I have to say, I know nothing about growing and preparing grapes. They are a foreign fruit to me that I didn’t even realize was a common fruit to grow. I vaguely remember my neighbors growing up having grapes and I thought it was the most exotic thing. I even remember them making raisins with them. Again, blowing my mind. And I remember Lucy stomping on grapes in I Love Lucy. But that pretty much was my level of grape knowledge.
At least until a moved into house once owned by a large Italian family that absolutely loved growing grapes.
Watching the grapes grow was fascinating to start with. I’ve never watched them grow. Never realized they went from green to purple. Or any idea when to pick them. But I was told after first frost. So that’s what I did.
Except for one minor confusion. Does “after first frost” mean after the average first frost date, or after my actual first frost. I decided to play it by ear. However, the first average frost was moved this year to October 1st. But this year we we didn’t actually get a frost until November.
So as the weeks went by, I would check on the grapes on occasion. Nibble one to see if it was sweet, make sure nothing crazy was happening.
But soon, they began to have that telltale smell of fermentation. Grapes started falling on their own. And I decided that I should probably harvest these grapes before I end up intoxicating my entire family and the local wildlife with fermented grapes. (I’m probably totally wrong on this, but in my grape ignorant mind, fermented grapes equal wine).
So we got to picking. And picking. And picking. Until we realized we had an extreme amount of grapes growing on this bush. And when my 5 gallon bucket was full, we called it good.
But now that I had all these grapes picked, I was faced with another issue.
I had no idea what to do with them. I researched (because that’s what my nerdy heart does). And all I could find to make with grapes was jelly, juice and wine. We don’t drink wine. And grape jelly is the last jelly I grab only when there are no other available jellies. Because there is just something odd about it. But here I had 5 gallons of grapes. And something needed to be made with them.
After much thought, I decided to delve into the jelly. Afterall, I’ve only had store bought jelly. Perhaps homemade jelly was something amazing? I would never know unless I gave it a try.
Here’s the thing though. My canning recipe book had a lovely little recipe for EASY grape jelly. Now, I am all for a challenge. I don’t shy away at diving headfirst into hard things. I usually fail at them. But I still try them. But when I’m trying something new, and an easy option comes up, there are times that the easy option looks very appealing. However, this particular recipe called for seedless grapes. And my little purple globes were, in fact, CONCORD grapes, which contained seeds.
That’s when I discovered a recipe for quick cinnamon grape preserves. And I thought to myself, now THAT sounds tasty! Except, I apparently have a very different view of “quick” than the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving because the whole process took me about 3 days.
The first step consisted of removing the stems from the grapes. 16 cups of grapes to be exact. This meant pulling out each bunch of grapes, removing the grapes that had not yet rotted and fermented along with the occasional worm that might have hitched a ride, and putting them in a separate container. This was done while sitting in a cloud of fruit flies because I have come to realize that living in the middle of nowhere and fruit flies go hand in hand. And fermenting grapes are like a giant, earth shattering dinner bell for the pesky little gnats. And well placed traps only deal with a fraction of the problem because with every fruit fly that is lured to its death in a cup of vinegar, sugar and soap, 10 more fruit flies come to avenge its death.
Once the good grapes have been gathered and the bad grapes have been composted (which still doesn’t convince the fruit flies to see their way out), you then have to gather your 16 cups of grapes and “remove the skin”. Now, when I read this, I instantly imagined the days when I was young and carefree (and didn’t make sounds when getting up from the floor) and would peel the skins off of green grapes until I had a slimy, sticky globe left over to eat (because these things used to make perfect sense in my mind). And then I imagined doing this to 16 CUPS OF GRAPES! And I imagined my life whisking away through hours of separating grapes from their skins.
But, it turns out, concord grapes are much easier to separate than those grapes you get from the store are. All it took was a squeeze and the pulp just squirted on out of its fleshy shell. This action is oddly satisfying and I found it quite enjoyable.
At this point, you do not toss the skins. Oh no. These are what give the jam its lovely purple color. So, you might ask, why bother separating them at all? Why not boil them down, skins and all.
Well, it’s because of those seeds. They need to see their way out so that they don’t taint the precious preserves. You do this by first boiling your pulp (anybody else hate that word?). And then you must drain your pulp. You plop that gooey grape goodness into a fine strainer and squish all the deliciousness out, keeping the thick pulp (if you didn’t hate it before, you will probably hate it now, after you’ve read it so many times) and those dreaded seeds in the strainer.
Here is where you combine it all, pulp and skins, along with the yummy good stuff like cinnamon sticks and sugar and pectin (which is not yummy but important). And then you cook some more, toss the cinnamon sticks and put them in jars (stupid question: why do they call it “canning” when you are jars and not cans?)
And I have to admit, what came out was some of the most delicious jam I’ve ever eaten. Especially on fresh buttermilk biscuits. KILLER. It came out a bit runny. Something to perfect in the future. But otherwise, amazing.
However, I still had a ton of grapes left. And by a ton, I mean another 2.5 gallons worth.
So, it was time to attempt some juice.
Because, why not?
But juice takes a buttload of grapes.
Like 21lbs.
Which, in normal, non canning, measurements, is like a gazillion grapes.
So, I did what any person who was tired of separating bad grapes from the good would do, and I cut the recipe in half.
And I separated again.
In a cloud of fruit flies.
And this time I did NOT need to squeeze them. This time I got to SQUISH them all together. And I dearly wanted to do this in a big swimming pool of grapes, barefooted and wearing a brightly colored dress, but one of the negatives of cutting down the recipe was that they really only fit in a container barely big enough for me to stand in. And that kind of ruined the fun.
Then there was more boiling.
And after that came the straining.
And then 2 DAYS of chilling.
And even more straining.
And yet some more boiling.
And then it’s like “add sugar to taste” and I’m like, “I’m not tasting boiling grape juice to see if it’s sweet enough and how do I know how much to even start with?”
So I had to put it in a cup, let it cool, taste, add a couple Tablespoons of sugar, lather, rinse, repeat. Except apparently it needs ALOT of sugar and my Tablespoon additions weren’t getting me very far and I ended up doing this like 20 times and by the time I was done, I had a lot less grape juice, a purple mouth, and frankly I was pretty sick of grape juice and just called it good.
I tossed those in jars and in just 7 days total, I had yummy (albeit runny) grape jelly, some slightly sour grape juice, and a giant mess of grape stains all over my counter that I am still trying to get out.
But I did it! I conquered the grape challenge and lived to tell about it! And whenever I come across homemade grape anything, I imagine little french nuns hand squeezing all those grapes for hours in a cloud of fruit flies and wondering why it doesn’t cost way more than it does.
Maybe someday I will try wine. Or maybe a wine spritzer. Can I even make those? Everyone tells me I would like them. Someday.
But for this year, grape season is over. And so is harvest season (I read that that harvest spirits find it very rude if you harvest after Halloween and I certainly didn’t want to risk offending the harvest spirits, so I made sure everything was cleared out by then.) And everything has settled down for the winter.
We’ve now been in Vermont over a year. I have seen every season and can honestly say I have absolutely enjoyed each and every one. There is a time for every season and each moment is lovely if you take the time to see what it can bring you.
