Norton Harvest

Just a quick note, somewhat delayed.  We harvested the Nortons Sept. 21.  We got 26 pounds of grapes de-stemmed and sorted.  It took about 5 hours to de-stem them--may have to consider some mechanical means in the future when we get more grapes???  The total reading from the scope was just over 20.  I would have liked to have seen a little higher reading, but still pretty happy with this. The birds have mostly left them alone, which is great.  In sorting them, there was a little more damage than appeared on the vine just because they are so tightly clustered.  There were some grapes particularly in the interior of clusters that mummified.  Overall, though, the grapes were sweet, with deep, dark juice.  It is now in the fourth day in the primary and working well.  I did use Montrachet yeast as indicated by this recipe.

• 12-16 lbs Summer Grapes
• 1/2 to 3/4 lb finely granulated sugar
• 1 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1 crushed Campden tablet
• 1/4 tsp acid blend
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• Montrachet wine yeast

Pick the grapes when fully ripe. Wash, destem and crush the grapes in primary fermentation vessel. Strain enough juice to float your hydrometer, measure specific gravity and return juice to primary. Add sugar to bring S.G. to 1.088 and stir with wooden paddle. Add crushed Campden tablet, stir, cover primary, and wait 12 hours. Add pectic enzyme, acid blend and yeast nutrient, stir, recover, and wait additional 12 hours. Add yeast and recover primary. Punch down the cap twice daily for 7-10 days (until S.G. is 1.010). Strain and press grapes and pour juice into secondary. Top up and ferment under airlock 30 days, rack into sterilized secondary, top up and refit airlock. Rack again every two months for six months. Stabilize, sweeten if desired, wait 10 days for dead yeast to fall, then rack into bottles. This wine can be consumed immediately but will improve with age. 

I did get the sugar a little high, being unused to this amount of natural sugar in my grapes, so I started just about 1.090.  It should be have plenty of kick!

Niagara harvest

Seeing that the birds were going to have their way, we decided to go ahead with the harvest.  The reading on the refractometer was only 12 for the whole combined juice, which is way lower than I would like to see but it was harvest or lose them.  Still, it was the best harvest we have had, in spite of losing all of one vine to the birds. 

The grapes were gorgeous--large, heavy clusters.  By taste, I would have thought they were much sweeter than the instrument indicated.  I think they will make a good wine.  The low incidence of diseased grapes really made a difference.  I just wish the bird netting, which wasn't cheap, worked better.  I need to research a way to make it work more effectively.

We use this juice steamer to extract the juice on our green grapes and when we make juice from the concords.  It is a great instrument.  It delivers a clear, pure juice and really does a great job getting as much juice as possible from the grapes.  Although it adds some moisture to the end product, it still makes a very rich-bodied juice.

It holds enough grapes to produce about 3 quarts or better, depending on the quality of the grapes.  From the Niagaras, I will take 8 quarts to make 3 gallons and we will still have a couple gallons to make a white grape juice.

Norton--Cynthiana--Summer Grape

Call it what you will, it can make a very good wine, probably the best native American wine grape.  We're at the upper end of the area in which Nortons apparently can be grown, so when we ordered 5 vines 4 years ago from the St. Francois vineyards in Missouri, I was uncertain as to whether or not we would have success.  This grape requires a long growing season.

Well, they're growing just beautifully.  They have been slow to develop as vines, and a couple are still on the smaller side but all have produced beautiful, tight clusters of virtually disease-free grapes.  So far, the birds are mostly staying off them but I'm going to monitor them closely.  I did a sampling from all vines this morning, beating out the predicted high of 97 or better here on the first day of September, and got a reading of 14.8, which I thought was pretty good.
We're going to be gone for about a week in about a week, so a bit of a dilemma as to whether or not chance that the grapes will still be there when we get back or if I'll have to pick right before we leave and freeze the must.  I'll do the latter if necessary, since I hate to lose this good first crop.