I lived in northern Italy for a coup-le of decades and love the grapes and wine. Regarding taste, my favorite is a type called "Fragolina." It is a dark red, sweet, bubbly wine that for some reason is not easily found in stores. In the 1970s, a friend moved to a home near us. He had a car port covered by two Clinton grape vines. He dug down a foot around each vine and filled the holes with composted chicken manure. He pruned the two grape vines to 4 limbs each vice the normal 2. The vines were monsters and he harvested enough grapes to ferment 220 quarts of wine. The wine was some of the best that I have ever tasted. Also, in Italy they make a liquor called grappa from the dregs left after the wine making. Try it; it is a cure for the common cold.
I have not heard of that wine before, but we are fans of a slightly wine. So far the Syrah has tended to be our favorite that needs a bit less back sweetening, but if we can find another that would be great. We've had a few folks suggest using the dregs for different types of alcohol. I have not heard of grappa before, but maybe we need to add that to the list of things to try out next season!
That's really interesting! I'm also very pleased that Duane is wearing Edge of Nowhere Farm merchandise. I think this is the second time I've seem him wearing it! It's about time!
Glad you enjoyed this one. Our wine making videos are not everyone's cup of tea, but if you have ever thought of giving it a try I would highly suggest it. There are some great wine making kits out there and you can make wine out of just about any kind of fruit. Even fruit juices can work.
I think the winemaking process is very interesting and think I would enjoy making wine. My problem is that I don’t really enjoy drinking wine, lol, although there are a couple of more fruity wines I’ve had that I liked a lot. I can’t drink a dry wine, but the weird thing is that I love a nice bitter IPA.
Jared, you definitely need to try a batch of home made wine. The great part of making your own is you get to make it exactly how you like it. We like a slightly sweet wine ourselves and store bought is either too dry or too sweet. With these we get to decide!
@@EdgeofNowhereFarm We have a friend down in Victorville that comes up here every year and buys a truckload of grapes. He has a 4 car garage and when you open the doors it looks like the whole inside is made of stainless steel, lol. He’s serious about making wine. He also buys fruit and makes wine. The absolute best wine I’ve ever tasted in my life was one he made with apricots. It was absolutely outstanding and the alcohol really snuck up on you because you couldn’t really taste it even though it was like 13%, lol.
@@jaredmccutcheon5496 ooh, that's good to hear about the apricot wine. We're trying that for the first time this year and I believe we should be around the same alcohol percentage as your buddy.
I was wondering how big the airlock was for the trash can ? 😆 then I got my answer. I then had another question. How do you guys find the time to work full time water and feed the animals, water the trees, harvest and process fruit and veggies then make wine and keep such a detailed wine record?....holy moly. Granted I do most of that stuff but no way I'm keeping a wine record. It either succeeds or fails but I'm not going into details on it.
Congrats Duane and Lori on a successful Cab Harvest! I can’t think why your Original Gravity was so low unless you picked too early. You should have a BRIX at harvest of about 24 which is 1.09 specific gravity. That is about the limit of tolerance for most wine yeasts. Most commercial wine goes into the bottle at no more than about 14%. Did you net the vines? Thanks for the great video!
I thought it was a bit low as well. The lowest of the grape wines this year which is really strange considering they're the last to ripen and get the most sunlight/heat! We have been surprised that netting the wine grapes has not been necessary for us. We noticed it last year and it was the same this year. I can only assume it's because there is still plenty of other things to munch on while these are ripening, but I'm really not too sure.
I really wanted to feed them to the animals, but Lori was having none of that! Funny thing is, we're feeding them spent brewers grain each night which does have some alcohol in it. They go CRAZY for it! Bunch of little drunk bacon machines running around back there each evening!
I hope the upcoming monsoon doesn't adversely affect the farm. I'm sure you learned a bit from the flood a few years ago..... I seem to remember seeing a video with some flood waters.
We did have some flooding last summer. The worst our neighbors have seen in over 15 years! The advantage we have this time around is knowing what areas would be the problem if we see heavy downpours again.
We have 27 lbs. of grapes this year and was wondering if you could let us know how much Campden Tables, Yeast and Yeast Nutrient we should use? Thanks and love your videos especially the fig wine. We got 65 bottles last year.
