Living so close to Sonoma Valley, we thought it would be fun to have our own little ‘crush’ with our one little grapevine. I originally planted this vine as decoration only, as it has incredible red fall foliage (the variety is a California native called ‘Roger’s Red’.) The grape itself has a ton of little seeds, making it a pain to eat, but since it’s such a beautiful vine I didn’t care.
Every year the vine produces more and more grapes, and this year is no exception. We usually eat a few, giving most of them to the birds, and compost the rest.
One Saturday morning, my daughter woke up and decided she really wanted to make grape juice with all of the grapes. Since I try to seize any activity that my 15 year old wants to do with me (they’re getting fewer and further between….) I grabbed my husband and we dove right in.
It was actually much easier than I thought it would be. I was prepared for a supreme messy hassle; resulting in my family abandoning me after about 15 minutes. But they hung in there ’til the very end and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it! It really wasn’t a big deal at all. Then again, we only have one grapevine (though plenty of grapes for at least 3 pitchers of grape juice!)
Here’s the step-by-step process, resulting in some of the best grape juice I’ve ever tasted:
Obviously, the first step is to pick your grapes. Even though our one vine gave us all of these grapes, believe it or not, we left just about as many on the vine for the birds – robins and mockingbirds really love to eat the grapes!
The next step is de-stemming the grapes. This is where it gets a bit tedious – but my daughter hung in there for the 20 minutes or so that it took. Why did we remove the stems? I was afraid if we left the stems on, and then they got crushed, it would make the juice taste ‘woody’ or ‘tanic’ or just plain weird.
After rinsing the grapes, it was time for one of the most critical steps of this process. WASHING FEET! The whole concept of using feet to crush the grapes, to make the juice I would soon be drinking sort of grossed me out, so I made sure they were squeaky clean before I let her germ-up our juice!
After 15 minutes of doing the ‘Lucille Ball’ thing, the next step was to separate the juice from the skins and seeds. We used a colander with really small holes in it to filter out as much ‘junk’ as we could. We also found it helpful to use our pastry blender to sort of ‘mash around’ and press down the skins, allowing even more juice to flow.
Next, we took the juice into the house to drain it through cheesecloth, removing the smallest particles.
After a quick boil on the stove to gently ‘pasturize’ the juice, we had 3 pitchers of very strong, but very tasty grape juice! We found it really delicious mixed with 7-Up or Seltzer water. The juice we didn’t drink, we poured into large ice-cube trays and will use them in our Smoothies. Cheers!
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh, this looks like such fun! My dad did this with us when we were kids – I’d love to do it with my daughter now. I’m sure she’d love it!
I’m glad it brought back some good memories for you! If you want to make it even easier, then buy some ‘seed-less’ grapes for your daughter…cuts out about 30 minutes of tedious work!
That is what I call “toe lick’n good”. The Colonial and “I Love Lucy” would be very proud. Would love to see you do an episode on Vitavitavegimin in-the-garden. Great blog and just my level of fun-in-the-garden. I wish there was a way to stomp my weeds in to juicy goodness! Keep up the good work.
Let me know how the weed juice turns out….wait…isn’t that what the grass shooters at Jamba Juice are?? (They taste like it, at least….)
Wow so thats how its done, glad to see this, my cartons of grape juice will take on a whole new appearance having read your post Rebecca. Quite a crushing feat uggghhh
What a great idea! Is the juice good as is, or does it need some sugar to temper it? I make spritzers all the time with pomegranate juice, OJ and club soda – I bet this would be a great sub for the tart pomegranate.
It was pretty strong, so we diluted it with 7-Up or Seltzer, which was perfect. Ours didn’t need any additional sugar, but I guess that depends on how sweet the original grapes are, or how much of a sweet-tooth you have! Your spritzer sounds wonderful & I think it would taste great with the grape juice!
That looks SO DARNED GOOD. I was happy to see the boiling step after the stomping step…no offense to Emily’s feet!
Yes, even though she’s my ‘precious little baby’ it’s still kinda gross if you think about it! Boiling is a crucial step!!
What fun!! We have grapes too, but have never made juice (we either eat them or give them to our sister who makes wine). But you may have inspired me to try it next year
The photos were fun; the write-up entertaining; and the grapes, themselves.. beautiful! How nice they alook along your deck railing.
I’m so glad this inspired you – honestly, it was an easy project (or I would be writing an entirely different blog – I hate messy projects with little to no rewards!!). The grapes look like they’re on a railing, but they’re actually on my arbor – and yes, they fall like crazy this time of year and get tracked in the house if you’re not diligent about sweeping them up each morning. Another great reason to pick and use them!!