We've had some chilly nights lately. Dodged frost so far, but the forecast was iffy late last week so I picked the rest of the ripe grapes ahead of time and made more juice over the weekend. Nine more quarts, which brings our total grape juice yield to 4.25 gallons!!
Doing some quickie math, if you go with conventional 100% juice grape juice at the grocery store, that comes out to about $30 in value. However, if you go with organic 100% grape juice (which mine basically is without the government label saying so) that grocery store equivalent value comes out to about $119! I'll take it!
We also transferred DH's wine into the secondary fermenter--a 5-gallon glass carboy--first filtering out all skins and seeds after the initial 10-day ferment. Once the wine was in the carboy, DH topped it off with 9 pounds of sugar dissolved in boiled water. We did not add any yeast, going with the old family recipe that says the yeast present on the grapes in the beginning of the process is enough to do the task.
Within a few hours, the airlock on the carboy was burbling away again, proving that yes, there was yeast in the wine actively feasting on the added sugar.
The next day, DH carried the carboy down to the basement, where it will sit in a darker environment for at least a month before we sample it. I have to confess that during the daily stirring in the first ferment, we sampled a little bit two different times. Each time, it tasted less like juice and more like wine, while still retaining the concord grape flavor.
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