Wow, congrats on that fig wine. You were busy!! As for your question, 27 pounds should equate to no more than 2 gallons of wine after your primary fermentation. It could be a little less, but it shouldn't be more than that. The campden tablets will be based on the amount of Must which would include the volume of the skins (assuming you're leaving them on the skins). The general rule of thumb is 1 tablet for every gallon of must/juice. You shouldn't need any yeast nutrient if you're not adding any water. If you do add water you'll want to follow the directions on the label as it can vary from one brand to the next. You should only need 1 packet of yeast for a batch of this size. Hopefully that helps!!
What type do you grow I live in west Texas and our summers are long and on the 100+ every day and no rain… I bought a plant but the leaves does and the plant didn’t survive…
As long as you have access to irrigation (we have a private well) and can mulch the ground well you should be fine with most grape varieties. We grow table grapes (Flame, Thompson & Monukka) and wine grapes (Syrah, Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon) in very similar conditions to what you have in West TX. If you pull up some
@@paulm965 we only had space for 3 varieties and Syrah, Zin and Cab were at the top of our list. If we expand in the future, that would definitely be on the list though.
No grapes, ants got them before I saw the little marauders. Next year, DT and surage bait. Right now they're bleeding the sap from chili blooms till they get busted.
Equal opportunity bandits is what they are. Or drug addicts might be a better way to put it. They rely heavily on their sense of smell to find food, usually the sugar rich foods that make wine or a tasty pie. Planting companion plants around those foods usually deters them, plants like rosemary, thyme, onions, garlic, tansy, all kind of basic herbs that stink to the ants. If you can't beat em, then confuse them with pungent aromas from savory herbs and sulfurous bulbs and tubers.
@@DavidLeeRothsAlterEgo The year before last, black harvester ants went thru the rosemary and thyme to clean out tepary beans planted in that bed. If a scout comes across something, the Atlantic Ocean probably isn't enough to stop them. But DE is. Borax is. I used borax with corn flour and they stuffed themselves on it and then remained as fertilizer.
@@marschlosser4540 That's a shame about the Tepary beans, they're a fine eating bean. Love the nutty taste and the ease of growing them. I just had mine emerge from the soil this week. Only about 5 or 6 plants but the seeds were almost 10 years old and have gone through summer heats and still I have few that were viable out of the pound I bought from Native Seed Search. Hopefully I will be able regrow my stock again. But those darn ants find a way don't they. I have the suggest herbs planted all around my garden and haven't had a problem with ants there, they seem to love the pallet boxes I planted my fruit trees in though. But they get wiped out every time I water them. Curiously though, they haven't bothered the sugar cane at all. But hey, if corn flour and borax works don't fix it if it ain't broken. Thank your lucky stars they're not fire ants.
@@DavidLeeRothsAlterEgo Black harvesters are a fire ant. Even small sugar ants sting. But, borax is a common way to get rid of ants. 1 tablespoon of borax soap in a cup of sugar or flour. Ants love it, and in a few weeks, another colony will raid the dying one to carry off the borax to their colony. There's one red fire ant colony in the garden, but that's let alone because horned toads prefer them. Half the tepary beans came up and are in bloom. Few cowpeas survived the weather. Usually they're all about hot and dry, but pillbugs may have gotten them. for pillbugs, trench, dust with DE, drop seed, dust again and add soil. Dust again :) Same in worm beds for pillbugs.
Now that is frustrating about the grapes. The ants are on a terror this year. I can only assume it's all that rain early on that made the population explode. Of course, something tasty to munch on makes a difference!
The one we use is not available any longer, but I'm going to link to one here that I would prefer if we had to do it again; amzn.to/3PTFp0C The biggest problem we have with ours is the juice squirting out of the sides when you press. This one has a shield around that mesh that will stop (or at least reduce) that.
I'm in new mexico, my ranch property is west of Socorro new mexico also in the middle of nowhere. I'm in process of building a small adobe house and starting my own farm as well. The problem as you know is water only comes in the summer monsoon season 8-10 inches a year. I plan on building a rain harvesting system as some of my far off neighbors do have this. I also have to put a barbed wire fence around parts as the property is so over grazed by roming cattle. Do you have any tips for me? I'm trying to build what you guys have here. Figs grow well here I noticed as it's similar to Mediterranean climate with mild winters.
