Purchasing Spring Grapes - Denver, CO

[JoP]

@DonnyDarko19 did you ever find a local source for Chilean grapes or juice? I also live in Denver and I’ve been wanting to make a Chilean Pinot.

Same here in California, I could never find any local distributor for Chilean grapes and the shipping from the East Coast is unaffordable

 

[DonnyDarko19]

@DonnyDarko19 did you ever find a local source for Chilean grapes or juice? I also live in Denver and I’ve been wanting to make a Chilean Pinot.

Unfortunately, no. I haven't found any local suppliers. The only option I have found so far is Musto Wine Grape Company in Connecticut. The problem is, unless you buy a LOT of grapes, they won't ship them fresh since that would require a refrigerated truck. Instead, they will only ship 5 gallon pails of frozen grape must and shipping is outrageous (not their fault, they ship using FedEx or UPS and it's just their shipping rates). Last I checked (a few weeks ago) it was about $200 per pail for shipping.

 

[CDrew]

Wine grapes direct is a good outfit and ships for much less. But yes, there is no way around the high shipping fees on heavy stuff. I want to say that to ship to me, was around $50 per pail.

 

[DonnyDarko19]

Wine grapes direct is a good outfit and ships for much less. But yes, there is no way around the high shipping fees on heavy stuff. I want to say that to ship to me, was around $50 per pail.

Do they sell Chilean grapes? There are a few other options (I've used Brehm Vinyards) for getting north American grapes, but Musto is the only option I have found for Chilean grapes. I've really been wanting to make some Chilean Malbec, but I'm not paying $200+ for shipping.

 

[Meadini]

@DonnyDarko19 thanks for responding. That’s definitely more than I’m willing to pay right now! I’m going to try to join a couple of winemaking clubs in the area and start networking-which could be tough with covid.

 

[DonnyDarko19]

@DonnyDarko19 thanks for responding. That’s definitely more than I’m willing to pay right now! I’m going to try to join a couple of winemaking clubs in the area and start networking-which could be tough with covid.

Sure thing!

One club you can look into is the Colorado Wine club. It's a club of winemakers. Covid has made it difficult for the club to meet, but hoping that changes soon.

https://sites.google.com/site/coloradowineclub/

 

[AaronSC]

This has been discussed so many time, I don't get it either. Even with the most efficient extraction methods the juice to grape ratio is not even close.

Maybe they can use mechanical harvesting for the buckets, but the grapes can only be hand harvested to ship? That could be a factor.

-Aaron

 

[user 38734]

A few local vineyards here do some version of the following for white-wine-making home gamers:

Sell the grapes and you pick up chilled, racked, settled, ready to ferment juice. No added charge for processing. Prices are roughly $1.50/lb, and the conversion is roughly 18lbs of grapes per gal of juice. Beer kegs work great for this and at 15.5 gal you need to buy 280lbs of fruit - $420. For the equivalent of a 6 gal bucket that'd be, what, call it $160 or $27/gal. This is machine-harvested fruit.

How they sell 6 gals of juice for $50 or $8/gal I have no idea.

 

[AaronSC]

If you compare this to the prices for hybrids and native grapes from the Finger Lakes (Wine Juice | 30+ Varieties | Fulkerson Winery & Farms) they are not too crazy ($5.50-8.00/gal). The viniferas are a lot more (≈$18-$20/gal), but the Finger Lakes is a very marginal area for vinifera, and these are high-quality grapes (or at least they were ten years ago).