Just picked my first homegrown grapes

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Pickle

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Sep 7, 2010
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Eastbourne, East Sussex
I'm so excited! I've just picked over 5kilos of grapes from down our garden. If anyone can advise me as to the best course of action from here I'd be grateful. :thumb: I have done a search on here for recipes but as you can imagine typing in white wine recipes throws back A LOT of results containing various combinations of those three words!
I just hope we manage to make something drinkable from our vine :D
 
I found myself in exactly the same position as you with approximately 5kg of white and red grapes from the garden.
I'm no expert by any means but hears what I did. I destalked the grapes and put them in a fermenting bucket,then washed them.I then mashed up the grapes with a potato masher and added 4litres of supermarket grape juice that i had in the cupboard as i was worried that my grapes may be too acidic I then made up to 15litres with water.
I took a sg reading it was 1045 I then added a two kg bag of sugar straight in not syrup and three crushed campden tablets gave it a good stir and left for 24hrs.
The next day to my amazement all the sugar appeared to of dissolved as after a quick stir I had an SG. of just over 1090.I then added 3 teaspoons of pectolose,3 of yeast nutrient and a sachet of ritchies red wine yeast,i then fermented this on the must for just over a week stirring when i remembered.
I then strained through muslin into 2 and a 1/2 DJ's topped up with grape juice and fermented out.
I am just about to give this its first racking it looks like red wine it smells like it not sure about the taste at this point.
This is the first time I have done this a would welcome any comments.

Cheers Graham
 
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