ditchbanker
Junior
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2011
- Messages
- 24
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I've been making fruit wines since last winter. Only one of my final bottled wines was bad. Not spoiled, just bad (white welche's wine... no flavor). So, last spring when my mom mentioned that she had a grape vine growing decoratively in her yard and they'd never done anything with the grapes, I told her I'd be happy to try some wine out of it, to see how it turned out.
Picked the grapes today.
I told her the grapes would need to be pruned to get ultimate sunlight. It's already growing against a fence, so I knew it'd be an issue. Apparently she didn't quite understand.
Lesson 1) make sure a grower knows what they're doing to make good wine.
Tied directly to lesson 2) I know now what people mean when they use the term "herbacious". My wife and I smelled the primary before anything was crushed, and both quickly gained an understanding.
3) I understand now the need for a destemer/crusher. Even though I knew better, part of my brain was still working in terms of grocery store grapes. About 20 lbs of grapes destemmed by hand, and I'm about to look up prices online. Ugh.
4) If you're spending hours making a wine you feel, deep in your gut, will not be that good, opening up a good bottle of sangiovese from a local winery helps pass the time. It's also responsible for most of the typos present here. Same point as with the wine... I just don't care.
5) It was good to get a "practice" run before I pick up my real wine grapes from a local grower later this week.
Still, my first real wine, and I was still excited to see the must after I crusehd it with a cleansed potato masher.
Picked the grapes today.
I told her the grapes would need to be pruned to get ultimate sunlight. It's already growing against a fence, so I knew it'd be an issue. Apparently she didn't quite understand.
Lesson 1) make sure a grower knows what they're doing to make good wine.
Tied directly to lesson 2) I know now what people mean when they use the term "herbacious". My wife and I smelled the primary before anything was crushed, and both quickly gained an understanding.
3) I understand now the need for a destemer/crusher. Even though I knew better, part of my brain was still working in terms of grocery store grapes. About 20 lbs of grapes destemmed by hand, and I'm about to look up prices online. Ugh.
4) If you're spending hours making a wine you feel, deep in your gut, will not be that good, opening up a good bottle of sangiovese from a local winery helps pass the time. It's also responsible for most of the typos present here. Same point as with the wine... I just don't care.
5) It was good to get a "practice" run before I pick up my real wine grapes from a local grower later this week.
Still, my first real wine, and I was still excited to see the must after I crusehd it with a cleansed potato masher.