It sounds like you have a similar amount of rainfall as we do here. Our "normal" rainfall is usually around 9 inches a year. The suggestion we usually give folks during consultations is to designate permaculture "zones" based on the proximity to where you'll be living on the property. Start with your house (zone 0) and move out from there into zone 1. Complete, or mostly complete, zone 1 and then move to zone 2. If you Google Permaculture Zoning it should help you decide what would be in each zone. Water and access are your keys to success!
Just following up here, this is my main channel. My other channel is musicissomuchfunpiano. I Just updated a video of my property in new mexico. Let me know what you think of planning a farm and house here!
@Edge of Nowhere Farm,Excellent video, I like how you guys respond to all the messages,that means a lot to some of us,Sheers!!
Glad you enjoyed this one and we do try to respond to everyone. I mean, it's what we would do if we were talking in person, right?
I lived in northern Italy for a coup-le of decades and love the grapes and wine. Regarding taste, my favorite is a type called "Fragolina." It is a dark red, sweet, bubbly wine that for some reason is not easily found in stores. In the 1970s, a friend moved to a home near us. He had a car port covered by two Clinton grape vines. He dug down a foot around each vine and filled the holes with composted chicken manure. He pruned the two grape vines to 4 limbs each vice the normal 2. The vines were monsters and he harvested enough grapes to ferment 220 quarts of wine. The wine was some of the best that I have ever tasted. Also, in Italy they make a liquor called grappa from the dregs left after the wine making. Try it; it is a cure for the common cold.
I have not heard of that wine before, but we are fans of a slightly wine. So far the Syrah has tended to be our favorite that needs a bit less back sweetening, but if we can find another that would be great.
We've had a few folks suggest using the dregs for different types of alcohol. I have not heard of grappa before, but maybe we need to add that to the list of things to try out next season!
I love the bloopers at the end. Real people trying to capture real life are very refreshing.
Glad you enjoy those. We include them at the end of each of our episodes for the handful of folks who stay until the end.
Good living! As my my father used to say.
That sounds like something my dad (and grandad) would have said as well.
I love seeing you enjoying the fruits of your labor, and their effects on your outtakes!
They seem to go hand in hand these days. With the heat of summer limiting our "outside time", happy hour starts a bit earlier for us!
That's really interesting! I'm also very pleased that Duane is wearing Edge of Nowhere Farm merchandise. I think this is the second time I've seem him wearing it! It's about time!
Eventually I'll get the whole marketing thing down!
You guys are the best.
Tom, it's comments like this that keep us going. Thank you for the kind words of encouragement.
Great vid guys! Thanks for sharing such a comprehensive video of home winemaking. Looks like a lot of work!
Glad you enjoyed this one. It definitely is a lot of work, but it's a great past time and the end result is pretty good too!
Another fantastic video. You ALWAYS explain thoroughly…. Great job!
Glad you enjoyed this one. Our wine making videos are not for everyone, but for folks trying to make their own it may help get that batch just right!
Well done!!! 😊
Glad you enjoyed this one! Our wine making videos are not for everyone, but we sure enjoy making them!
Love seein' the spark.❤
This whole thing is a labor of love for us.
The coffee and wine bar in the back is so cool
Glad you like that. We're fans of both, so it just made sense!
I always love your videos. Even learned something about a subject I've always been curious about!
Glad you enjoyed this one. Our wine making videos are not everyone's cup of tea, but if you have ever thought of giving it a try I would highly suggest it. There are some great wine making kits out there and you can make wine out of just about any kind of fruit. Even fruit juices can work.
I think the winemaking process is very interesting and think I would enjoy making wine. My problem is that I don’t really enjoy drinking wine, lol, although there are a couple of more fruity wines I’ve had that I liked a lot. I can’t drink a dry wine, but the weird thing is that I love a nice bitter IPA.
Jared, you definitely need to try a batch of home made wine. The great part of making your own is you get to make it exactly how you like it. We like a slightly sweet wine ourselves and store bought is either too dry or too sweet. With these we get to decide!
