Better Summer

[dinosaw]

Just finished picking and crushing this years grapes, more of them and more importantly they are much sweeter than last year, borderline edible. Mind you last years wine is drinking now and isn't too bad, tastes much like standard cheap plonk from the supermarket. This years harvest would give 7.5% alcohol by themselves which is up a whole point from last year so it shows how much warmer it must have been.

 

[rick]

How did you press them Dinosaw? and how many bottles do you think you'll get?
We have a handful of little green grapes hang over from next door - would make about an eggcup full. More pears but they are like cannon balls until the frosts then last a few days (if you catch them falling) - the hens appreciate them!

 

[MrsBiscuit]

Its been the same over here as well, our grapes are the best they've ever been. Its partly the winter (lots of wet), partly the summer (baking) and partly the fact its been dry since June whereas by now we would normally have had a downpour, meaning the harvest would be in earlier but its still hot! We only have about 12 vines, mostly wine grapes but with the odd table grape. The wine grapes are supersweet this year, but the flesh/pip ratio is rubbish otherwise they'd make excellent eating. Normally we heave our crop in with our neighbour's (everybody around here makes industrial quantities of wine) but this year we made a paltry 5 litres of our own (we had to make it very quickly as we were travelling otherwise we could have extracted more juice) plus another 5 litres of what the germans call 'federweisser' (sp?) which is sort of cloudy, young, slightly fermented grape juice, sweet and quite lethal because its easy to drink too much.

Our neighbours have devices where you throw in the grapes, stalks and all, the debris is stripped off, the grapes mashed as they go through the machine and the resulting juice/skins/pips fall into large tanks. They are left there for 10 days and then you let the liquid out of the bottom and put it into barrels. Its basically as easy as that, but the results aren't brilliant. A winemaking friend of ours says we could make better quality wine quite easily. Our home made attempts involved a potato masher! We've made cider using a cider press, I guess you could use the same thing for making wine.

I should think this is going to be a bumper year for wine in Europe

 

[dinosaw]

We should get about 12 bottles this year off 16kg of grapes Rick. Like Mrs B we use the state of the art potato masher method to press them and then squeeze as much juice as possible out of them using a muslin cloth after primary fementation. You made me smile when you said you use a masher too Mrs B, do you send your pips and stems to be made into Aguardente?

 

[MrsBiscuit]

Mercifully not!

This is because we have enough bottles of homemade aguadente from different makers to arrange tastings between them if we ever get stuck for amusements :roll: We even got given a bottle when we went to view a house Round here there is a local speciality which is made from arbutus (strawberry tree), its poky stuff, slightly sweet on the nose but the usual firewater in the mouth, though it is smooth. Our neighbour made some last year in a massive blue plastic barrel outside. When he took the lid off to stir it we all had to take a step back - the fumes coming off it!

One thing we've drunk, which is really interesting - although nearly everybody we've given a taste to absolutely hates it - is distilled honey. It really smells and tastes like essence of honey. I quite like it but its very powerful and most people seem to dislike it. Its made in a hamlet which really is in the middle of nowhere, it only had a road to it in the 1970s. They distill all sorts, including acorns.