We grow grapes and make small batches of wine out of them. We are on the California coast and grow Golden Muscat and Thompson Seedless. Here is what we do - 1) harvest the grape clusters into buckets 2) Clean them off and pick the individual grapes putting them into a clean bucket 3)Crush and press into juice using a hand cranked juice press 4) Measure the sugar levels in the juice 5) Add Camden tablets to kill undesirable wild yeast 6) Add sugar if needed 7)Add wine yeast 8)Ferment/rack

and 9) bottle. You will need a small fruit press, food grade buckets with airlocks, camden tablets, wine yeast and corks. We sterilize and re-use bottles and everything else can be obtained on Amazon or from a beer supplier.

thank you Lynda!
we do not have large quantity of grapes, its one vine.
what's the minimum quantity of grapes we should have, so its worth making wine?

btw thats beautiful color, are you making Chardonnay?

I think the minimum would be 1 gallon of juice, which is between 2 and 3 gallons of grapes. Ideally, you would want to build up to 5 gallons of juice, which will make ~60 bottles. When you cut your vines back in the winter, try to propagate the cut canes. We started with two just two vines, but ours have self propagated.

This year our muscat vines gave us 12 gallons of juice. The picture is of our golden muscat, which makes a very unusual white wine. This is our fourth year making it and every year has come out completely different. One year it was crisp and dry like sauvignon blanc and another year heavy bodied like a viognier. We have no idea what we will get this year.

quick reference - 15 - 18 lbs. of grapes per gallon of wine (stems removed), 85-90 lbs will yield about 5 gallons finished wine (24 bottles)

You can make wine from raisins. In fact you can make it from any fruit or vegetable. My mom joked that could probably make it from cotton underwear.

I never pressed any fruit before making my wine. I've used whole almonds with the fruit and skins still complete with the pits in the center as they came off the tree. When I used Bananas I used everything except the Chiquita label. I did peal the bananas.

With grapes I would crush them in my hands to break up the skins although from my experience the fermentation would accomplish that. Any recipe I ever used seemed to always call for 3 pounds of fruit per gallon of wine and left all of the fruit in the fermentation container for the entire fermentation period; about a week. Also the recipes always called for adding 6-7 pints of water per gallon of wine. And most added */-2 pounds of sugar per gallon. Also a package of yeast. As you add sugar the alcohol content will increase until you reach the point where the yeast can't process any more sugar and it chokes. Any remaining sugar will sweeten the wine.

The main reason for my post is to point out that you don't need juice and instead just use the whole fruit. I always used 4 or more pounds of fruit per gallon. If use this method you're going to need a fermentation container much larger than what your final wine content will be to handle all the fruit. You'll need to stir the contents a couple times a day. After the week in the primary fermenter you would "rack" the liquid trying to keep from stirring it up so that you get as clear a liquid as possible. You would do this with a length of clear plastic tubing. You would put your thumb over one end of the tubing after raising it as high as possible and lower it into your new container. Practice this with a straw and a glass of water. I found it simpler to always use a larger container than your final container after your last rack. When I made 5 gallons I used a 6 gallon carboy.

Buried in the post above is a way of making a more organic wine but I won't spell it out; but it's up there.

I think my best wines were the Strawberry wine using berries from my garden and the Plum wine using a 25 pound box of plums purchased on sale. My worst was probably the Banana wine which I called Guzzlers Gold. Banana wine needs pectin added as there's little to none in the fruit. I use a "Winemakers recipe handbook" by Raymond Massaccesi (1976)

We make all kinds of wine from our excess fruit from our garden. Outside of grape wine, we like blueberry wine and guava wine. One of our plum varieties (satsuma) makes a nice wine and the other (Santa Rosa) is better eaten fresh or made into a sauce. One year we made key lime wine and it was horrible as a wine, but we made a sangria out of it which was very popular. This year we are going to try and blend the two grape varietals that we grow. One is a little plain and the other has a little too much personality. I am hoping a blend will be just right.

Hello Lynda and John D, had not visited this thread in more than a year.

How is it going on your winemaking?

I have an update! Last year we made our first Zinfandel wine. Started with having zero equipment and knowhow and in 2 weeks our wine was aging in carboys.

We got good yield of grapes last year. Almost 18 gallons grapes by volume. And 17 gallons of wine. We picked the gapes bit early, all grapes were not quite ripe/sweet. But we went ahead anyway. We got some encouragement and advice from a local winemaker.

Resulting wine was much lighter and acidic , but it was our first time making so we did well.

Yesterday we bottled one of the carboy.

Getting ready for second wine harvest, in next few days.

Grapes have started ripening, some more than others. Some are fermenting on tree, going to wait till they are sweeter. This year grapes are ripening much earlier.

@John D, what was your reference to 'organic' winemaking?

Btw, I tried to make natural wine, in small batch. Instead of yeast, added some honey to help ferment. According to winemaker we consulted, that resulted in a 'funky' wine. but I am going to try making part 'funky' wine.

swar_rao The Camden tablets kill off all yeasts. After a day or so you add your yeast. The tablets cause headaches from drinking the wine.

As an example there's a method of making hard apple cider called Keeving, The cider maker, Kevin Zielinski , states:

"After the apples are milled, they’re left to sit in their own pulp and skins, anywhere from a few hours to overnight. During maceration, oxygen breaks down the cell walls to release pectin, a naturally occurring gelling agent. Oxidation also browns the fruit, resulting in a juice that is a deeper, richer color."

And also:

"The cidermaking skill comes from managing that yeast population, and the most common trick to do so is just transferring the cider from one tank to another tank,” Takush adds. The cider is racked and re-racked. Each time, the yeast blooms and uses up nitrogen until finally, it can no longer replicate and fermentation stops, leaving much of the available sugar behind."

I haven't used the method but I wouldn't mill the apples but would leave the pulp and skins for the entire primary ferment. Keeving is done on the natural yeasts in the apples. It is said that with keeving all the yeast except the most desirable dies off during fermentation. So whether you add yeast or keeve you are using the most desirable yeast organically. I prefer a sweeter wine and found that adding a little extra sugar allows the yeast to "consume all the sugar that it's capable of and then fermentation stops leaving any remaining sugar to sweeten the wine." in my words.

swr_rao - You can make a wine from just honey. It's called mead. Requires 2 3/4 to 3 1/4 cups of honey per gallon of wine. No fruit. The more honey the sweeter the mead.

I think the reference to funky is that you didn't add any yeast. And if you used the Camden tablets you killed off all the yeasts in the fruit. The ferment must of happened from what yeasts were in your environment or the containers, maybe the honey, depending on when you added the honey.

We need to be careful. I was afraid to speak of this in my old post. The keeving of cider is an old method practiced in France and England. From the link in my last post: ..."the first references to the process in an appendix to the first edition of “Sylva,” John Evelyn’s famous full comprehensive study on British trees which was published in 1664."

But there are two methods of making wine/cider. From juice or using the whole fruit. I don't have a cider mill or even a press. I could rent a press; I tried that and found that the apples must be milled or you get very little juice when pressed. But it seems there's very little attention paid to using unmilled/unpressed grapes or apples to make a fine beverage.

@John, will read your post in detail, later.

We did not use camden tablets. During fermentation did not add any of that. After fermentation, did add metabisulphite solution

Its been more than a month, since we chatted.

We harvested the grapes bit late, just yesterday. We could have harvested last sunday, but we went on a trip.

Result is a very sweet must, with 28 brix and ph is 3.3. This is going to balance out the light sour winebof last year.