I have been making wine on my own for 3 years now and have been helping my uncles make wine since I was 12 or so. My great-grandfather moved here from a small town in Italy and we have been making wine from locally sourced concord grapes and grapes from Cali (cab, zin, barbera, sangiovese) ever since. We always do a natural fermentation (no yeast addition) and never add sulfites. The Concord grapes we get are from a farm that started growing grapes in 1888. We crush/destem up at the farm, press 1 week later, add sugar and bulk age. We drink all our wine within 2-3 years so we usually don't run risk of spoilage. We finally started aging our cab for 2 years about 7 years ago (we would always drink it) and have seen great improvement. A lot of Italians moved to this area when my great-grand father did so there are lots of home winemakers and we get together to order grapes from Cali. My uncles do about 60gal Concord, 60gal cab and 45gal of either zin or barbera every year. This year I am doing 100 gal of Concord.
Hey from Michiana
- Thread starter FXibley
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bkisel
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There are a bunch of folks on the forum who like you make wine starting with grapes. A few, I believe, even have their own vines. Stick around and you'll be meeting them.
Welcome, sdibley! You are certainly off and running!
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