@@EdgeofNowhereFarm We have a friend down in Victorville that comes up here every year and buys a truckload of grapes. He has a 4 car garage and when you open the doors it looks like the whole inside is made of stainless steel, lol. He’s serious about making wine. He also buys fruit and makes wine. The absolute best wine I’ve ever tasted in my life was one he made with apricots. It was absolutely outstanding and the alcohol really snuck up on you because you couldn’t really taste it even though it was like 13%, lol.
@@jaredmccutcheon5496 ooh, that's good to hear about the apricot wine. We're trying that for the first time this year and I believe we should be around the same alcohol percentage as your buddy.
I was wondering how big the airlock was for the trash can ? 😆 then I got my answer. I then had another question. How do you guys find the time to work full time water and feed the animals, water the trees, harvest and process fruit and veggies then make wine and keep such a detailed wine record?....holy moly. Granted I do most of that stuff but no way I'm keeping a wine record. It either succeeds or fails but I'm not going into details on it.
I will say, Lori being home full time is the key for us. If she wasn't here every day we would not be able to keep this up!
Love your videos ❤❤❤❤❤
Glad you're enjoying the content!
It's so nice of you to share your wine with all of us, and by all of us, I mean me specifically. I'm DMing you as I type this.
I'll keep an eye out for that DM!
Frontenac, St Croix, Marquette, St Peppin will all grow in cold climates. They grow and thrive here in Minnesota
Thank you for those suggestions for folks on the cooler side of things!
@@EdgeofNowhereFarm You are welcome. These are wine grapes, I forgot to mention.
Congrats Duane and Lori on a successful Cab Harvest! I can’t think why your Original Gravity was so low unless you picked too early. You should have a BRIX at harvest of about 24 which is 1.09 specific gravity. That is about the limit of tolerance for most wine yeasts. Most commercial wine goes into the bottle at no more than about 14%. Did you net the vines? Thanks for the great video!
I thought it was a bit low as well. The lowest of the grape wines this year which is really strange considering they're the last to ripen and get the most sunlight/heat! We have been surprised that netting the wine grapes has not been necessary for us. We noticed it last year and it was the same this year. I can only assume it's because there is still plenty of other things to munch on while these are ripening, but I'm really not too sure.
;-)
I wonder what did you do with pressed skins - organized a party for pigs? :-)
I really wanted to feed them to the animals, but Lori was having none of that! Funny thing is, we're feeding them spent brewers grain each night which does have some alcohol in it. They go CRAZY for it! Bunch of little drunk bacon machines running around back there each evening!
:-D I can imagine they love that!
I hope the upcoming monsoon doesn't adversely affect the farm. I'm sure you learned a bit from the flood a few years ago..... I seem to remember seeing a video with some flood waters.
We did have some flooding last summer. The worst our neighbors have seen in over 15 years! The advantage we have this time around is knowing what areas would be the problem if we see heavy downpours again.
We have 27 lbs. of grapes this year and was wondering if you could let us know how much Campden Tables, Yeast and Yeast Nutrient we should use? Thanks and love your videos especially the fig wine. We got 65 bottles last year.
Wow, congrats on that fig wine. You were busy!! As for your question, 27 pounds should equate to no more than 2 gallons of wine after your primary fermentation. It could be a little less, but it shouldn't be more than that. The campden tablets will be based on the amount of Must which would include the volume of the skins (assuming you're leaving them on the skins). The general rule of thumb is 1 tablet for every gallon of must/juice. You shouldn't need any yeast nutrient if you're not adding any water. If you do add water you'll want to follow the directions on the label as it can vary from one brand to the next. You should only need 1 packet of yeast for a batch of this size. Hopefully that helps!!
❤
Glad you enjoyed this one Kariire!
Have you made grape juice out of these grapes before? Were used to juicing concord grapes but I don't think they grow well in AZ.
Hmm, no we haven't tried just the juice before. They do have some sweetness to them, but the skins are just a little bitter.
What type do you grow I live in west Texas and our summers are long and on the 100+ every day and no rain… I bought a plant but the leaves does and the plant didn’t survive…
As long as you have access to irrigation (we have a private well) and can mulch the ground well you should be fine with most grape varieties. We grow table grapes (Flame, Thompson & Monukka) and wine grapes (Syrah, Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon) in very similar conditions to what you have in West TX. If you pull up some
@@EdgeofNowhereFarm Did you consider other heat-loving varieties such as sangiovese?
