Elston Gunn wrote:
> Is the old adage one gallon of wine per vine true? I have a small lot
> and would like to plant enough to make a carboy (6 gallon/23L) per
> year. About how many vines would I need? And, am I looking at about
> 4 years from putting the vines in the ground to picking my first grape?


Elston,

I'm in the hills of northern New Jersey and have a lot of trees near my
grapes. Last year the 44 actively producing FA hybrid vines produced 460
lbs of fruit, red & white. That yielded 44 gallons of young wine, and
that will end up as 38 to 40 gallons of bottled wine after all the
racking, "testing" and topping up are done. This comes out to about 12
pounds per gallon, or roughly .9 gallons of bottled wine per vine. I
could easily increase the total crop weight by 30 to 50%, but I would
have considerable trouble getting it ripe under my growing conditions.
Vine health would suffer too.

Four years to the first grape? No, not exactly. If you have a
particularly vigorous vine or two, you might let it hang one modest
cluster the second year, just to prove the principle. As mentioned
elsewhere, you should wait til the third year for a half crop, and the
fourth year for a full crop. Even then, the crop quality will continue
to improve (even at the same size) for years to come.

If I can offer some advice: Don't just plant what you think you will
want. If at all possible, plant several times that.


--
Mike MTM, Cokesbury, NJ, USA

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