Any wine makers?

[cliffrod]

Since it was time to begin harvesting my vineyard today for this year's wine, thought I might post a few pics.   

Here in the southeastern USA, there's a native wild grape called a muscadine.  It excels in the South Carolina climate, so is a lot easier to grow than typical grape cultivars.  It's good for eating and for an informal wine that is consumed young.  Muscadines are a slip skin grape with pretty high sugar content.  My ultimate goal is not the wine, but the grappa that follows the wine.  Grappa is distilled from the fermented must, the solid remains of the winemaking process.

The old Italians sculptors & carvers in the stone studios up north would sometimes have a little grappa in the studio at the end of the day.  The reason I put in a vineyard about a decade ago was to someday have my own grappa from my own grapes in my own studio.  A good friend that spends more time here than anyone is making the wine right now.  It keeps getting better each year.   We're finally getting enough grapes to make wine & more seem worthwhile.  Elsmore is hoping to make 5 gallons of wine this year.

My four main arbors of Cowart muscadines, about a dozen self-fertile Cowart vines and one collected wild male to further benefit fertilization-



 

Close up of some fruit.  These grapes ripen independently, not as a bunch. About half of the fruit was ripe today-





Today's pickings, headed for wine tomorrow.  Pretty modest compared to the 1 ton of grapes another good friend helped harvest on Thursday over in TN-





The rest of the fruit should be ripe in 1-2 wks. 

Any other wine making folks here?

[Markcarovilli]

We make 50 + gallons every year but get the grapes from California.  Usually Moscat and Zin...

It is a family tradition that we may not due this year.

Mark

[Markcarovilli]

Of course there is always lemoncello

[cliffrod]

Yeah, I love that too.  Made some last fall for the holidays.  It's always a big hit.  Need to make some more.  Sure is good straight out of the freezer when it's 100+F around here.

[Ncdan]

A good pal of mine, his Dad, who is in his 90s now has been making wine in the hills of Tennessee all of his adult life. I’ve been his basement and observed rows of 5 gallon glass jugs with hoses coming out of cork plugs in the jugs. Here’s a few of the different fruit kinds he has produced over the past over the past 25 Years.
Elderberry
Strawberry
Watermelon
Tomato
Peach
Blueberry
Grape and scuppernong grapes
Blackberry
Wild cherry
I think that’s all and it was all good and potent !!

[SmithSwede]

Yes.  When I was younger and living in Alabama, we had a giant 80 year old scuppernong bush trained
to a huge overhead fence thing.   I’d harvest the fruit and make a passable wine.   

I’d also make a wine from fresh picked blackberries that grew everywhere.   The blackberry wine was not to be trifled with.   Used an old Euell Gibbons recipe.

[Jim Rich]

I would like to sample Muscadine wine.  I brewed beer for years and made one batch of wine from a kit but always wanted to get into making county wines from different berries and fruit.  Sounds like you've got a good thing going.  Good luck with the grappa.

[PhilB]

I did home-made wines for about 25 years.

My schtick was backyard fruits.  All the wines I made, but one, were from fruit trees of friends and neighbors.  I had 3 5-gallon carboy setups, so coule make 15 gallons at a time, which could end up as 6 cases of 12 bottles.

I started out because my mom has an oversexed plum tree, that would give us about 2 gallons of plums *a day* for six weeks in the summer.  They were delicious Santa Rosa plums, but we couldn't eat them or even give them away fast enough.  So I started making plum wine, and it was fantastic.  Eventually, that plum tree got sick, so I started making wine from other fruits.  Apricots (good), oranges (mediocre), various berries (usually great), rose petals (this was fabulous), kumquats (this was delicious, but I'll never do it again).  And so on.  I still want to make peach wine at some point.

I've never made wine from grapes.  Why do that?  I can buy great grape wine anywhere for not much money.

My one time not from backyard fruit was when the local health food store had a big sale on organic blueberries.  I got two flats and made a big batch that was great.

I made a full batch of wine from pomegranates for my wedding; that was delicious.  Shucking 115 pomegranates took me, my fiancee (at the time), and my niece a full day, but it was worth it.

I also made mead from wild honey from a beekeeper I knew.  A straight honey batch, and a batch with the honey mixed with dark red cherries.  Both lovely.

The kumquat story is that kumquats are a small citrus fruit, about twice as big as a grape, in which much of the sweetness and flavor is in the rind.  When you eat them, you pop the whole thing in your mouth and chew fast -- the inside has good flavor, but is quite sour, and the sweet rind as you chew it into the pulp makes it taste fine.  So for the wine, I had to not just juice them, but also crush the rinds for the sugars and oils -- 15 lbs of kumquats hand squeezed in a garlic press.  Made the pomegranates look like child's play.  Delicious, but never again.

PhilB

[cliffrod]

I did home-made wines for about 25 years.

My schtick was backyard fruits.  All the wines I made, but one, were from fruit trees of friends and neighbors.  I had 3 5-gallon carboy setups, so coule make 15 gallons at a time, which could end up as 6 cases of 12 bottles.

I started out because my mom has an oversexed plum tree, that would give us about 2 gallons of plums *a day* for six weeks in the summer.  They were delicious Santa Rosa plums, but we couldn't eat them or even give them away fast enough.  So I started making plum wine, and it was fantastic.  Eventually, that plum tree got sick, so I started making wine from other fruits.  Apricots (good), oranges (mediocre), various berries (usually great), rose petals (this was fabulous), kumquats (this was delicious, but I'll never do it again).  And so on.  I still want to make peach wine at some point.

