Wild Grape Vineyard Stanstead, Quebec, Canada

[Sean@TomifobiaRanch QC]

Hi to all, new here and I’m from Stanstead Quebec, Canada.

When I was 14 (44 years ago, ouf) I made wine with a neighbor in the fall for two years. The first year we went to Jean-Talon Market in Montreal and bought several cases of grapes (Cariginac) from France. The wine that year was soso if I remember correctly. The second year, my neighbor who used to work in a hospital in Montreal-East, he notices people going over to the fences around the hospital and this drew his curiosity. To his amazement he found that there were wild grapes growing there and we decided that fall we would make wine with wild grapes instead of using imported grapes.

We really didn’t do anything very special, making the wine in our cold cellar, we had a old open top oak drum which we used to do our primary fermentation with the grapes pulp for several weeks (I’d have to stir twice a day), from there we transferred the juice into glass jugs with airlock vales on top and it would stay there (a month or maybe more?) until hydrometer reached a level I can’t remember and we were ready to bottle.

That second year we made something special, deep red in color and the wine had a rich body taste vs what we had made the first year. We had several people taste the wine and the feedback was pretty good. My uncle in Toronto who was from Austria and who wrote articles on wine for the Toronto Star on wine said he liked it, told me to cut down on my sugar and take out the grape seeds when fermenting. I’ve long lost our recipe for our mix but we had that Oak drum that was half full or maybe a little more (100-120 liters) and we had maybe 3-4 cases for wild grapes, white sugar bag may two and the rest was water and of course some yeast. As much as I can remember.....?....I thought the wine was pretty good, but of course at 14 most booze taste good.

Over all these years I’ve always had in the back of my mind to someday make some wine with wild grapes again as I’ve always felt there was something originally tasteful to be done with these grapes. In Quebec there are a few good little whites for summer drinking but the red’s I’ve tasted to date aren’t very palatable. (being polite) The strains of grapes that grow in our cold region challenge the making of good wine let alone a great wine.

This past spring in lock down from Covid-19, I decided to make the jump and plant a vineyard. I’ve cleared off part of a hill at my ranch near my stables and I’ve planted 120 vines of wild grapes which I potted from seed this past spring. I have another 100 pots growing now that I plan to plant next spring to finish the initial part of my vineyard. I’ve planted my vines 20 feet apart so that they will spread 10 feet on each side from the stem along the wire. To maximise my space and to experiment, I’ve pulled wires at 6 and 4 feet high, thus enabling me to plant vines every 10 feet alternating heights, hopefully increasing my production. Have to see how that works.

So here is where I need help with my folly! LOL Would anyone have some experience with wine making using “Wild Grapes” ?? What mix do you use? Hmmm, pounds of destemmed or stemmed grapes to gallons of water? I know using a hydrometer and adjusting my quantity of sugar will affect the alcohol content in my wine but, what do you do? Do you have a fixed quantity of sugar you use? Any insight or tips on the process, fermentation times, aging, etc.??

I’m heading down to Montreal-East in the coming weeks to pick some wild grapes and hopefully I can start a few test batches with different mixtures to see if I can produce a wine with some potential. I have lots of acreage to expand my vineyard but before I go too far let’s see what this fall brings with my test batches. I’ll certainly need help along the way and hopefully forum members can point me in the right direction. Let me know your thoughts, ideas, advice, tips, any help is much appreciated! Many thanks, Sean.

 

[SeniorHobby]

Hello Sean,
Fellow newbie here from Minnesota. Looks like you might have the same kind of weather that we have. I have made wine from wild grapes before & learned a bit from fellow wine makers about the wild grape. Apparently they are quite high in acid. When you ferment with the seeds and skins they can get that strong smell sometimes described as "foxy". Jack Keller's book on "Home Winemaking" has a recipe for wild grapes. I would add it here but not sure if that is appropriate with copyright rules. His book also is a good book for learning a lot about beginning wine making. I will be making wild grape wine this year but will not be fermenting with the skins & seeds for the whole time. This is an experiment for me but my plan will be to try leaving them on for three days instead of the full seven days or so to completion. I will also be trying to correct the acidity before the ferment to see if I can get a better result. As far as the amount of sugar to add, the beginning SG reading should be 1.090, so you would need to add sugar till you get to that reading. I am reading this about two years too late, but as in most grape vines I would imagine that your vines needed a few years to mature in order to produce.
Good luck fellow northerner!

 

[JustJoe]

Welcome Sean,

I am from Minnesota so similar weather to yours. I have been making wine from wild grapes and experimenting with different mixes of fruit (usually some portion of elderberries also tried mulberries), different yeasts, oak and no oak. The last batch from 2021 grapes seems to be the best but it is still very young. I only tasted some when I bottled it last week. but the taste was excellent. This is the recipe for a 6 gallon batch:
Batch 2 December 1
35 ½ pounds grapes
2 pounds elderberries
½ tsp kmeta
½ tsp pectic enzyme
4 ½ pounds sugar
Avante yeast

12/1 All fruit was frozen. Heated and crushed all fruit together Added 3 cups of simple syrup (2 # sugar) dumped into the fermenter and added ½ tsp Kmeta and ½ tsp pectic enzyme
12/2 Added water to 6 gallons and sugar to SG 1.088, 2 ½ pounds and pitched yeast / Temperature using a heat pad 68F
12/4 fermenting vigorously removed heat pad.
12/ 5 SG 1.042 Temperature 62F
12/6 SG 1.038
12/7 SG 1.032
12/14 SG 1.002 Removed skins and racked
1/3/22 SG .992 racked
9/19 bottled Tasted very good for such young wine.

