wild grape issues

[JustJoe]

I have a lot of wild grapes (vitis riparia I think) growing here and I plan to make winr from them. However, being wild, they have issues. Most of the clusters have one or two or more dry black remnants of what were grapes mixed in with the good grapes.
My question is, how bad are these for my wine? are they essentially harmless and they will settle out with the lees or do I need to assiduously remove every one or my wine will turn into sewage? I know that nothing other than the fat purple grapes will make my wine better but will a few of these things cause serious damage. picture shows a really bad cluster. Most have many good grapes and only a few bad ones.

 

[salcoco]

the grapes are past should not make wine from them risk of bacterial activity to high let alone rotten grapes.

 

[JustJoe]

the grapes are past should not make wine from them risk of bacterial activity to high let alone rotten grapes.

Thanks for the answer. Did you mean the bad ones should be thrown out or all of the grapes?

 

[tjgaul]

I can't say definitively how much damage the bad grapes will do, but it's best to eliminate as many as possible. I've made varietal wild grape wine once and blended a good volume into last year's Concord must. Destemming and sorting those little buggers by hand is a pain in the butt, however, I felt it was worth the effort. One method that makes things go faster is to de-stem in bulk using whatever device you like and then simply feel through the must and pluck out anything hard and crusty. The raisined grapes are easy to detect and that will get the vast majority out of the must.

I don't know about your grapes, but the local ones I have available produce an inky dark wine that will stain just about anything. It took quite an effort to get a formica countertop clean when I didn't wipe up a spill quickly. Good luck.

 

[salcoco]

I would rack up to experience throw these away and be more diligent next year in determining ripening.

 

[Vinobeau]

I just picked 10 pounds of wild grapes to try Carbonic Maceration an I picked off all of the dried and damaged grapes from the clusters. I've been using wild grapes for about 12 years and I've always de stemmed them by hand and culled out the bad grapes.
How many pounds per gallon are you using?

 

[JustJoe]

I use 5 pounds per gallon. I partially destem them by hand and I remove the bad ones. However, this year I got about 70 pounds so wanted to know how careful I really need to be about removing the bad ones. Is it ok to remove most of them?