is still an ongoing process and even with over 25 years of winemaking experience, I find still I have things to learn.

I come from a long line of winemakers. To me, using modern techniques does not reflect poorly on my ancesters. If they were alive today, and could taste the results, I am sure that they would be very proud of me.

Finally, you would be very surprised at how much of these chemicals were actually used in the past. For example, "sulphur sticks" have been used for sterlizing barrels. Sulphur is still being used, just in a different, more easy to use form (k-meta).

Another example is the fact that Malo-lactic fermentation was natrually occuring in France for (potentially) thousands of years. The French were simply unaware of it and was only discovered through scientific analysis.

One last note: Let your own tongue decide on what you prefer to do. Perform a blind tasting with organic wines against simular non-organic wines. If you are like me, you may find most organic wines are not as good. I feel that most will choose organic simply because they are organic and not because they are better and more enjoyable. (I know that others may disagree with me here, all I am saying is decide for yourself).

 

[Bartman]

JohnT,
Somewhat along those lines is that Kosher Wine share a lot of similarities to organic wines (except while the grapes are growing). But they rarely taste as good to me as non-kosher wines, although I haven't tasted many unsweetened kosher wines. Kosher winemakers (who must be male) cannot use many of the fining agents we take for granted as available, but they can use bentonite and egg whites (I think). There's a lot more to it, if you want to study it.

Now, THAT is old-school winemaking, and I think it woiuld be pretty tough to make a very good dry red using those methods.

 

[jswordy]

Getting harder to find these people. Last summer I attended an Italian Festival in Peoria, IL. I bumped into a few old timers that had been wine makers in their day and none had a written recipe and when I showed them one that I found on line, they looked at it like it was Greek to them. Oh well, it would be nice to hear from anyone who had success stories to tell.

Like Mad Mike said, it was all about where you got your grapes. You could also inoculate your own vines with yeast from elsewhere by dumping the lees and used grapes around your plants. Over several years, the vine got inoculated with that strain. That's how they have done it for hundreds of years in Europe.

My Italian grandpa used to order 36 lugs of grapes, zinfandel and some red too, and make a red rose and some white wine. He would make wine once a year, with two pressings. The first would be all grape juice and maybe just enough sugar to get it going. The second would involve the skins from the first and water and sugar. So he had one shot a year at getting it right. His wines were very dry.

His grapes came from California, and he bought them through a local supermarket. He experimented with other types of grapes, but they did not have the proper yeasts he liked. He would load up a great big car with lugs of grapes when they came in. Every seat and the trunk would be full, and grandpa would drive them home. My uncles used to help him make the wine, as boys and young adults.

He stomped his grapes in a wooden half-barrel, fermented in wooden half-barrels, pressed them with a press he made out of an old hand letterpress, and kept the wine in six oak barrels in the basement. No carboys and etc.

He would drink a very small glass - a little bigger than a shot glass - of wine with each meal. At holiday family gatherings, he would break it out more freely. I did get my share of tastes as a small boy. I still remember him coming in on summer days from tending his large garden and sitting down to a bowl of my grandma's soup with that small glass of wine.

He had a group of winemaking friends, all Italian immigrants, and they would gather from time to time and bring their wines and taste them and talk about methods they used to produce them. My grandpa was very proud of the wine he made, though I can't say on here what he called it.

When I was 10 and he was diagnosed with leukemia, the docs still permitted him to have his daily small glasses of wine. They said it wouldn't hurt him and might keep his spirits up. So he had wine all the way up to his last several days on Earth.

We used to have quite a few artisanal winemakers on the forum.

 

[BobR]

jswordy,

Really enjoyed your story! When my grandfather died in '73, the family took out the old vineyard (I now have a few grapes on that same hillside) and sold just the old farm house, which turned out to be a big mistake. Now you have a total stranger in the middle of the property. In fact, while planting grapes last spring, the present owner came over and told me that his wife did not like the grapes being planted there. Well anyway, the house over the years had changed hands twice. When it was put up for sale a third time, the owner came over and told me that there was an old grape press in the basement and asked if I'd be interested in it. Well, I just about knocked her over getting to the thing and to my surprise, it was my grandfathers old press. My brother and I lugged it out and I cleaned it up and still have it down stairs. There was no basket with it and there was no sign of his old clay crock, or his two wine barrels. She said that only the press was there when she bought the house. Oh well, after 35 years, I felt lucky just to get that. Yeah, I too can remember the old Italian immigrants gathering out at the farm for an afternoon and just sitting around drinking wine. That's when they would slip me some wine. What a smell and flavor.....smooth and then a little later, you'd break out in a cold sweat.

 

[kevinlfifer]

I have nothing to add, but what a great series of postings.

 

[robie]

I am really enjoying this thread. I truly wish my family had had a background in vineyards and wine making; maybe they did but I sure don't know about it. I love to hear about all your relatives of the past and how they made wine.

In about 3 months, I am privileged to be taking a 10-day trip to the wine regions of Italy, where I have never been before and until recently, every even hoped to see. I'm looking forward to seeing homesteads and wineries that were built hundreds of years ago; and of course a bunch of much newer ones, too. It's all good!

