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I grow muscadines, which have 40 chromosomes instead of the 38 of vinifera grapes. So, technically, no pics from me.

I planted some hardy kiwi vines last year. No fruit yet on most of them, but next year I'm expecting to see some. Has anybody made wine from them?

Are you sure your starting sg was 1.15? Maybe 1.115? Not sure, but I doubt that yeast will work in 1.15. Secondly, to go from 1.15 to .995 will get about 21% alcohol. I don't know of any yeast in common use that will do that. The good news is that if your beginning sg was 1.115 and it went down...

I'd prune off the low shoots. I would have rubbed them off as soon as the buds opened on the trunk. I like my trunk to be bare. If your vine is going to absorb a weedkiller, the leaves near the ground will be the ones to get it.

If citric acid is turned into acetic acid, I'm not using any more acid blend in my wine. I sure would have thought the companies that make that stuff would know better than to make it with 50% citric acid.

I've had good luck with Bottoms and Ison's.

I use 5 gallon paint straining bags from Lowe's or Home Depot. No weights. Just punch it down and rotate it upside down 2 or 3 times a day to keep the floating side from drying out.

You will be able to easily find muscadine roots 10 feet from the trunk of the vine. Amending the planting hole is mostly to make you feel good. I did it, too. I used landscaping fabric, too. Bark or wood mulch to help hold it down in addition to pins. Sand and dirt get in the mulch and it...

I just made 5 batches of wine. I don't even have lids for 3 of my buckets and did not snap the lids down on the other 2. I use a towel over the tops of the buckets that don't have lids. However, I usually transfer to a carboy with airlock before the fermentation ends, somewhere between 1.020 and...

Or online from Amazon or any number of winemaking supply companies that have websites.

I frequently use inverted sugar syrup to backsweeten my wines. I make muscadine, elderberry, and aronia wines and some blends of those 3. Of the 3, muscadines are acidic. But some of the acidity of the muscadines gets reduced during the winemaking process using 71B yeast. As near as I can tell...

Muscadines are very difficult to propagate by cuttings. You need a misting bed and the cutting would be taken in the summer. If one of the shoots coming off it is in the ground, that would be a lot easier. But you would have a lot of nerve, trespassing and taking a plant, unless there's a lot...

If you use a vacuum pump to transfer or bottle, you might want to make sure they can take the vacuum without collapse.

Never get your corks wet until they're touching the wine in the bottle. I keep a quart spray bottle with k-meta sanitizing solution. I spray the bottom, sides and lid of a 5 gallon bucket with this, put my corks in a colander, put the colander in the bucket and put the lid on it. 10 or 15...

I just put the year on my labels. In very rare cases, the year of harvest and the year I make the wine are not the same and I use the year the wine was made.

When you say it tastes like the rind, is that like the taste of a raw cucumber?

That seemed like a lot of water, but when I harvested my aronia berries this year, I noticed they are not very juicy. I let mine stay on the bush until some were falling off. That's a long time hanging on the bushes after they turned dark. It seemed like some were a little shriveled. I harvested...

I've done it. I bottled a few days later and ended up with some sediment in the bottles. Next time, the wine will sit for a month or more and be racked at least one more time after adding anything.

I use 3 piece airlocks. I usually don't pull them out of the stopper when I'm cleaning them. I blast water through the middle tube in both directions. If I didn't do that, I could envision a bug being in the part that's in the stopper and not being seen because of the stopper.

Muscadines are known for being acidic. There are 2 reasons that I know of to be concerned about the pH. One is that the yeast will only work in a certain pH range. You've passed that concern. The other is that the taste is affected by the acidity. Metrics like pH are nice, but you've tasted it...