Switch To grapes

[JohnT]

It seems to me that this year we have a fair number of members that, after sticking mostly to kits and buckets, are trying out fresh grapes for the first time.

I want to take a moment to offer my encouragement!

Although you can make fantastic wines from kits and buckets, I remain a firm believer in fresh fruit. To me, I take great pride knowing that I started from square one and there are times that I envy the amount of pride that the grape grower members here must feel.

I look at handling grapes not as additional labor, but as a chance to say to folks "remember making this one?" over a couple of future glasses.

Promote the fun in it! Get friends and family involved. The minute you see this as not being fun, kick the trouble makers to the curb and continue..

I advise that you keep at it even though you may find the results of that first batch not to you liking. I would guess that the first kit or bucket you made might not have turned out so well, but you still kept with it until you made something to your liking. I would suggest that the same rule applies here.

My motto says it all.. Nobody likes a tight grape!

johnT.

 

[ibglowin]

One you go "Fresh"......... LOL

Couldn't agree more!

 

[Stressbaby]

John,

I am one of those grape newbies, having recently started Catawba and Vignoles, and soon hopefully the Chambourcin.

Thanks for the words of encouragement and thanks to everyone with their patience with my questions.

Robert

 

[Rocky]

I agree with John and Mike. All things being equal, making wine from fresh grapes is best alternative. IMHO, all things are not equal and there is a significantly greater amount of work, equipment, mess and risk involved in making wine from grapes. So for me, it is a basic economic decision involving the concept of "the point of diminishing returns," i.e. there is a point beyond which added investment, while yielding a greater total return, will yield a less proportionate return. For me, the increase in actual or perceived quality is simply not worth the additional effort.

Remember now, I am much lazier than either John or Mike, and I am sure that it makes sense for them to use fresh grapes.

 

[novalou]

I agree with John and Mike. All things being equal, making wine from fresh grapes is best alternative. IMHO, all things are not equal and there is a significantly greater amount of work, equipment, mess and risk involved in making wine from grapes. So for me, it is a basic economic decision involving the concept of "the point of diminishing returns," i.e. there is a point beyond which added investment, while yielding a greater total return, will yield a less proportionate return. For me, the increase in actual or perceived quality is simply not worth the additional effort. Remember now, I am much lazier than either John or Mike, and I am sure that it makes sense for them to use fresh grapes.

My approach to grapes wines to date has been using grapes for red wine and fresh juice for white wines.

For reds there is a big difference in quality using grapes and will continue using grapes!

 

[Rocky]

... and I am much lazier than Novalou, too!

 

[berrycrush]

Thanks for the encouragement, John! Fresh rules.

 

[Machine]

Love to garden and love wine, that led to putting in wine grape vines with the hopes of having enough to fiddle around making some. I love to drink wine but I'm doing this for the fun and challenge of making it, after the fun and challenge of trying to get wine grapes to grow...not so easy in my climate. Not sure I'd go down this road if it wasn't for my grapes.

 

[froeschli]

I make (fresh) fruit wine for fun, and ferment buckets of juice for bulk. Two very different motivations....
I don't enjoy "traditional" grape wines enough to go to the trouble. I will, however, sort, peel, destone, mash, etc, any fruit or berry that crosses my path...

 

[geek]

I have NOT made a wine with fresh grapes but really considering a trial with a small batch. This is because every time I taste a wine made with fresh grapes where the skins are in contact in fermentation, it is always a better taste, I think.

 

[Rocky]

Don't misunderstand, Guys and Gals. I have made a whole lot of wine from grapes, probably a lot more than most on this forum. We made "around 200 gallons" every year at home and I was involved from age 8 onward. It was a great family project and we had the facility, the equipment and the labor to manage it. The last wine I made wine from grapes was in Rochester, New York in the mid-1990's. When I retired and moved to Ohio, it did not occur to me that I might want to continue wine making and I sold a lot of really good equipment, including a great crusher, a press, carboys, two 55 gallon fermenters, 10, 20 and 25 gallon oak barrels and a pump/filter system. I still have a press but no crusher. I do everything in my basement so everything has to be carried down a flight of stairs. To get back into grapes would not be worth the time, money or effort for me. I am able to make a passable wine from either kits or juice with minimal effort. Works for me, may not work for others.

