Wild grapes, what should I make?

[justineaton]

I have never made grape wine but I recently discovered my parents have a lot of wild grapes, my parents bought the place from a relative and where told they are concord grapes so maybe they are not wild and were planted awhile ago, they have grown up some trees though and there are quite a few of them. After two days of picking I have about five gallons of unpressed (cleaned and destemed though) grapes. I'm not sure how much juice I will get from that but I thought about adding something else to it in order to fill a five gallon carboy. my first thought was to make a pyment but I have already spent a lot on honey this year. I am getting some apples pressed next week and thought about doing a grape and Apple wine. Is there a name for that? It's it good? I have had a beer with grape must in it before and it was good so maybe something like that. Any suggestions? Or maybe I should just buy a smaller carboy and make wine. I have made a kit of county fruit wines but never worked with grapes before just Apple and berry wines.

 

[ncredneck]

Look up some recipes online 5gal of grapes should make a 5 gallon batch or more. I would use a bucket for primary and use a mesh bag for the cruched grapes. I just racked a gallon of muscadine wine off the grapes and have a ton of sediment in my secondary now.

 

[justineaton]

There are 30 pounds and I have found online that on average 100 pounds is needed to make five gallons. I am expecting about two gallons or so.

 

[justineaton]

I have a mesh bag, should I squeeze juice through it and throw the pulp out and then add a Camden tablet to juice and then nutrients and energizer next day?

 

[Yooper]

Oh, I was just talking to a friend (via email) about this!

Native grapes are tough, because they tend to be acidic. Here is a great way to deal with them: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/natives.asp for a quick way to see if you can figure out what you have; and recipes and techniques: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/nativew1.asp

Not only are they overly acidic, they don't have enough sugar either. So generally, you add some water (to help dilute the acidity) and add sugar dissolved in that water (to bring up the sugar content to get a decent specific gravity for wine).

For concord, here's the best way to deal with them (again from Jack keller!):
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques10.asp

I use about 7 pounds of grapes per gallon when using native grape types (not winemaking grapes) due to the acidity, adding sugar, and dilution. We do lots of wild grape wine every year and love it.

One thing that helps is to either reduce the acidity at the beginning per the instructions on Jack Keller's website, or to cold stabilize the finished wine. Cold stabilization does an amazing job of having the acid form as crystals and drop out of the wine, creating a much better wine with less acidity.

 

[ncredneck]

I leave the pulp in the bag for primary.

 

[justineaton]

Oh, I was just talking to a friend (via email) about this!

Native grapes are tough, because they tend to be acidic. Here is a great way to deal with them: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/natives.asp for a quick way to see if you can figure out what you have; and recipes and techniques: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/nativew1.asp

Not only are they overly acidic, they don't have enough sugar either. So generally, you add some water (to help dilute the acidity) and add sugar dissolved in that water (to bring up the sugar content to get a decent specific gravity for wine).

For concord, here's the best way to deal with them (again from Jack keller!):
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques10.asp

I use about 7 pounds of grapes per gallon when using native grape types (not winemaking grapes) due to the acidity, adding sugar, and dilution. We do lots of wild grape wine every year and love it.

One thing that helps is to either reduce the acidity at the beginning per the instructions on Jack Keller's website, or to cold stabilize the finished wine. Cold stabilization does an amazing job of having the acid form as crystals and drop out of the wine, creating a much better wine with less acidity.

Thanks, that helps a lot! Looks like I can probably make five gallons after all then. Very much appreciated!

 

[pumpkinman2012]

36 lbs of crushed and destemmed grapes should yield 2.5 gallons of wine, ferment the grapes on the skins, this will add more color and help to extract more flavor, but it can also extract more tannins.
I agree with Yooper, Jack Keller would be the best resource for non wine making grapes.

 

[justineaton]

So I made a five gallon batch of wine following the advise in the links posted by yooper. I just racked it for the third time a few days ago and took my first taste test, it is very tart. Drinkable but not good, I think I will probably save it for blending. I have some large wine bottles I can bottle it in and open them as needed for blending.

 

[jackkeller]

Justineaton, since you are working with one of the biggest challenges in winemaking, I say follow your instincts. Did you chill proof the wine as Yooper suggested? Three weeks in a refrigerator (or a winter garage) will drop a lot of that tartness out as potassium tartrate and bitartrate crystals (you have to rack the wine off the crystals while while still cold or the crystals will dissolve back into the wine as it warms to room temperature).

We are fortunate in that we can test the wine at various steps along the way and make corrections as needed. Our forefathers did not have that luxury and simply tasted often during the winemaking to determine what to do next. After a few batches they had figured out how to make outstanding wines and left records of how they did it. You can too, but you have to be more involved along the way. The tartness should not have been a surprise had you tasted often and corrected.

Down here in Texas we have one of the worse tasting natives anywhere (the Mustang grape). My friends love the challenge of turning this horror into award-winning wine. When you can do that, all those sissy "Noble" grape varieties from Europe will be child's play. You might want to check out my May 26, 2014 entry for three articles on native grape winemaking as well as the links Yooper supplied.

If you have not bottled it yet I suggest you might want to try dealing with its faults before bottling for blending (blackberry, black currant, black raspberry, and blueberry all blend well with most native grape wines). Also, it is entirely possible that if you put a bottle away "as is" and opened it on St. Patrick's Day 2017 it will have mellowed on its own---possibly not, but my experience has been that time solves many problems, including tartness.

Welcome to REAL winemaking, and don't hesitate to pick those grapes again next year. As a bonus, almost all native grapes make terrific jelly and all of those also make great pancake syrup. I have a diminishing supply of both to prove it.

Best of luck, Jack Keller

 

[marcownz747]

So I made a five gallon batch of wine following the advise in the links posted by yooper. I just racked it for the third time a few days ago and took my first taste test, it is very tart. Drinkable but not good, I think I will probably save it for blending. I have some large wine bottles I can bottle it in and open them as needed for blending.

Concord is a higher acidity grape which usually is used to make sweet wines. Most people who want to run it as a semi-sweet or dry will do a malolactic fermentation to reduce some of the acidity. If you have time to still do a malolactic fermentation, I would advise it. If not, I would advise backsweetening with more concord grape juice, or adding some honey, doing a secondary fermentation and turning it into a semi-sweet pyment (By stopping fermentation early with sulphites and/or sorbates).

This is the way in which many wineries treat their higher-acid wines, including concord, in the Finger Lakes (NY).