Community Winemaking Scheme

[REDRUM]

So, I came across this the other day - a couple of ommunity winemaking schemes in London:
http://www.londonmylondon.co.uk/?p=2247
http://transitionwalthamstow.org.uk/2013/08/26/a-community-wine-making-scheme-for-london-gardeners/

In a nutshell, home gardeners across London with grape vines in their backyard can bring their fruit in and have it added to a blended red or blended white made by a professional winemaker. You get a certain number of bottles per kilo of grapes brought in (plus a small fee).

I was really interested in this because there are so many vines around in suburban backyards in Adelaide where the fruit is just eaten by birds or goes to waste... having looked into it, it seems that there was a scheme in the late '80s where suburban grapes were bought & made into a wine which was sold for charity, but I think that may have only happened in one year.

Has anyone heard of any similar projects happening elsewhere? I think it's a pretty cool idea... crowdsourced wine!

 

[JohnT]

I think it does sound cool, but I would think the resulting wine would be crap. All of these grapes were grown by folks that have no clue of how to grow quality grapes. Also, you have no way of controlling what varietal goes into the mix. Someone might sneak in some...gasp... concords.

 

[REDRUM]

I think it does sound cool, but I would think the resulting wine would be crap. All of these grapes were grown by folks that have no clue of how to grow quality grapes. Also, you have no way of controlling what varietal goes into the mix. Someone might sneak in some...gasp... concords.

That's true, I guess the idea is that most of it would be fairly standard wine grape varietals, and any small amounts of weird fruit would not really affect the overall blend.
Apparently the wine that came out of this scheme in the '80s was quite decent (but nothing special), more of a novelty than anything else - I guess it would be pretty fun serving your dinner guests a professionally-made wine containing grapes out of your own backyard!

As for Concords, my only experience with them was drinking a local wine in Japan made from them, tasted like grape flavoured Hubba Bubba!

 

[JohnT]

That's true, I guess the idea is that most of it would be fairly standard wine grape varietals, and any small amounts of weird fruit would not really affect the overall blend.
Apparently the wine that came out of this scheme in the '80s was quite decent (but nothing special), more of a novelty than anything else - I guess it would be pretty fun serving your dinner guests a professionally-made wine containing grapes out of your own backyard!

As for Concords, my only experience with them was drinking a local wine in Japan made from them, tasted like grape flavoured Hubba Bubba!

I agree that the novelty aspect is interesting. I just would not get my hopes up for a wine that could compete with Opus One (or the like).

One question.. Why did you choose REDRUM (or Murder spelled backwards) as your member name??

 

[REDRUM]

It's a reference to The Shining (great film!) and a name I use on some football forums (cos the 'Reds' is the nickname for the soccer team I follow, Adelaide United). It seemed appropriate for a wine forum too!