Thinking about making the plunge, should I?

[mainshipfred]

From VA but got a late harvest PV from them while visiting family this past fall. Seem like really good peope. So far so good on the wine.

 

[mainshipfred]

Are the Eastern PA winemakers on here getting grapes from CFP winemakers down in the strip? Happy with the quality? Anything better available?

Back in the seventies it was always Christmas in the Strip District. Everywhere you went it was hoe hoe hoe.

 

[baron4406]

There are a bunch of us Pennsylvania winemakers on here, Baron. Kits and grapes - the better the quality, the better the wine (that's the theory at least). Where in Pa are you?

PS. There's no such thing as "too much wine". Just wine you haven't opened yet.

I'm just north of the Allentown area, by "too much wine" I mean more wine that I have bottles for. I'm constantly tasting my wine and today I'm doing PH/SO2 checks on my kits I started this summer. A Nebbiolo and an Amarone. The Neb is pretty darn good and the taste of the Amaron at 6 months of age is incredible. I'm bottling both this weekend and they will bottle age for a year or so. Some of these kits make incredible wine. But there's no shame in marginal wine becoming brandy either. Its like putting a dress on a hog.

 

[heatherd]

I came to winemaking in a very round about way. Was a "bourbon maker" so many years then graduated to beer then wine. My fruit wine is great, grape wine is terrible. I started with juice buckets and ended up hating them. Then started doing grape/juice wines and they were almost as good a box wine. Then full grape and they are about as good a a $10 bottle of wine. I then tried some high end kits and even young they are worlds better than my grape wines, here in Pa you just can't get too many decent grapes. Now just to play around I'm trying out cheap kits that I heavily modify and I'm really liking the results. Yea I make too much wine lol. I actually have about 30 gallons of "juice" wine that doesn't really deserve bottles, so its gonna become brandy.

Baron, have you tried getting fresh grapes/juice from Keystone Homebrew? They get them from outside of PA so you're not limited to local varietals. http://www.keystonehomebrew.com/shop/wine/fresh-grapes-and-juice.html http://www.keystonehomebrew.com/premium-grapes/ Looks like they still have some fall 2018 stock of Washington Merlot and Sangiovese. I know they'll have Chilean grapes in the spring.

You can also get stuff fresh from Presque Isle wine. They don't ship fresh grapes, but you can preorder and pick up. https://www.piwine.com/grapes-juices.html

They do ship fresh Australian juice: https://www.piwine.com/order-australian-juice-for-wine-making.html

 

[baron4406]

Yes Heather I got my last batch of grapes from Keystone(Petite Syrah) and its in my barrel now. I'm not making any juice wines anymore, the wine they make is thin and tasteless. The only exception from that is a juice bucket I got from Walkers last year (Noriet) that I combines with 3 lugs of Chilean Cabernet and that wine is tasting great so far. From now on I'm just doing kits or grapes.