What I've Learned About Wild Grapes

It's been really interesting working with the wild grapes.  Here's what I've learned.

5 pounds of grape bunches yeilds about 3 pounds of usable grapes.  While there are some bunches that are full of ripe grapes, most have a combination of ripe grapes, green grapes and rock-hard little former raisins.  Occcasionally there's an actual raisin.  In any case, there is a lot of detritus.

While it only takes minutes to gather up 5 pounds of bunches, it takes a couple of hours to pick the ripe ones from the stems.  They stain fingers blue and purple.  It comes off after about a half-dozen hand-washings or so.  My hands were really pretty after squeezing the pulp while I was making juice, but that's another story.  The blue is mostly from that.  That's from the skins, I believe. 

It's a really pretty blue.  I've got some white cotton gauze material that I haven't decided what to do with.  I have a hard time with white - it always ends up with some food stain or other.  I might see if I can dye it with the grape skins.  Then again, it's not like I'm looking for a new hobby just now...

There aren't many bugs in the bunches, nor is there much bug damage on the fruit.  I suspect that this is because any nice, well-packed bunch of grapes is going to have a little spider silk at it's center.  There were little white/yellow spiders still in the grapes as I was pulling them off the stems, having a hard time deciding whether to try to hide back in the grapes or take off and look for new digs.  I don't kill them.  I'm not a big fan of spiders, but they eat bugs that I'm less fond of.

The grapes range in size quite a bit.  It's wonderful to find a bunch of big, fat juicy ones.  They're about the size of a plump blueberry.  On the other end of the scale are some that aren't much bigger than elderberries.

I've made some of the grapes into liqueur - about 2 pounds of them - and the rest are being turned into juice that will be turned into jelly as soon as I have all of the necessary equipment to do it. 


FT