 

[jswordy]

I'm lazy as heck, but for a couple extra steps, I can get cheaper wine that tastes good from fresh fruit and grapes instead of paying someone else's profit to process them into a juice for me. I actually did this for years before doing my first kits last year. It's just not that hard, and you don't need first-class equipment. Scrape your grapes off the stems on the bottom of a milk crate or through hardware cloth (woven wire with appropriate sized squares). Crush with 4 x 4, and a homemade press will suffice for squeezing.

You're fortunate, John. I'm all by myself in this. My wife does not really like the fact that I make wine, she tolerates it. Friends are happy to accept free bottles and give me empties but scarce when it comes to the labor. There are times when it is actually hard, painful, physical work in a one-man operation and I'm dead-dog tired and short-tempered afterward. But for me, it's overall a labor of love. Cuz I love to drink. So there ya go.

 

[geek]

Ditto here, nobody in my house helps me, my little kids and that is when I offer them a treat in exchange.....sigh....

But I mention grapes crushing and the kids were excited and said they will help no doubt.....go figure..

 

[jswordy]

But I mention grapes crushing and the kids were excited and said they will help no doubt.....go figure..

Cuz it's messy!

 

[berrycrush]

"Scrape ... through hardware cloth (woven wire with appropriate sized squares)". That sounds like a great idea. So you feed the the stem base through the mesh and give a hard yank?

 

[jswordy]

"Scrape ... through hardware cloth (woven wire with appropriate sized squares)". That sounds like a great idea. So you feed the the stem base through the mesh and give a hard yank?

You rub the bunch across the screen and the grapes are scraped off.

I have also heard of freezing them and then using a gloved hand to strip the hard berries off the stems. Always thought combining the two might be ideal.

 

[JohnT]

Rocky,

If I were in your shoes, I would do exactly the same. What concerns me is that you say you can make a "passable" wine using kits. IMHO, this is an understatement.

I pride myself in knowing good wines when I taste them. One of the best wines I ever tasted what Joeswine's Sangio. I was simply blown away by how good it was and the fact that It came from a kit. I can see now why kit wines and wines from fruit are now lumped together in winemaking competitions.

That being said.. I learned winemaking from fresh grapes from the onset and at a time when kits were far less than they are today. For me, there really was no "transition" from kits to grapes.

Also for me, labor is not an issue. Crush is a yearly event that a lot of folks look forward to. Recently, I had a falling out with some of the more serious workers and was shocked by how quickly, easily, and happily others stepped up to help.

Most of my equipment (which lasts forever) is at least 15 years old. Sure, the startup costs were painful, but was really just a one time thing.

Kits are much more expensive. I see that a decent kit can end up costing about 6 or 7 dollars a bottle. When using fresh grapes, I consider $4 per bottle expensive. I make a lot of wine and the savings are very real and the results are outstanding.

But it is not just price. Wine and winemaking have always been a big part of my family's culture. We still have a family vineyard in hungary which we visit every 4 years or so. My father and uncle still tell stories of the winery. My making wine from fruit allows the elders in my family to relive childhood memories. Kinda makes it all worth while.

I get so much joy and pleasure from the experience, that I wanted to encourage all to give it a try. I plan to make from grapes until my situation no longer allows it. In tasting some of the kit wines out there, it is nice to know that (if/when) i retire, I can still make small batches of wine at whatever condo I end up in.

 

[Rocky]

I agree with everything that you say in your post above, John. Wine making at home was a major annual event and we all waited to hear, "The grapes are in!" meaning they had arrived at the produce companies in Pittsburgh, normally in early October.

We would go down with my Father and Grandfather and Pap would make his selection, going from company to company and tasting the grapes. Lugs were 42 pounds then and we could net a good 3 gallons from a lug. The wine we made in quantity was essentially the same every year, 3/4 Zinfandel blended with 1/4 Muscat, co-fermented. Occasionally, when the Zin was not up to par, he would use Alicante, but that was very rare. We had a great place to do the work at our home, under a detached 2+ car garage whose lower walls were mostly underground. There was an "army" of laborers because Pap insisted that the grapes be removed from the stems, moldy grapes discarded, leaves removed, etc., from up to 80 lugs of grapes. This was the "entry level" job and where I started. As one got older, he (or she) would progress through the "higher skill level" jobs, e.g. crushing, barrel preparation, punch down, racking, pressing and bottling. We had open barrels for fermenters and whiskey barrels (from Schenley Distillery used to cost $4 and probably had that much whiskey still in them!) for aging barrels and two presses. It was an "all hands on deck" effort that lasted the weekend. And you are correct, it was a great family activity.

