[Sca-cooks] grape stomping
Stefan li Rous
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
Sun May 14 21:13:56 PDT 2006
Giano replied to me with:
<< Am Sonntag, 14. Mai 2006 09:21 schrieb Stefan li Rous:
> I know today that machinery is probably used almost everywhere to get
> the juice from grapes for making wine. Was the juice actually
> extracted from the grapes, in period or "traditionally" actually done
> by filling vats with the grapes and then by people climbing into the
> vats and stomping on the grapes?
AFAIK the extraction was a two-step process: First, the grapes were
put into
the vat and stomped. In the process, they would be turned into a
gooey pulp
rather than discrete units. The juice flowing out at this stage would
not be
a large quantity, but made the choicest wine. In stage two, the pulp was
placed in a wine press and sueezed. That created much more juice, but
of a
somewhat lower quality. Finally, the squeezed pulp would be watered,
creating
the base for the lowest quality wine.>>
Ah, Thank you. There's more to getting the juice out than I expected.
This reminds me very much of the descriptions of getting olive oil,
with the various grades of the result.
However, with olive oil I see it labeled "extra-virgin", "virgin"
etc. I've heard that only the top grades are worth exporting to the
U.S., at least from Europe. However, I don't seem to remember wine
being graded this way. Simply by area of production, type of grape
and brand name. Do most wines end up being composed of all, or a
single one of these grades of grape juice?
What about fresh grape juice? ie: Concord Grape Juice. Is is composed
of all these grades? I never see any indication of this on the
labels, either.
Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous Barony of Bryn Gwlad Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris Austin, Texas
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at: http://www.florilegium.org ****
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