Dates On Wine

It's the harvest year.

It's totally up to you, do whatever you like with your wine.

Pp

With commercial wines it signifies the harvest year.

Is that advice supposed to help?:p

I have some friends that label their dates with the day, month, and year- to signify the bottling date.

And yes- having the day on there sometimes helps us appreciate just how 'old' their vintage is :)

On 4/27/2006 3:29 PM, mdginzo wrote: [snipped]

Mdginzo,

My guess would be that, since commercial grape wines are made with fresh fruit (at least, I am unaware of any commercial wineries who operate otherwise), and the harvest time in any given region spans perhaps 6 weeks, that the year is considered sufficient to narrow down the time when the grape began to be transformed into wine.

Cheers, Ken

(at least, I am unaware of any commercial wineries who operate otherwise)

Hate to burst your bubble but; who do you think some of the largest purchasers of concentrate are.

That is right. It is generally the year the fruit was picked. For commercial wines that is generally okay. For home winemaker, it gets a bit muddled. If you buy a kit in Aug. 2006 that was made from grapes picked in Sept, 2005, you could date it 2005 even though you might not start it until

2007. Why? Because the wine is related back to the year of the fruit so you know what fruit was used to make it. This seems to take precedence over the aging of the wine after making it.

That said, I date mine from the date I started the ferment.

Ray

I don't know. That's why I said I was unaware of any commercial wineries who operated otherwise. Can you provide a list of some wineries who use concentrate?

I know of wineries who buy the large portion of their grapes, but they still use fresh fruit.

Cheers, Ken

ha! That's a good one.

I actually put the month and year, cause recently I've gone into several iterations. Like an Apple October 2005, then another Apple in November

2005. So the label was October 2005 & November 2005 respectively.

This thread is good - thanks to all - as I hadn't thought about what year was important. I've always put the year I started the must. To me, that's when it was born. It's good to know the harvest of fruit is when commercial does it. I'll be smarter at the table tonight when I expound on that. :*)

DAve

p.s. I use Avery Removable labels #6464. Avery has a new free software that makes a good looking label, and they peel off soooo nicely. My other wine makers in the area were jealous when they say me remove the label. Of course, don't get them wet. My labels look better than the wine tastes! haha

Avery Design Pro is at

I have some friends that label their dates with the day, month, and

wineries who operated otherwise. Can you provide a list of some wineries who use concentrate?

That is like trying to provide you a list of restaurants that use margarine instead of butter. Look on the web. There are a few in Florida that I know of.

Since I only make fruit, veggie, and herb wines - I use the month, day, & year the wine finished its primary fermentation. Since I start wines all the time, not just when the harvest is in like the commercial wines - I think there's too large of a time gap over a year to just go with a year. I'm a bit more specific, but that is me. Darlene

Hi Dar, That sounds like a good idea with fruit wines. I usually go by the grape winemaking standard of using the year the grapes were grown but just opened a bottle of mead where your label would make more sense.

I buy honey in a pail, it's not unusual for me to have it for at least a year, this time it was 3 years. I keep it sealed and don't seem to run into the problems several people encountered using old honey on rec.crafts.meadmaking but it does raise an interesting question as to the label.

We made some last year from honey from 2002. I labeled it 2002, but in hindsight maybe a comment about the date of making it would have made sense. Meads drunk young are different than older meads and it doesn't seem to have a lot to do with when the bees made the honey, it seems to have more to do with time in the bottle.

My fruit wines are made with local fruit so I kind of intuitively know when it was in season but you make a much larger variety than I do. I'm happy with the grapes and make the fruits for blending and for others.

Joe.

Joe, It has been a very interesting discussion, and I've learned something new. I understand the concept from the commercial point of view, but for the home winemaker who makes something other than grape wine, it should be up to the individual. In other words, do what is best for you so that you drink your wine/mead at the right time when it tastes the best. Darlene ;o)

Exactly, home wine makers do not need to be bound by the commercial wineries. They can set their own standards within reason. You just need to understand why commercial wineries do it they way they do. Some years you have a good quality harvest and the next year the grapes may be of poorer quality. If the poor quality grapes, or concentrate, were held over to the next year and then made it a good year and labeled with the good year date it would throw everything out of kilter. You could no longer tell by the year which was a good wine. For them, the year must indicate when the grapes were picked. As a home winemakers, you may be trying to show off our your wine making abilities rather that the quality of the grape and it may be more important to you to indicated when the wine was started. Then you could put both dates on the label.

Ray

Mdginzo,

I must be using the wrong search phrases, because I'm not able to find any FL wineries who state that they use concentrates. Could you provide me the list of the few which you know of, please?

Cheers, Ken

Wonderful thread, you all. To add to Ray's comment - AND it's nice to know the commercial view point, so we can expound your rationale compared to theirs for our fruit wines dates. What interesting conversations I've learned reading this newsgroup. thanks!

signed DAve, dated 2005 (when I started mak>> Joe,