Favorite Grape?

[2dimes]

What's your favorite grape? I've intentionally omitted grapefruit from this vote. I've also omitted AK Iceman.

[DoomYoshi]

purple drank

[rdsrds2120]

My favorite isn't listed so I abstain. When will the Sweet Jubilee finally be recognized as the superior grape?

[jonesthecurl]

Muscat make the best raisins. When I was a kid, you could only buy these at Christmas for some reason, and it was one of the tastes I always associate with it. they're hard to find these days.

[DoomYoshi]

Muscat make the best raisins. When I was a kid, you could only buy these at Christmas for some reason, and it was one of the tastes I always associate with it. they're hard to find these days.

I just had Muscats for the first time this past year. They were delicious, but I ate them fresh.

[mookiemcgee]

First of all your list is entirely grape racist. It doesn't include any popular white grapes, apparently you have a 'bias' against whites.

Grüner Veltliner is my fav... but honestly I can't respect a list of grapes that doesn't include Chardonnay which is by far the most popular white grape in North America, or the next two most popular Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio(gris). Fucking embarrassment 2dimes.

[2dimes]

You mean green grapes?

[Dukasaur]

I'm glad to see Pinot Noir on the list.

I take back all those bad things I said about you!

[mookiemcgee]

You mean green grapes?

I mean the ones without anthocyanins in the skins, the ones that apparently aren't worth listing by you because of their skin color you grape bigot.

The bulk of your list was the vinifera plant, which are almost exclusively used for winemaking and rarely if ever sold for eating (they are small, thick skinned and have lots of seeds). A winemaker would refer to them as white grapes, since you make white wine with them not green wine.. but then again winemakers usually aren't grape racists like you!!!

If you ever invite me over to a grape eating party, are you even gonna let me inside if I try bringing grapes that are the 'wrong skin color'? Will I have to eat my grapes in the "whites/greens only" section? Are you gonna try and put me and my white grapes to work picking your cotton???

[mookiemcgee]

Also... Alicante Bouschet is the coolest name for any grape.

The german name for Pinot Noir is pretty cool too - Spätburgunder

[mrswdk]

It doesn't include any popular white grapes

White grapes are just so bland.

Also this list doesn't really make sense because no one is eating the grapes, they're drinking wine made from the grapes.

[Dukasaur]

True story. I live in a region overrun with wild grapes. This summer I was hiking and figured, "why not try some wild grapes?" They were very bitter and unpleasant.

Today, however, I was thinking that maybe they gain sweetness with time. After all, domestic grapes continue to get sweeter and sweeter the longer you leave them. So I tried some again. They were still very bitter, but not quite as bitter as before. Definitely they did gain sweetness over time, albeit not enough to drown out the bitterness. More significantly, though, I was able to detect the undercurrent of grape flavour. The kinship is detectable.

[mookiemcgee]

I was thinking that maybe they gain sweetness with time.

That's basically the gist of it. You measure sugar concentration in grapes throughout the season in degrees brix (°Bx), and the acid level in pH. We also measure Titratable acidity (or total acidity) which is actually kind of more relevant than pH but harder to understand/explain so I'm going to leave that out of this post. The other thing people test for alot in red grapes is phenolics but that has nothing to do with sugar, it's really just about color in the skins.

As the growing season moves along, slowly the acid levels go up in pH terms (the grapes become less acidic over time), and the sugar concentration goes up slowly (the grapes become slightly less bitter/tart) and then spike quite a bit in the last month or two of the season (the grapes become really sweet). For white wines, you are usually picking grapes with a pH around 3.5-3.9 and a brix level of around 24-25 °Bx, and red grapes people tend to push sometimes all the way up to 28-29 °Bx if the area has a growing season long enough to allow for that. The reason for the big spike in the last month or so is less about the plant creating a ton more sugar, but also about the grapes losing some of their water weight which leaves the grapes with a greater concentration of sugar.

If you multiply °Bx number by .59 you have a rough idea of the alcohol in the wine made from these grapes (assuming you ferment all the sugar and don't leave some sugar in the wine). So 25°Bx grapes would produce a 14.8% alcohol wine. It's a little more complicated than that but that's the basic idea.

If you Duku ate wild grapes in like may/June/july they are gonna taste horrible. If you went back to that same plant and taste them in late Aug/Sept they are going to taste much better. If no one picked them you could come back in late October and you would basically have raisins still hanging on clusters which are also super tasty but almost too sweet.

Icewine which you canadians are leaders in, are made from incredibly sweet grapes that are left on the vine way too long for normal winemaking. They have little to no water weight and brix numbers that are off the charts. Because of their lack of water you get almost nothing out of a grape when you press it so it requires massive amounts of fruit to create a single bottle and it's both very high in alcohol and very sweet since there is more sugar than the yeast can convert to alcohol before the yeast die off.

[Bentelbow]

This list is also missing Carmenere

[2dimes]

There are way more missing than on the list. Someone should suggest expanded polls that can include more grape varieties.

Also I gave you all nearly 24 hours to make this thread but no one bothered so basically it's just sour grapes now.

[Dukasaur]

Cool stuff, mookie!