Wine grapes in UK

An afterthought or two

1. Destemming elderberries. It is certainly elderberry season now in England. I am not going to do any this year but I have tried different methods in the past. The two methods I have used are a. Freezing the whole lot, complete and then destemming the frozen berries quickly into containers. I actually used this for a couple of seasons and then gave it up. The main reason for giving it up was that I had too much rubbish ( small twig remnants/unripe berries)carrying over into the containers. b. Destemming them while freshly picked I have eventually decided that this is the method I prefer. I do it by hand and it is a total pain! But I sit at my sink and destem by hand -- quite gently -- with a big sack by my side to take all the stems. When complete I wash all the berries in a gentle flow of fresh cold water. It is not really a washing but a method by which I can remove unripe berries ( essential) and the very small bits of the stems remaining. I then drain in a sieve and freeze in old ice-cream cartons.

As I said -- it is a pain -- but I have never had any problem with retentive slime which raises its head on here occasionally

1. Cleaning out my deep freeze. In preparation for a new input of fresh grapes on Monday ( tomorrow) I emptied my 16cu ft chest deep freeze of all of last years fruit. There was about 26 lbs of an unspecified wine grape ( almost certainly Bacco Noir), about 8 lbs of last years elderberries and about the same of blackberries. So I put the whole lot in a bucket with a few litres of cartonned red grape juice, added a campden tablet solution and a pectin enzyme. The addition of a kg of sugar upped the sg to 1.075 and I added a gervin claret style yeast. It is going great guns now and I stir it 2ce a day. In a few days time I shall rack it off the fruit pulp and then press the pulp for juice extraction. I shall then adjust the total volume by addition of more grape juice ( standard supermarket carton stuff with no nasty additives) and recalculate the amount of sugar to give me a finishing abv of

12- 13 % A bit messy but quite a simple bit of maths together with a simple fermenting regime. Probably drinkable by December 2006 or 2007

This wine making stuff has been fun for over 35 years now and it continues to be full of surprises. I can usually guarantee a different basic wine most years by some new combination of fruits.

Never thrown any away yet -- although there was one 5 gallon ( imp) lot that was bottled with attractive Christmas labels as red wine vinegar ( my fault but it was good wine vinegar) and was well received by friends ( I did discard the polyethylene container it was in though!)

Ever on to new things!

In article , Pinky writes

Yes, after trying several alternatives, I now always freeze elderberries on their clusters, then strig them off with a kitchen fork. I'm tempted to go for a spiced wine with them this year, ginger, cloves etc. I call that a mulled wine, but I'm not sure if that is correct.

You are totally incorrect! A mulled wine is something entirely different in its preparation and drinking. It is made from a ready to drink red wine and is NOT part of the process of making wine It is always served warm to hot and the best mulled wines are about 1/2 wine and water prepared slowly with cloves, lemon & orange slices, a few sticks of cinnamon, sugar to taste --but not too sweet please. Definitely no ginger and then a splash of cognac just before serving When I lived in the Sultanate of Oman from 76 to 86 I regularly served up to

200 expats with gallons of the stuff prepared slowly over several hours under the afternoon sun ,over a low heat, in huge Indian style pans and the "splash" of brandy tended to be several bottles.

But it is easy to do it on a small scale in a saucepan. The danger is to use too much neat wine -- half water and wine with the spices produce the best result. And despite the addition of brandy it is not a high alcohol drink due to the evaporation of alcohol

You have other minor misconceptions in some of your posts on this wine NG. Beer makers talk about the "mash" wine makers refer to the "must" -- which is the mess of early fermenting sludge which produces amazingly good wines. A minor point but I am certainly not a beer maker and being in the home winemaking hobby for far longer than I like to admit to I do like to maintain the language!!!

In article , Pinky writes

Thanks for that advice. I am not contemplating adding spices to an existing wine, but using them in making a new one. I have an old recipe for it which has always turned out well. It is a lovely warming drink to come home to after a day out in the cold. Elderberry wines are very adaptable to variations of choice.

An update.

Got 90 kg of Sangiovese today. They were in excellent condition and think they were only picked last Friday in Puglia in Southern Italy.

I have just finished destemming the lot by hand -- 4 1/2 hours of messy work. I have bagged 6 boxes worth and they are now in my 16 cu ft chest deep freeze. The other 4 boxes worth are in 2 buckets tightly sealed (and mildly sulphited) till I have recovered enough to press then tomorrow.

I am still vaguely tempted to ferment on the wild yeasts. The grapes looked so good with a heavy "bloom" on them. But I suspect that I shall use a packet yeast to have a good kick start.

The wastage on destemming was very small -- I wouldn't say that there was as much as 2 lbs of waste grapes. Most of the destemming was fairly hassle free just a trimming of the top of the bunch and then a stripping action from top to bottom removed most of the grape with a small crushing action as well. But it was boring and tedious -- though hardly hard work.

I am also informed that there might be some Montepulciano grapes coming to Manchester wholesale market soon! I shall be there!

This is the first time after many years of searching that I have found wine grapes available in UK. I know that you in the USA have lots of opportunities but there seems to be a different mindset here in England ( and I refer to England and not UK).

The real problem is the "Home brew" shops are tied irrevocably to the beer and wine kit manufactures. Even my good friend Allan ( a Home brew supplier in Doncaster) will not look towards the real grape market. It is a slow progress here but there are many ( perhaps isolated) winemakers who want access to real grapes. It is silly really when the whole of Europe's over production of wine grapes is so available.

Ah well -- just another of my high horses! --- and I do have a few!

Why are you planning to press the grapes before fermentation?

Brian

Ooops ! I meant "crush" and not "press".

I used the grapes from 4 boxes and then had a good foot stomping yesterday and now have 5 gals+ (imp) in two fermentation bins fermenting away like mad on the results. Quite cathartic really