Anyone make spontaneous-fermented wine?

Last year was my first attempt at making wine. A friend gave me enough concord grapes to make 3 gallons of wine, roughly 45 lbs.

The method he uses, and what I did for this batch, is to take the grapes off the stems and crush them. Add them to primary with a cup of sugar per gallon and let sit covered loosely for 14 days. After that you strain and press the grapes and put in secondary with airlock, and thats it!

He lets his wine set in the secondary for 12 months, racking every 3 months. So far, my 3 gal batch is doing well. I started in it november of last year and so far it tastes good. Has anyone else made wine this way? How did it turn out for you?

Eric

I do some casual work in a local winery and this year they did a few barrels of chardonnay with natural ferment. The grapes were pressed first then just left to ferment in the barrels. Last I heard the winemaker was pretty pleased with the results, I had a sniff at the airlock and it had good aromas. Natural ferments are becoming more common at wineries, and has always been the way they do things in france. All fruit is covered with natural yeast and the juice will ferment unless you do something to stop it, so commercial juice is pasteurised and has preservatives, if you want to make wine from juice you buy you have to pitch some yeast but if you start with fruit you don't.
Most home winemakers use yeast either way because it is faster and gives more control.

emr454 said:

Last year was my first attempt at making wine. A friend gave me enough concord grapes to make 3 gallons of wine, roughly 45 lbs.

The method he uses, and what I did for this batch, is to take the grapes off the stems and crush them. Add them to primary with a cup of sugar per gallon and let sit covered loosely for 14 days. After that you strain and press the grapes and put in secondary with airlock, and thats it!

He lets his wine set in the secondary for 12 months, racking every 3 months. So far, my 3 gal batch is doing well. I started in it november of last year and so far it tastes good. Has anyone else made wine this way? How did it turn out for you?

Eric

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My next door neighbor is an old Italian and he makes wine like this. He just gave me a bottle of concord made the same way. He doesn't use sulfites, yeast, clarifiers or any other chemicals, and he does it in big barrels. It tasted pretty good but had a weird aftertaste to it. That's how they did it in the old days when we didn't have all the stuff we use today.

My friend has been doing it this way for 7 or 8 years now and he says he's never had a batch get infected. I think I'll make more this year but may use yeast because it does take a long time.

Eric

Why would you take the chance that the wine gets ruined? Yeast costs a few dollars, potasium metabisulfite to kill the wild yeast costs a few pennies. You can spend hundreds of dollars buying grapes, why not spend the extra dollar orr two to ensurethat you get what you want, or more importantly, don't get what you don't want. Can you end up with good wine using naturally occuring yeasts? Certainly. Is it a crapshoot? I think so.

PTN

True, it is a crapshoot, but the grapes were free to me and I decided to try his method. It does work but this year I'll use some wine yeast so I have more control over everything.

Eric