Newbie

[Tm&J3]

Hello all! Found you via Google search. We are in Northeast Ohio and contemplating planting grapes and making wine. In the way early stages of research now.

 

[sour_grapes]

Welcome to WMT! Research away!

 

[mainshipfred]

Welcome, it doesn't take too much research if you wanted to get your feet wet with a kit. In fact it will probably help you know what to research.

 

[Bubba1]

Welcome to WMT there is a ton of knowledge here just ask.

 

[robert81650]

welcome.............................

 

[Tm&J3]

Welcome to WMT there is a ton of knowledge here just ask.

thanks

 

[Rice_Guy]

Welcome to WMT.

you have two activities vinting and growing. I would rate the grape growing as a lot riskier/harder than making wine. Many of the commercial folks do one or the other. I count years as, the year I learned about black rot, or the year I tried milky spore.
The native grapes have done better than the hybrids.

 

[keverman]

Hello all! Found you via Google search. We are in Northeast Ohio and contemplating planting grapes and making wine. In the way early stages of research now.

I am a beginner, with my first home grown vintage of Marquette now in the bottle (2018). It was year 3 for my vines and I got 118 lbs. off 16 vines even after cutting off lots of bunches with black rot. Being a tree hugger, I tried to see how it would perform with no spray. I did not see any diseases until my first fruiting year. Anyway, from a winemaking perspective, I purchased 200 lbs. of Marquette from a grower to practice on while my vines were growing in, and I'm so glad I did. I burned up a lot of excess worry, fussing, OCD behavior and basically that poor wine was "pecked to death by chickens" if you can envision my behavior. Adding, tweaking, desperately trying to make it drinkable, using anything but what was really needed. Time. It was still drinkable, but a little odd at the finish from over tweaking. Now the good: I learned a lot that practice year, and did so on someone else's "babies" and not my own. I figured there would be a lot less heartache if I ruined grapes I simply bought, rather than ones that I grew. I asked a lot of questions, bugged a lot of vintners, and my first estate Marquette, which we just started drinking, makes me very happy. Def. a kit would have been a good "practice" year one, then if you can purchase some grapes for your "practice" year 2, by year 3 you should have some of your own. (Disclaimer: I know almost nothing in the grand scheme of things, but folks on this forum do, and they help a lot). I have always wanted to taste a Noiret to see how it compares but have not found one close by. Same with Baco Noir and Itasca.

 

[Rice_Guy]

You need a good fungicide, black rot spores build up and can kill the vines. If you are a tree hugger at least sulphur (Bordeaux mix) but organic isn’t very good.

 

[keverman]

Yep, good advice, Rice_Guy. I found that out the hard way! I did go ahead with the traditional fungicides last year, so apparently I'm a tree hugger until my wine grapes are threatened. Then it's just war.