I have seen the grapes go from $.75 for a 42 pound lug in the late 1940's to $46.00 for a 36 pound lug today. The last time I made wine at home with the family in the late 1970's I seem to remember that a 36 pound lug was something like $6 or $7. I think when I was in Rochester, the grapes were in the high teens like $18-19 for 36 pounds. That was the last time I made wine from California grapes but I did make wine for a few years from locally grown New York grapes (Delaware and Vidal Blanc) and fruit, mostly cherry and blackberry. The choices for good red grapes were slim at the time. This is when I made my first wine from juice buckets, which was fair and a kit, which was awful. I guess this is also the time when I thought my wine making days were over and I decided to sell all of my equipment.

To get back into it now (I am 71) would just be too much trouble and expense. I do admire those of you who still make wine the "old way." I try to focus on the good things about kits and juice buckets, e.g. I can make wine any time during the year, I can make wine from varieties that would not be available as fresh grapes, there is less work, mess and equipment involved and the process takes less time. With some judicious "tweaking" I have made some wines that I believe Pap would have liked. More importantly he would have said, "Well I'll be damned. He was listening!"

 

[JohnT]

I agree with everything that you say in your post above, John. Wine making at home was a major annual event and we all waited to hear, "The grapes are in!" meaning they had arrived at the produce companies in Pittsburgh, normally in early October.

We would go down with my Father and Grandfather and Pap would make his selection, going from company to company and tasting the grapes. Lugs were 42 pounds then and we could net a good 3 gallons from a lug. The wine we made in quantity was essentially the same every year, 3/4 Zinfandel blended with 1/4 Muscat, co-fermented. Occasionally, when the Zin was not up to par, he would use Alicante, but that was very rare. We had a great place to do the work at our home, under a detached 2+ car garage whose lower walls were mostly underground. There was an "army" of laborers because Pap insisted that the grapes be removed from the stems, moldy grapes discarded, leaves removed, etc., from up to 80 lugs of grapes. This was the "entry level" job and where I started. As one got older, he (or she) would progress through the "higher skill level" jobs, e.g. crushing, barrel preparation, punch down, racking, pressing and bottling. We had open barrels for fermenters and whiskey barrels (from Schenley Distillery used to cost $4 and probably had that much whiskey still in them!) for aging barrels and two presses. It was an "all hands on deck" effort that lasted the weekend. And you are correct, it was a great family activity.

I have seen the grapes go from $.75 for a 42 pound lug in the late 1940's to $46.00 for a 36 pound lug today. The last time I made wine at home with the family in the late 1970's I seem to remember that a 36 pound lug was something like $6 or $7. I think when I was in Rochester, the grapes were in the high teens like $18-19 for 36 pounds. That was the last time I made wine from California grapes but I did make wine for a few years from locally grown New York grapes (Delaware and Vidal Blanc) and fruit, mostly cherry and blackberry. The choices for good red grapes were slim at the time. This is when I made my first wine from juice buckets, which was fair and a kit, which was awful. I guess this is also the time when I thought my wine making days were over and I decided to sell all of my equipment.

To get back into it now (I am 71) would just be too much trouble and expense. I do admire those of you who still make wine the "old way." I try to focus on the good things about kits and juice buckets, e.g. I can make wine any time during the year, I can make wine from varieties that would not be available as fresh grapes, there is less work, mess and equipment involved and the process takes less time. With some judicious "tweaking" I have made some wines that I believe Pap would have liked. More importantly he would have said, "Well I'll be damned. He was listening!"

Rocky,

Thanks for sharing and I could not agree more with what you have said.

When I pick up my grapes, I rent a large truck and set up a long bench so that we have have up to 8 people sorting at one time. QC is so imprtant. I remember that we actually found a harvest knife in one of the lugs (a few years back). I hate to think of what that would have done to my crusher/destemmer!

I hear ya on the advantages. Basically, I am on a one-crush yearly calandar, but will also do a much smaller batch in of chillean in the late spring when the mood strikes. This is why I do a lot, I am making a year's worth of wine in one go.

 

[Scott]

Good thread JohnT, this will be my first time with grapes too, kinda nervous and excited. Always much to learn, having only made fruit or flower and wines kits. It's nice having this collection of knowledge and helpful people!