Grapes or Not – It’s Still Good Wine
Ask ten different people for a definition of “wine” and you’ll get just as many different answers. A stockbroker in New York will have visions of fine Bordeaux Grand Crus, a surfer in California will be dreaming of a local Chardonnay, a couple in Vermont will pour you a glass of their homemade blackberry cordial, while a gentleman farmer in England will bring out a dusty bottle of last year’s rather “experimental” turnip “wine.”
“Wine,” such as it is, means many different things to those who collect, consume, make, and enjoy it. Folks associated with the commercial or scientific side of the wine industry may define wine as those beverages made only with grapes. They may even go further and stipulate that these grapes may only belong to the classic European family of winemaking grapes, the Vitis vinifera species. This train of thought is inherently blasphemous to another class of winemakers and wine-appreciators, those people who believe that practically anything — from cucumbers to grass clippings to dandelions — can be fermented into a beverage recognizable as “wine.”
It’s easy to take a viewpoint somewhere in the middle. Drive through one of this nation’s winegrowing regions and you’re bound to see a bumper sticker that says it all: “Wine Happens.” It’s no mistake that Mother Nature imbued grapes (and certain varieties, at that) with just the right amount of sugar, water, acids, flavors, and tannin to make a dry, crisp, aromatic, and clear beverage that humankind has improved upon and enjoyed over the millennia. Wine made from these Vitis vinifera grapes sometimes does just seem to “happen.” Dump some yeast in if you want, don’t let it get too hot or too cold, and more likely than not you’ll end up with a clear, dry beverage that’s got about 10 percent to 12 percent alcohol and is pretty similar to the table wine that you can buy on the shelf at your local supermarket.
No matter what you call it, home winemakers the world over have always used ingredients other than wine grapes to make their fine homemade beverages. You can divide these ingredients into the following categories: Vitis vinifera grapes, French hybrid grapes, berries, soft fruits, hard fruits, tropical fruits, dried fruits, herbs and flowers, and vegetables. Pertaining to each category are special techniques that must be employed and certain additives that must be used to give the yeast a healthy, happy environment in which to conduct its fermentation.
Vitis vinifera grapes naturally provide the best combination of factors (acid, sugar, and nutrient levels) for wine yeast to grow in. The tannins and flavors in wine grapes also tend to give the most pleasing results when it comes to the aesthetics of the finished product. All of this notwithstanding, it is certainly possible, if not inevitable, to produce fine non-grape wines if a little extra attention to detail is paid.
Vitis Vinifera Grapes
These grapes are some of the best materials with which to make dry table wines. Varieties traditionally used in France but now grown around the world include: Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, and Viognier for whites as well as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Malbec, and Syrah on the red side. These grapes and their concentrated juices can be purchased for use by the home winemaker.
For making dry table wine, the “ideal” components of a wine grape juice are: 22% sugar and 6.5 grams per liter total acidity for reds and 21 percent sugar and 7.5 grams per liter total acidity for whites. In these conditions wine yeast (which also can be bought through home winemaking supply stores and catalogs) are generally the happiest and will conduct the healthiest fermentation possible. Vary a lot below or above these guidelines and winemakers should add a little sugar or grape juice concentrate, add a bit of water, or add some tartaric acid to bring the acid up. When using any other fruit besides grapes, add yeast nutrients (purchased through home winemaking suppliers) at the rate of one-half to one ounce per five-gallon batch. Wine grapes are usually abundant in the nitrogen, vitamins, and minerals necessary for a healthy alcoholic fermentation while other fruits can lack adequate amounts of all three.
French Hybrid Grapes
French hybrid grapes are a cross between a Vitis vinifera species and native American grape species. Traditional European wine grapes flourish in a Mediterranean climate and immigrants to the New World noticed that the vines they brought over with them didn’t do too well in their new home. In the 19th century crosses were made (and some are suspected to have occurred naturally) between the European Vitis vinifera grapes and native American grapes such as Vitis labrusca and Vitis rotundifolia.
These hardy crosses have become collectively known as “French hybrids” and are used by many viticulturalists, professional and amateur, throughout the United States and Canada. The most popular hybrids in use are, for whites, OK Riesling, Verdelet, and Müller-Thurgau. For reds, Rougon and Chancellor seem to be good choices.
When using French hybrids for winemaking, it is wise to remember that, especially given the colder, damper areas in which they thrive, they’ll end up being lower in sugar and higher in acids than traditional winemaking varieties. That being so, winemakers using hybrids will need to add sugar or Vitis vinifera concentrate to make up for the sugar deficiency. At the same time, it is important that the acids aren’t too high, so diluting hybrid juices and musts with water (and adding sugar) or using a proportion of lower-acid V. vinifera concentrate is usually necessary.
