Vermont
As Vermont’s Wine Industry Grows, Home Winemakers Are Inspired to DIY
- Daria Bishop
- Bottles of Jessica Wagener’s homemade wine
For much of human history, wine has had a place on the dinner table. At Jessica Wagener’s house in Burlington’s New North End, the wine on the table just happens to be still fermenting away in three-gallon plastic buckets.
Beer brewing and annual autumn cider presses have dominated the home booze production scene for years, but Wagener is one of an increasing number of Vermonters who are taking a DIY approach to making wine from grapes. Some, such as Wagener, are using grapes that happen to grow in their backyards. Others, inspired by the state’s growing commercial wine scene, are purchasing cold-hardy hybrid grapes or planting them in small-scale vineyards. Wherever the fruit comes from, home winemaking is easier than it sounds.
When Wagener and her husband, Alan, bought their home 25 years ago, it came with grapes. The couple haven’t officially identified the three varieties that grow over arbors in their backyard, which Alan protects from hungry, savvy raccoons with electric fencing. But one seems to be a classic Concord, Wagener said; the others are an unknown red variety and one they call “blue grapes.”
- Daria Bishop
- Jessica Wagener with freshly picked grapes
For about five years, Wagener has made separate wines from each variety. She smashes the grapes by hand; adds some water and sugar or honey; checks the wine’s specific gravity using a hydrometer; adds pectic enzyme, yeast nutrient and yeast; and then leaves the buckets alone on the kitchen table for a week. After that first fermentation stretch, she strains out the grapes and ages the juice in glass carboys in the basement. Each two-gallon batch yields six or seven bottles.
As involved as that process sounds, Wagener was quick to say it isn’t intimidating. To get started, she googled recipes and asked questions at Vermont Homebrew Supply in Winooski. The most expensive piece of equipment she bought for winemaking is a bottle corker, available for less than $30. The bulk of the work is sanitizing and keeping things clean.
“It’s really a very accessible thing, because foods naturally want to ferment,” Wagener said. “It’s very homegrown, what we do.”
- Daria Bishop
- Winemaking supplies at Wagener’s home
The final product can be an acquired taste, she added with a laugh: “It has a homemade flavor, but people say they like it. They drink it, anyway.”
Thanks to a relatively recent expansion in vineyard plantings around the state, Vermont Homebrew Supply co-owner Anne Whyte is seeing more home winemakers giving grapes a go, she said. Most use hybrid varieties, which yield a final product similar to the Vitis vinifera grapes that dominate the wine industry. The hybrids’ later bud dates and quicker maturation are well suited to our short growing season — even a challenging one like this year’s.
Whyte recalled a visit with Shelburne Vineyard cofounder Ken Albert, who came into the shop when he was still a home winemaker, before planting his first commercial vines in 1998.
“Ken taught me about the hybrid grapes, which have revolutionized Vermont winemaking,” she said. “That trickles down to home winemakers and growers. There’s a classic homebrewer attitude: If somebody else in Vermont can do it, I can, too.”
- Daria Bishop
- Wagener filling a hydrometer with homemade wine
Whichever fruit a home winemaker uses, Whyte said, their equipment need not be fancy. Small upgrades such as siphoning equipment and air locks — which vent the gas that yeast produces during fermentation while keeping out pesky fruit flies — differentiate today’s winemakers from their medieval predecessors. To make a gallon batch, the startup equipment costs, not including fruit, can be as little as $36. For another $10, customers can purchase the yeasts and additives they want to include, if any.
Current trends in the wine industry — especially among low-intervention natural winemakers — are things home winemakers have done for ages, Whyte said.
“It’s much like craft beer, which is here because of homebrewers who wanted different beers than Bud, Molson and Miller,” she said. “Or craft cider, which is here because people didn’t want mass-produced, sweet ciders. Using wild yeast, cofermenting, not filtering — we’ve been doing that forever.”