@@paulm965 we only had space for 3 varieties and Syrah, Zin and Cab were at the top of our list. If we expand in the future, that would definitely be on the list though.
No grapes, ants got them before I saw the little marauders. Next year, DT and surage bait. Right now they're bleeding the sap from chili blooms till they get busted.
Equal opportunity bandits is what they are. Or drug addicts might be a better way to put it. They rely heavily on their sense of smell to find food, usually the sugar rich foods that make wine or a tasty pie. Planting companion plants around those foods usually deters them, plants like rosemary, thyme, onions, garlic, tansy, all kind of basic herbs that stink to the ants. If you can't beat em, then confuse them with pungent aromas from savory herbs and sulfurous bulbs and tubers.
@@DavidLeeRothsAlterEgo The year before last, black harvester ants went thru the rosemary and thyme to clean out tepary beans planted in that bed. If a scout comes across something, the Atlantic Ocean probably isn't enough to stop them. But DE is. Borax is. I used borax with corn flour and they stuffed themselves on it and then remained as fertilizer.
@@marschlosser4540 That's a shame about the Tepary beans, they're a fine eating bean. Love the nutty taste and the ease of growing them. I just had mine emerge from the soil this week. Only about 5 or 6 plants but the seeds were almost 10 years old and have gone through summer heats and still I have few that were viable out of the pound I bought from Native Seed Search. Hopefully I will be able regrow my stock again. But those darn ants find a way don't they. I have the suggest herbs planted all around my garden and haven't had a problem with ants there, they seem to love the pallet boxes I planted my fruit trees in though. But they get wiped out every time I water them. Curiously though, they haven't bothered the sugar cane at all. But hey, if corn flour and borax works don't fix it if it ain't broken. Thank your lucky stars they're not fire ants.
@@DavidLeeRothsAlterEgo Black harvesters are a fire ant. Even small sugar ants sting. But, borax is a common way to get rid of ants. 1 tablespoon of borax soap in a cup of sugar or flour. Ants love it, and in a few weeks, another colony will raid the dying one to carry off the borax to their colony. There's one red fire ant colony in the garden, but that's let alone because horned toads prefer them.
Half the tepary beans came up and are in bloom. Few cowpeas survived the weather. Usually they're all about hot and dry, but pillbugs may have gotten them. for pillbugs, trench, dust with DE, drop seed, dust again and add soil. Dust again :) Same in worm beds for pillbugs.
Now that is frustrating about the grapes. The ants are on a terror this year. I can only assume it's all that rain early on that made the population explode. Of course, something tasty to munch on makes a difference!
Where can I get the press you use?
The one we use is not available any longer, but I'm going to link to one here that I would prefer if we had to do it again;
amzn.to/3PTFp0C
The biggest problem we have with ours is the juice squirting out of the sides when you press. This one has a shield around that mesh that will stop (or at least reduce) that.
I'm in new mexico, my ranch property is west of Socorro new mexico also in the middle of nowhere. I'm in process of building a small adobe house and starting my own farm as well. The problem as you know is water only comes in the summer monsoon season 8-10 inches a year. I plan on building a rain harvesting system as some of my far off neighbors do have this. I also have to put a barbed wire fence around parts as the property is so over grazed by roming cattle. Do you have any tips for me? I'm trying to build what you guys have here. Figs grow well here I noticed as it's similar to Mediterranean climate with mild winters.
It sounds like you have a similar amount of rainfall as we do here. Our "normal" rainfall is usually around 9 inches a year.
The suggestion we usually give folks during consultations is to designate permaculture "zones" based on the proximity to where you'll be living on the property. Start with your house (zone 0) and move out from there into zone 1. Complete, or mostly complete, zone 1 and then move to zone 2. If you Google Permaculture Zoning it should help you decide what would be in each zone.
Water and access are your keys to success!
@@EdgeofNowhereFarm thanks!
Just following up here, this is my main channel. My other channel is musicissomuchfunpiano. I Just updated a video of my property in new mexico. Let me know what you think of planning a farm and house here!