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Sarah Taber

Grapes for winemaking tend to have thicker skins than grapes for eating. Thick skins aren't fun to chew through.

But winemakers like a nice thick skin, because that's where a lot of the flavor & aroma compounds in wine come from. They're in the skin, not the inside of the grape.

4 comments
Sarah Taber replied to Sarah

Vineyards for wine grapes can be surprisingly, uh, not as lucrative as we might think.

Grapes for eating fresh tend to command a higher price. Why?

Sarah Taber replied to Sarah

Wine grapes can be ugly! They get mashed up into juice.

But table grapes have to be in good enough condition to ship, & for people to still want to buy them when they arrive.

So table grapes are higher maintenance to grow. You'll lose more the crop to un-shippability, etc.

Sarah Taber replied to Sarah

That's one reason there's so much agritourism in the winery business. Often, there's surprisingly little money in the vineyard itself.

Sarah Taber replied to Sarah

Ok raisin time!

This is how most of the raisins in the US are made.

They just pick the clusters off the vine, lay them on a piece of kraft paper between the rows, and leave them there until they're raisins.

That's it that's the whole process.

Photo of a vineyard with raisins drying between the rows. There's a line of brown pieces of kraft paper (almost the same color as the soil) with a layer of purple grapes drying on them. The grapes are most of the way dried into raisins.
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