re: #241 Blind Frog Belly White

My Dad made wine for years, taking advantage of local growers who put in vines but didn’t have their own wineries. The first year, he bought a bunch of crushed grapes from NY State, then realized that since they were WHITE grapes they weren’t supposed to be left on the skins. The next year, he got freshly picked local grapes, and we did the crush ourselves. Literally. My then-girlfriend and I stood at the then-new stainless steel sink in the kitchen ‘island’, popping grapes with our hands, then Dad siphoned off the juice.

For the next decade or so, every fall there were 2 or 3 5-gal carboys with fermentation locks, bubbling away. At that time, he was running the QC lab at the fruit processing company where he worked and he took advantage of the instruments he had at his disposal. And of course he was a voracious reader, and took his hobby very seriously.
Most of the wine we drank at home, he made. Every time one of his adult children came for a visit, they usually left with 4-6 bottles. Eventually, he realized he was providing free wine for about 5 families!

He could have left them on the skins-it gives you “orange wine.” Never having had any, I can’t tell you if that’s a good idea or not.