Berries
Since berries are small, often round, and can be bright purple like many grapes, some people assume that they can substitute one for the other and make a fine beverage. This may be the case, if fortune smiles upon you, but these two fruit types are inherently different and must be treated as such.
First of all, berries can be very high in acid — they can take the enamel right off your teeth. Especially since this high acid content usually goes hand-in-hand with lower sugar content, supplementing a berry fermentation with wine grape concentrate is almost always necessary. Berries are also high in pectin, a complex carbohydrate in fruits that makes them jelly-like if cooked, as in the making of jam. It is always a good idea to add about two teaspoons of pectic enzyme per five-gallon batch of any fruit other than grapes to break down the pectin molecules and cut down on the haze and instabilities that the natural pectin in fruit can cause. This enzyme is commonly available in powder or tablet form at home winemaking and brewing supply stores. The great thing about using berries for making wine is that they are very aromatic and usually highly colored, two things that contribute to wines that look, smell, and taste great. Many have a lot of tannins in their skins, which, like the skins of wine grapes, contributes to the slightly astringent mouthfeel that you expect from a fine red wine.
Soft Fruits
In the soft fruits category are things like apricots, plums, and peaches. Apricots make some of the best white and sparkling wines around, though like berries and most other fruits, must have pectic enzymes added to them since they can easily make hazy wines. Soft fruits, depending upon their stage of ripeness, can have high sugars and low acids, so both of these parameters may need to be adjusted. Luckily, apricots make for healthy, alcoholic fermentations as they are abundant in the nutrients needed for yeast to reproduce and complete the fermentation. Plums are good fruits to use for the same reason, but the strange, spicy flavor they acquire when they age recommends them for use only in blends and in port and sherry-style dessert wines.
Hard Fruits
Hard fruits include things like apples, pears, and rhubarb. These fruits usually don’t have enough of their own sugar to create the alcohol content associated with what we call wine, so they need to be supplemented by sugar, honey, grape juice concentrate, or any combination of the above. Apple cider is a often thought of as the realm of home brewers, but home winemakers can make delicious apple or pear wine that is crisp, pleasant, and flavorful at about 11 percent alcohol.
Again, pectic enzyme is an important additive to making wine with hard fruits. Hard fruits also may need a small hand-press to extract their juice, a specialized piece of equipment that many people may not own. Luckily, these can often be borrowed from local home winemaking clubs or rented from home winemaking or home brewing stores. Hard fruits make good bases for dry white-wine styles as well as sweet dessert or social wines.
Tropical and Dried Fruits
These fruits are in one category because they usually take on a supplemental role. Rarely do they supply all the sugar, or serve as the main ingredient around which a wine is centered. Tropical fruits are used sparingly, mainly because they are expensive and difficult to obtain for most people in North America. Typical tropical fruits include pineapple, kiwi, and starfruit. These fruits are usually very high in acid and impart flavors many people would consider “strange” in most wine styles. However, they can be used with some success as flavoring agents in sweeter white wines when the bulk of the juice comes from white wine grapes, apples, or a similar source.
Dried fruits are usually used either as a quick source of a sugar and nutrient boost (raisins being very popular) or as a flavoring agent in port or sherry-style wines. The oxidized flavor of dried fruits does not recommend them for crisp, clean white-wine styles, though they can sometimes be used as a sugar and flavor source for dry and sweet red-wine styles.
Herbs, Vegetables, and Flowers
Last but not least, it’s time to give some credence to everyone who likes to make a good parsnip wine now and then. When most people think of wine, they don’t think of vegetables, flowers, or herbs. But these things have been used to give special flavor, aroma, and character to wines throughout history. There is a good reason, however, that wines are most likely to be made with fruits — these plants are high in sugar and will ferment very well.
Vegetables, on the other hand, don’t have much natural sugar that is immediately available to the yeast and it is always necessary to supplement your vegetable musts with grape concentrate, juice, or with dried fruit such as raisins or elderberries. The same thing could be said of herbs and flowers — they don’t really have any fermentable material of their own and usually are used only to contribute aromas or flavors to the finished product. Elderflower wine and dandelion wine are prime examples of wines that rely on herbs and flowers for their distinctive characteristics.
Purist or not, wine snob or not, you must admit that it is always possible to make wonderful, tasty beverages out of fruits, vegetables, and other materials that are not grapes. You might even be able to say that those winemakers who use only grapes to make wine are taking the easy way out — and those who dare to be different are the truly talented among the winemakers of the world.