 

[SeniorHobby]

Welcome Sean,

I am from Minnesota so similar weather to yours. I have been making wine from wild grapes and experimenting with different mixes of fruit (usually some portion of elderberries also tried mulberries), different yeasts, oak and no oak. The last batch from 2021 grapes seems to be the best but it is still very young. I only tasted some when I bottled it last week. but the taste was excellent. This is the recipe for a 6 gallon batch:
Batch 2 December 1
35 ½ pounds grapes
2 pounds elderberries
½ tsp kmeta
½ tsp pectic enzyme
4 ½ pounds sugar
Avante yeast

12/1 All fruit was frozen. Heated and crushed all fruit together Added 3 cups of simple syrup (2 # sugar) dumped into the fermenter and added ½ tsp Kmeta and ½ tsp pectic enzyme
12/2 Added water to 6 gallons and sugar to SG 1.088, 2 ½ pounds and pitched yeast / Temperature using a heat pad 68F
12/4 fermenting vigorously removed heat pad.
12/ 5 SG 1.042 Temperature 62F
12/6 SG 1.038
12/7 SG 1.032
12/14 SG 1.002 Removed skins and racked
1/3/22 SG .992 racked
9/19 bottled Tasted very good for such young wine.

Hi JustJoe,
Thanks for the recipe, now I wish I had elderberries so I could try it!! Does the elderberry pull the high acidity away from the wild grape? Any chance you adjusted the acid content during the process? Also, did you oak the wine at any time? I tried that with an earlier batch of wild grape and it did soften the strong bite a bit.

 

[JustJoe]

I don't do anything specifically to reduce acid but there are things I do that help. The Avante yeast removes some of the malic acid during fermentation, not the same as MLF but it removes some of it. The elderberries are lower in acid than wild grapes so that also helps a little. I also wait as long as possible before harvesting the grapes to get the maximum sugar level but that also reduces the natural acidity of the grapes. I tried oaking a couple of batches but I didn't see any change. I do bulk age the wine about a year and I don't open a bottle until at least 2 years.
I bet there are plenty of elderberries in your area;. they grow wild all over north America and Europe, I don't grow any myself. I pick them all from wild bushes and I get 5 to 10 pounds every year without trying very hard. I made one batch of elderberry wine a few years ago but it was a lot of work to find, harvest and process 60 pounds of elderberries, and the wine was good but not good enough for me to do it again.

 

[SeniorHobby]

I don't do anything specifically to reduce acid but there are things I do that help. The Avante yeast removes some of the malic acid during fermentation, not the same as MLF but it removes some of it. The elderberries are lower in acid than wild grapes so that also helps a little. I also wait as long as possible before harvesting the grapes to get the maximum sugar level but that also reduces the natural acidity of the grapes. I tried oaking a couple of batches but I didn't see any change. I do bulk age the wine about a year and I don't open a bottle until at least 2 years.
I bet there are plenty of elderberries in your area;. they grow wild all over north America and Europe, I don't grow any myself. I pick them all from wild bushes and I get 5 to 10 pounds every year without trying very hard. I made one batch of elderberry wine a few years ago but it was a lot of work to find, harvest and process 60 pounds of elderberries, and the wine was good but not good enough for me to do it again.

Thanks for the response! My last batch of wild grape was aged two years before I did anything with it. Because it had such a strong flavor I thought I did something wrong. I did not balance my pH or check the acids when I fermented it. I don't recall the type of yeast I used but more than likely I followed Jack Keller's book for beginner wine makers recommendation. I did add oak, then later blended it with some white grape juice which made it taste pretty good. I did have a bit of cloudiness after adding the white grape juice, not sure what if I should have aged it, racked it again? I will have to look up what an elderberry looks like as I have never seen one.

 

[VinesnBines]

You can use dried elderberries to make wine or blend with wild grapes. A small amount goes a long way.

 

[SeniorHobby]

You can use dried elderberries to make wine or blend with wild grapes. A small amount goes a long way.

I'm assuming that you can buy them. Where would I find them?

 

[VinesnBines]

Online at homebrew/wine making stores or Amazon. They aren't cheap but a little goes a long way, four to six ounces per gallon for dried elderberry wine. Actually dried is better than fresh because of a green goo that (I hear) comes out of fresh elderberries.

Here is an article: Elderberry Wine: Taming the Wild Elderberry - WineMakerMag.com

 

[SeniorHobby]

Online at homebrew/wine making stores or Amazon. They aren't cheap but a little goes a long way, four to six ounces per gallon for dried elderberry wine. Actually dried is better than fresh because of a green goo that (I hear) comes out of fresh elderberries.

Here is an article: Elderberry Wine: Taming the Wild Elderberry - WineMakerMag.com

Thanks!