Mixing Juice Buckets and Grapes?

[jsbeckton]

I am trying to move from kits to all grapes and ordered 108lbs of Chilean Merlot. I don’t have a crusher/destemmer so will be doing that manually (I do have a press). What I was wondering is if it’s common practice to also get a juice bucket and combine everything into one fermentation to kind of cheat up your yield?

I did 2 juice buckets (no grapes) in 2016 and was really disappointed in how they turned out. Was thinking that maybe it was due to a local of skins so maybe this might yield better results?

Or should I just stick with just the all grape batch to prevent any dilution in quality?

 

[Boatboy24]

While adding some grapes to a juice bucket will help with adding body, mouthfeel and tannin, I'm not sure I'd do the reverse. You have enough grapes to get more than 6 gallons there. I'd probably just go w/ that.

 

[Ajmassa]

Or Make 2 different wines. The all grape and then use those skins in a juice pail. I did that last spring adding 300lbs worth of Malbec grapes’ skins to a Syrah juice pail.
Was a lot of skins and looked like slop. But result was definitely legit. I will probably do that again

 

[CDrew]

I would stick with grapes. Wine is made from grapes. Use Enzymes to increase your extraction of flavor.

I would think the less processing before you get it, the better. And I'd consider a larger vintage since the amount of work is not that different.

 

[jgmann67]

This past fall I did 4 lugs of OVZ grapes and a bucket of OVZ juice. I bought them from an outfit that provides crushing/destemming on site for free.

When I brought my purchases home, I combined them and fermented juice and grape in the same vessel.

At last taste, the wine was pretty righteous. I’d probably do it again without too much thought.

 

[heatherd]

I frequently do batches that have 6 gallons of juice and 6 gallons off grape must. I agree its an easy/cheap way to increase the yield.

 

[jsbeckton]

Thanks for the responses. I’ll prob stick with all grapes for this first batch but consider mixing in the future.

Would be interesting to do one half and half and another all grape and then see how they compare over time.