I understand some wanting to adhere to the old ways and also the idea that many of the old timers just might have appreciated some of our newer methods and techniques. Now that I am older and hopefully a little wiser, there is something so very special about the past and the pioneers of days gone by, who have steered us to where we are today, many of them not even realizing that they were. Where would we be without them...

I am one of hopefully only a few individuals who have no idea of my family history. I know nothing about my grand parents' parents; from where they originated or for what they stood. I had little exposure to my grandparents and didn't think to start asking questions until they and my parents were already gone. I don't know if I am Irish, English, or German. Sort of a lonely feeling.

Good for you gals and guys, who learned from the previous generation(s) and are carrying on, maybe still in the same older style or maybe you've even incorporated some new techniques. As I said above, it's all good.

I believe that when you try to make wine the way your grandpa did, or maybe even your great grandpa, what an honor that is to be able to carry-on that tradition. Every time you do that, you are honoring them and your heritage.

Thanks again for this thread. It's all good.

 

[jswordy]

BobR, that looks just like an old letter press to me! They used to use them to print handbills and ad posters. So cool that you have your grandpa's!

I'd like to say that the tradition continued in my family, but it didn't. My uncles did not make wine as they married and had families, so it all died with grandpa. One of them has his press, I think, but I'll never see it or get to use it again. Now my second cousins had a guy, Dominic, who had a vineyard and became a vintner, even started a small company. But I guess I sort of picked it up more from a desire to drink my own stuff and have cheaper good-tasting wine than anything else.

Funny how it works, though. The more I made wine, the more memories came back, even though I am not doing it like grandpa did. I was barely 11 when he died, and I recall one winemaking day - very vaguely, just enough to know that was what was going on back then.

My uncle Joe said that as boys they would have to reach down into a barrel to scoop up fermented grapes to be pressed "and you could get stoned just by breathing down there."

 

[BobR]

In about 3 months, I am privileged to be taking a 10-day trip to the wine regions of Italy, where I have never been before and until recently, every even hoped to see. I'm looking forward to seeing homesteads and wineries that were built hundreds of years ago; and of course a bunch of much newer ones, too. It's all good!

Robie,

Thanks so much for your kind words! But I must say, WOW, a 10 day Italian wine regions trip! When you get back, you will be the new expert on "old school" wine making. I'm sorry to say that I just don't fly, or I'd be jumping at the chance to go with you. My daughter has been there twice and I have had family and friends who go over for two week vacations and they all just love it. A close friend went over last summer and they took him on winery tours in the Abruzzo region where our families had come from. My daughter told me that she would have no problem on moving there, so I do hope that you are in for a good time. Of course 4 months from now, we will expect to see a lot of photos and hear a lot of wine and vineyard stories.

 

[BobR]

that looks just like an old letter press to me! They used to use them to print handbills and ad posters.

Beats me, you could be very well right on this press. Growing up, I always remembered that press sitting on the dirt floor of his wine room. It always sat in the middle of the room, right under the only light bulb. Yeah, I'm like you, neither my dad, his two brothers or sister ever had anything to do with wine making. Once my grandfather died, they had no idea of how he made it. They never helped, or even watched.
I mentioned earlier that when I was growing up, our neighbor made wine in his basement. He died quite a few years ago, but after his wife died in 2011 my dad bought the house for rental property and when we were cleaning out the basement, I got that old press out of there. It's a more modern press like what you could buy today, but that thing has got to be at least 50 years old. I cleaned the rust off of the legs, soaked and scrubbed the basket in OxyClean and painted it. I never planned on using it, but last fall, I bought 144 pounds of Concords from a winery and I used it to press the grapes.

 

[Craiger]

I have nothing to add, but what a great series of postings.

I'm with you.

The only thing I will add is that the stories shared in this post are why I make my grape wine the traditional way. For me, I feel a connection to my past (mine is Polish, not Italian). I feel I'm part of that tradition. For me it's less about the taste of the wine and more about paying tribute.

Some would argue that regardless of how the wine is made, and the chemicals that are added, we're still part of the tradition. I wouldn't argue that point. It's all in your point of view.

 

[Deezil]

I am one of hopefully only a few individuals who have no idea of my family history. I know nothing about my grand parents' parents; from where they originated or for what they stood. I had little exposure to my grandparents and didn't think to start asking questions until they and my parents were already gone. I don't know if I am Irish, English, or German. Sort of a lonely feeling.

Not to derail this thread, but... I had this problem myself, only - i knew JUST enough to make me almost cry, wishing i knew more... Honestly, Ancestry.com does a nice job - i paid for 1 month + their promotion, at the time was an extra 10 days...

Figured out my Dads-Mom's side of the family was traceable to Virginia, back before America even fought for its Independence.. I've had family members (on both sides, mom & dads) in every major American war since it was founded (except for the last one, i get to live with that).. I learned more than i bargained for..

All you really need to start with is your name, your mom and dads name.. Your grandparents, if you knew their names.. If not, some of your aunts and uncles names... And the census records and such kind of take over from there, you just have to DIG and make sure its correct..

For some 25 bucks, its better than knowing nothing.. Cause thats a horrible feeling

 

[robie]

Thanks, might give it a try.