Treatise on Winemaking
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JimCook
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Wade,
I return from Disney tomorrow with a list of wine tasks to accomplish in the forthcoming week, but to answer your question, I have purchased grapes (both fresh and frozen) in 2009 and see no reason why I should not continue to purchase grapes. Being in Illinois doesn't necessarily help availability issues, but I'm working with what I can. I'm also going to investigate local growers and see what I can find for North American/hybrid grapes to consider as an option.
My size constraints prevent me from expanding into larger tanks/barrels, so I have to plan carefully. When I took care of 200+ pounds of Zin this fall, it was about all I would want to handle with two people manually crushing grapes. The press that I use is a small 1-gallon press which also takes a good amount of time compared to a larger press that I don't necessarily have the space for.
I can tell you that I have frozen the pomace from fermentations and have been experimenting using those as my own 'grape packs' with kit wines to help boost them up. I'll have a better handle on that effect in the first quarter or so of 2010. I want to experiment with the size of pressed skins to add to the kit to see what provides the most efficient bang for the buck, so to speak.
I have had some friends note that I should just go exclusively into grapes, but each time I simply respond with the fact that fresh grapes are only available during a short window each year and I do not have the production capacity to handle a large amount nor variety of grapes at that one moment. The frozen grapes from Brehm Vineyards are very expensive, so they had best make some darn good wine to justify the raw material price of $8-10+/bottle - I'm waiting a bit to see how mine develop before pursuing that route any further.
In the end, the economy of scale is my limiting factor.
- Jim
I return from Disney tomorrow with a list of wine tasks to accomplish in the forthcoming week, but to answer your question, I have purchased grapes (both fresh and frozen) in 2009 and see no reason why I should not continue to purchase grapes. Being in Illinois doesn't necessarily help availability issues, but I'm working with what I can. I'm also going to investigate local growers and see what I can find for North American/hybrid grapes to consider as an option.
My size constraints prevent me from expanding into larger tanks/barrels, so I have to plan carefully. When I took care of 200+ pounds of Zin this fall, it was about all I would want to handle with two people manually crushing grapes. The press that I use is a small 1-gallon press which also takes a good amount of time compared to a larger press that I don't necessarily have the space for.
I can tell you that I have frozen the pomace from fermentations and have been experimenting using those as my own 'grape packs' with kit wines to help boost them up. I'll have a better handle on that effect in the first quarter or so of 2010. I want to experiment with the size of pressed skins to add to the kit to see what provides the most efficient bang for the buck, so to speak.
I have had some friends note that I should just go exclusively into grapes, but each time I simply respond with the fact that fresh grapes are only available during a short window each year and I do not have the production capacity to handle a large amount nor variety of grapes at that one moment. The frozen grapes from Brehm Vineyards are very expensive, so they had best make some darn good wine to justify the raw material price of $8-10+/bottle - I'm waiting a bit to see how mine develop before pursuing that route any further.
In the end, the economy of scale is my limiting factor.
- Jim
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