I've never made wine from grapes.  Why do that?  I can buy great grape wine anywhere for not much money.

My one time not from backyard fruit was when the local health food store had a big sale on organic blueberries.  I got two flats and made a big batch that was great.

I made a full batch of wine from pomegranates for my wedding; that was delicious.  Shucking 115 pomegranates took me, my fiancee (at the time), and my niece a full day, but it was worth it.

I also made mead from wild honey from a beekeeper I knew.  A straight honey batch, and a batch with the honey mixed with dark red cherries.  Both lovely.

The kumquat story is that kumquats are a small citrus fruit, about twice as big as a grape, in which much of the sweetness and flavor is in the rind.  When you eat them, you pop the whole thing in your mouth and chew fast -- the inside has good flavor, but is quite sour, and the sweet rind as you chew it into the pulp makes it taste fine.  So for the wine, I had to not just juice them, but also crush the rinds for the sugars and oils -- 15 lbs of kumquats hand squeezed in a garlic press.  Made the pomegranates look like child's play.  Delicious, but never again.

PhilB

Although I've never done kumquats like that, I totally get it.  During my culinary apprenticeship, I was regularly given similar "you've gotta be kidding me" tasks.  Either my chef or manager would get some grand creative idea and it would burn down my week.  During one point, I ran a bunch of stuff through garlic presses that was never meant to be done.  One day I broke 4 presses....   Same thing with pomegranates.  A little old rich member would find a recipe for some kind of tiddlywinks canapés for 12 in a magazine, then want it for 250 people.  Recipes like that are rarely well tested enough to easily multiply, so it turns into a train wreck of minutiae.

My wife and brother have both made mead.  We keep talking about making another batch.  But like Lance mentioned, I'm also lacking patience/interest to sanitize and bottle stuff nowadays.

[slowmover]

My brother and I have made 45 gallons a year for 30 years.We buy grapes that come from California. Half muscat and half different reds mostly Zinfandel and Carignane. I blend the two together but be doesn’t. Has anyone here made Muscat? There’s been a change in the flavor we can’t account for. We heard they can change the flavor somehow of existing vines to get rid of the full bodied flavor for the tender palates of the millennials.

[Ryan]

I admire you wine guys. I have brewed beer for years, but I don't have the patience for wine; I couldn't wait a year or more not knowing if I made a good batch!

[PhilB]

I admire you wine guys. I have brewed beer for years, but I don't have the patience for wine; I couldn't wait a year or more not knowing if I made a good batch!

For most of mine, the whole process takes about 18 months.  So yes, much longer than beer takes.  I usually bottle a few in those Grolsch bottle with the rubber sealed stoppers.  I can then sample them during the process to get an idea of how well the batch is progressing, and if it's any good.

This was most valuable when I made the batch of pomegranate for the wedding.  I had left plenty of time, I thought, but it was refusing to mature.  Pomegranates are pretty astringent, and 3 weeks before the wedding, sampling the wine still made for a good pucker.  I was starting to think I'd better buy a few cases of champagne, but then the very next week, the batch suddenly turned the corner and became sweet and tasty, just in time.  One of the better wines I've made.  It lasted well, too; I didn't take it all to the wedding, I saved two of the six cases aside, and we drank them on our anniversaries and special occasions.  15 years later, we finished it off, and it was still very good.

PhilB

[Guzzi Gal]

I commend you all for your choice of a hobby.  My grandma made dandelion wine, my first job was for a boutique champagne cellar (I could hand riddle and disgorge with the best), my mom worked in several labs, the last being Piper Sonoma's and my dad was a gold medal winemaker for a time before moving back into the compliance and management side of the wine bis with Jackson Family Wines.  You'd think I would have followed suit but it wasn't my thing.  Seeing the process from start to finish behind the scenes was kind of neat. 

[Steve Cas]

My brothers and I have been making a barrell, 55 gallons of so, every other year for quite some time. We mostly use carignane from CA.
We learned how to make wine from our Dad before he passed away.  It's become a family event with 4 generations lending a helping hand.
I remember my Dad and grandfather making wine when I was a lot younger, at 67 years old I'm using the press and grinder that belonged to my grandfather. 

[PhilB]

I commend you all for your choice of a hobby.  My grandma made dandelion wine, my first job was for a boutique champagne cellar (I could hand riddle and disgorge with the best), my mom worked in several labs, the last being Piper Sonoma's and my dad was a gold medal winemaker for a time before moving back into the compliance and management side of the wine bis with Jackson Family Wines.  You'd think I would have followed suit but it wasn't my thing.  Seeing the process from start to finish behind the scenes was kind of neat.

My wife and I had 1-gallon test batches of flower wines going a few years ago -- one dandelion, and one lilac.  I bet the lilac would have been great -- the 5 gallon carboy of rose petal wine I had made many years before was fantastic.  Unfortunately, we got divorced then and those two batches never got finished.

Oh well. I'll try again someday, when I stop traveling full time for work.  I'll try to make some peach wine then, too.

PhilB

[pebra]

My ultimate goal is not the wine, but the grappa that follows the wine. 

Somehow I find that most reassuring!