Wild Grape - anyone ever make?

Interesting... Those look just like the grapes I made into wine a few weeks ago. (Mentioned in the 'A gallon of "sugar wine"' thread, Sept. 12.) I pretty much followed the Terry Garey recipe.

I had about 7 pounds. At first I was going to make just a gallon, but then I spread it out to 2 gallons by adding more sugar and water. And recently I've been thinking spreading it out to 3 gallons by adding some frozen concord concentrate. The reasons I'm thinking of doing this are:

(1) I'd rather work with a single 3-gallon carboy rather than 2 one-gallon jugs (2) I'm not sure the grapes were quite ripe enough, and so I'm wanting to lessen the influence of the grapes.

I hope yours turns out well. But even more that that, I hope mine does. :-)

Jeff Hay-Roe Sechelt, B.C.

As fermentation went on

so let me guess, you fathom yourself a regular Henry David Thoreau in you endeavors.

I approve.

I'm less than impressed with the notion of just making alcohol out of sugar water. It can be done, but then what?

Add some sugar, okay, we all do that, but to make that the focus??? That's a horse of a different color in my book.

Thyose are riparia grapes. They are very acidic and difficult to make into a balanced wine. Early on they were used in hybrids becasue of the extreme cold tolerance of the vines (up to -60 F I think). Baco noir is a prime example of a riparia hybrid.

Many sources say to let the grapes sit on the vine until after the first frost when they will sweeten. If you try that here you will not see a grape that late because wild animals will get to them well before that.

Me I have decided to use them for jelly and jam. Breeders have given up on them too for hybridization I believe (IIRC this info is from The American Wine Society Presents Growing Wine Grapes)

Those look like the wild grapes we in the midwest used to make wine out of. They are very highly colored as they have dark red juice and are high in acid. We would press the juice and use a gallon of it to make 5 gallons of wine, and on some batches we would also press elderberries and use a gallon of elderberries and a gallon of the wild grape juice to make a 10 gallon batch adjusting the SG and acid to normal parameters. This would give a fairly well balanced wine, as the high tannin in the elderberries would be reduced to a more moderate level.

Hi: I've tried it and used it to acidify my hydrangeas.