Wild grapes

[Steveruch]

I found these growing on a fence by my house and am contemplating using them with some local wildflower honey in a pyment.

 

[pvtpublic]

Looks like wild concords. Makes great wines and meads! Use straight juice instead of water and add your honey. I used to live in Massachusetts and I went picking every year.

Edit: What experience do you have with making pyments?

 

[Steveruch]

Looks like wild concords. Makes great wines and meads! Use straight juice instead of water and add your honey. I used to live in Massachusetts and I went picking every year.

Edit: What experience do you have with making pyments?

We think they're something called frost grapes that are best after the first frost or two.
I've only made one pyment, many years ago.

 

[pvtpublic]

Like apples, the frost makes the sugars pop. Good call. I haven't made my pyments in a long time, let me know how it goes.

What part of the planet are you getting these frost grapes? How do they taste?

 

[Steveruch]

Like apples, the frost makes the sugars pop. Good call. I haven't made my pyments in a long time, let me know how it goes.

What part of the planet are you getting these frost grapes? How do they taste?

I haven't actually decided for sure about the pyment, it depends a lot on how many I actually get.
Fort Wayne, Indiana. The one I tasted was kind of tart.

 

[pvtpublic]

Tart? Great! That's going to pop nicely with some Lanvin 71B yeast, medium oak chips for a week and a year for wine, 3-4 years for mead for aging. Of course you can drink it young at 2-4 weeks after pitching, but it's entirely dependent on your patience and the time you have available.

 

[Steveruch]

Tart? Great! That's going to pop nicely with some Lanvin 71B yeast, medium oak chips for a week and a year for wine, 3-4 years for mead for aging. Of course you can drink it young at 2-4 weeks after pitching, but it's entirely dependent on your patience and the time you have available.

It's my understanding that they change after the first frost, which is why they are called frost grapes.

 

[BPenny]

I believe there are a couple of species of grapes often referred to as “Frost grapes” One of them is vitis riparia (also known as riverbank grape), the other is Vitis Vulpina. To me those look like Vitis riparia due to the leaves and the fact that the grapes appear to have red flesh. I have made wine and pyment out of Vitis riparia and, they were much sweeter after the frost, although a wine made without any added water was still way too acidic, even after 3 years of aging. The sugar content was really high as well (if I recall correctly the brix was around 26). With the grapes I used there was a very high skin to juice ratio, especially after the frost, so it made a shockingly concentrated, viscous wine. The downside is that it is a very intensely acidic, one-note grape and the wine had very little complexity other than an over the top minerality and harsh acidity. There was a slight appealing earthy savoriness about it, but with absolutely no supporting fruity or floral notes, it just wasn’t enjoyable. Back then I was still using lab cultured yeast to make wine, and the yeast I used (Red Star Premier Cuvée) was a reliable fermenter, but not very interesting, so maybe with a different yeast (like 71B as pvtpublic suggested) or a native ferment it would have been better. The Pyment on the other hand was wonderful because the honey added complexity and smoothed out those rough edges. Even though I only fermented it on 2-3 lbs of grapes per gallon of mead must, they still contributed a surprising amount of color, body and acidity. The pyment was also surprisingly good with less than a year of aging.

 

[Steveruch]

I believe there are a couple of species of grapes often referred to as “Frost grapes” One of them is vitis riparia (also known as riverbank grape), the other is Vitis Vulpina. To me those look like Vitis riparia due to the leaves and the fact that the grapes appear to have red flesh.

Some of the leaves in the picture are from some other climbing vine that we get along the fence every year. It was while clearing away those that I discovered the grapes.