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I recently received a call from a journalist who said he was interested in interviewing me as a home winemaker who makes wine from grapes rather than from kits. I quickly assured him that I DO make wine from kits, as well as from grapes! He seemed a bit confused. To him the world is neatly divided into “grapes” people and “kits” people—just, I guess, the way it is supposed to be divided into “cat” people versus “dog” people. Well, in my experience it doesn’t really work that way. Lots of folks who make kit wines also use fresh fruit, and vice versa. I happen to like dogs AND cats!
So what, really, are the advantages and disadvantages of kits over fresh grapes, and vice versa?
Time. It takes about ½ hour to sanitize a fermenter, dump in a kit, dilute to proper length and pitch the yeast. Grapes require a lot more work. Like going to the vineyard and, most likely, picking a hundred pounds or more in the hot sun! Then you have to remove shrunken, under-ripe and rotten grapes! Then you have to crush them. If they’re white-wine grapes, they next go directly to the wine press. If red-wine grapes, they go into the fermenter with some sulfite, after you spend an hour fishing out the stems!. After a week or so they get pressed. What’s more, the trip from raw, sweet, fruity liquid to cloudy, dry, fermented wine differs tremendously for kit wines compared to wine from fresh grapes: like using enzymes, correcting sugar and acid levels, checking Ph, making decisions about malolactic fermentation, deciding how long to extend maceration and how often to punch down reds, etc. Your kit wine can go into the bottle in a few weeks, but it’s usually a bad idea to bottle “real” whites in under 4-6 months, and “real” reds in under 9 months to a year.
Energy. It requires a whole lot less calories, or ergs or horsepower, or whatever you care to measure with, to dump some extract and juice into a fermenter and watch it churn than it does to pick, haul, crush, press and discard the waste from a hundred pounds or so of grapes! What’s more, kit wines, if you follow thee directions, are racked fewer times and just don’t require anywhere near the handling, testing, caressing, praying over, dancing for, and otherwise busting your bum over that “real” wines do.
Quality. Well now we’re into the land of subjectivity and opinion. Most people would taste your average homemade wine made by your average Virginia amateur winemaker from your average Virginia grapes, and, when comparing them with a high-end kit made from grapes from California, Oregon, France, Italy, etc., well, they’d just spit it out, or gulp it down and mumble something vaguely complimentary while rushing away looking for the Gallo. But here we’re talking about “average.” There is no doubt that California has climates far more suitable for vinifera grapes. Fruit intensity, body, brix, acid levels are all likely to be “better,” by some definition, than your average Virginia wine grapes.
But let’s leave “average” alone, here, because we are not pursuing the winemaking hobby because we want to be drinking “average” wines, are we?. What are the REAL differences? To answer this I need to pour a couple glasses of my own wine. On my left is a glass of a really nice kit wine. It is the Winexpert 2003 Selection Limited Edition Chilean Carmenere and Malbec blend. On the right is my 2003 Virginia Merlot from Hasselhof’s Weingarten, in Essex County, Virginia. Chilean Carmenere was, for many, many years, mistaken for—and labeled as—Merlot. So here are two wines from similar grapes. And yet, the wines are not similar! The Virginia Merlot, from the 2003 vintage, is high in acid, full of green-pepper/unripe flavors, a lot thinner, fruitier, more “liquid” than the rich, highly concentrated fluid that comes from the kit. On the other hand, the Virginia Merlot is MUCH more aromatic. Its flavors are filled with real fruit, substantial fruity acids, lots of tannins—sometimes somewhat harsh. The kit wine is full-bodied, with generic fruit enveloping generic vanilla-and-toast-oakiness. Acidity is low, so flavor is round, tasty but unexciting, not refreshing. In short, it’s a kit wine, though better than many!
The “grape” wine is still on the young side, exhibiting sharp, “green” flavors, but nonetheless a really animated blend of oak, acid, fruit, spice, and minerals…a true Virginia wine, even if from an “off” vintage (the rainy cool days of 2003 made for a really challenging harvest). This wine, to me, tastes alive, not like something produced by a Star Trek Replicator. As a winemaker, I was presented with sound but somewhat under-ripe grapes. My job was to do the best I could with them. Over the past several months—nearly a year—I have tried yeast fining, varies levels and types of oak aging, and adding of enzymes to protect the wine. As I taste it now, I taste an immature, but truly interesting wine. Of course, as a living entity, my Merlot may yet get away from me. Lurking microorganisms and a fairly high Ph could still combine to leave me with a spoiled product suitable for little more than wetting down the compost heap. Making “real” wine has some “real” risks, and it takes a certain amount of knowledge, experience and luck to succeed.
When I taste the Carmenere/Malbec, I’m aware that this is a faster maturing, but nonetheless sophisticated wine! It is well made, probably from very high quality grapes. It is, however, made to a model of what a “good” wine should be. That model is based on the needs of mass marketing. Wine kit manufacturers are still stuck with the same mandate that all commercial wineries have: they have to produce a product that makes the highest profit. While kit makers have done a fantastic job of getting more of the grape into the kit, they still cannot duplicate the huge range of flavors and aromas that make each wine unique. If all you want is generic California-style red and white or pink dinner wines, then stick strictly to kits. You’ll make good wine and you’ll save a lot of heartaches, hassles and dollars.
But if you’d like the challenge of making something that is truly the results of your own craftsmanship (and that of the vineyardist, of course), then try crushing, pressing and vinifying wine grapes—especially locally grown ones. The product will be unique, not like everyone else’s kit wine. Sometimes it won’t be as “good,” by some standards—that’s why kit wines win so many ribbons in competitions—but it will be true to the millennia-old traditions and values of winemaking. And sometimes the vintage will be right, your judgments will be on the mark, and you’ll blow any kit wine out of the water!
Central Virginia Winemakers members harvesting Pinot gris at Hasselhof’s Weingarten, 2003
Dan, where can I buy grapes for making wine. I live in the Richmond area.
Sally V.
Sally,
I buy most of my grapes from Dr. Gert Hasselhof whose 36-acre vineyard is in Hustle Virginia. That’s in Essex County just Northwest of Tappahannock. Gert has about a dozen varieties, all vinifera. You can reach him at 608-778-2936. There is a small vineyard, Chestnut Ridge, near Ettrick that produces Cabernet Sauvignon and Viognier. For contact information, contact Bob and Jeanne Henderson at The Weekend Brewer. For California grapes, I can recommend Old Oak Vineyards (http://www.oldoakvineyards.net/oldoak/grapes.htm) for Lodi grapes, and Peter Brehm Vineyards (http://www.brehmvineyards.com/).
Also, see: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CentralVirginiaWinemakers/
Copyright 2004 L. Daniel Mouer