- Courtesy
- Paola Canty and her daughter Amalia stomping grapes
Paola Canty is taking that low-intervention approach to her home winemaking, inspired by Vermont natural wine pioneer Deirdre Heekin of La Garagista Farm + Winery.
“I was getting anxious about the process,” Canty said. “Then I realized that people have been making wine for thousands of years. It can’t be too hard if people have been doing it for so long.”
Canty has been surrounded by wine since her youth in New York City; her mom, a salesperson for a wine importer, would often bring home leftover samples. When Canty went to college, her bedroom immediately turned into wine storage. She and her husband moved to Danby from Brooklyn two years ago; as they tried to figure out what to do with their new plot of land, she saw an Instagram ad for VT Vineyards, a company that installs small-scale vineyards all over the state.
After talking with VT Vineyards founder Stephen Wilson, the couple decided to have him plant eight rows of hybrid grapes in their backyard in the spring: 80 marquette, 40 frontenac gris and 40 Louise Swenson.
It will take up to five years for those vines to bear a full harvest. In the meantime, Canty has started practicing her winemaking skills. Last year, she purchased a winemaking equipment kit and 100 pounds of petite pearl grapes from Wilson; this year, she purchased 100 pounds of marquette. Her first five-gallon vintage was “barely drinkable but not vinegar,” she said.
“I have no experience in winemaking at all,” Canty said. “The plan is to mess up with the grapes we buy. That way, the grapes we’ve spent five years growing — we can actually do something with them.”
- Courtesy
- Canty pressing and straining her first vintage after fermentation
Like Wagener, Canty takes a straightforward approach. Both years, she stomped the grapes in a plastic garbage can with help from her now 4-year-old daughter. This year’s batch is currently in the middle of its first fermentation, stored in a bedroom next to her Peloton. Because the process takes several months, she’s been researching one step at a time.
“It’s not something you have to figure out all at once,” Canty said.
Taking a harvest break at Maquam Barn & Winery in Milton on a late September day, Wilson of VT Vineyards said curious home winemakers such as Canty make up most of the owners of the nearly 40 vineyards he’s installed over the past three years. Most share the homebrewers’ philosophy that Whyte pointed out.
“They’ve had something from Shelburne Vineyard or La Garagista or Ellison Estate, and they’re like, ‘This is awesome. They’re making this with Vermont grapes; maybe I can, too,’” Wilson said.
- Jordan Barry
- Stephen Wilson of VT Vineyards harvesting grapes
It’s not the cheapest hobby if you have to purchase fruit, he admitted, estimating that 100 pounds of fruit and the necessary equipment for that first five-gallon batch run around $500.
“But when you crack a bottle you made yourself, it’s super worth it,” Wilson said. “It’s such a fun feeling.”
Access to grapes can be a barrier for home winemakers who don’t have vines in their backyards or whose vineyards aren’t producing full crops yet. The state’s industry is still growing, and when setbacks such as this spring’s late frost hit, the fruit can be scarce. Still, Wilson urged, there’s a lot to be learned from stopping at a tasting room and talking with the winemakers or volunteering during harvest.
- Jordan Barry
- Harvested marquette grapes
Wilson dabbles in winemaking himself, though he prefers to leave technical questions to the pros. His home vineyard in Underhill is a “mishmash” of varieties, he said, with 200 plants sourced from Andy and India Farmer at Northeastern Vine Supply in West Pawlet.
VT Vineyards sells fruit from the half dozen maintenance projects that Wilson and employee Reuben Jalbert have taken on, including Maquam, which is one of the largest commercial vineyards in the state. There’s still a bit of marquette left to be sold this year, though most of their harvest from vineyards in Waitsfield, Swanton, Castleton, Hinesburg, Stowe and Milton is already destined for winemakers in Vermont and New Hampshire.
“The commercial winemakers need the fruit, but I think there’s enough to get it into hobbyists’ hands,” Wilson said. “If the winemakers miss out on a few pounds of grapes, it’s being made up for when people make wine themselves, share it with friends and family, and get them excited about Vermont wine.”
Wagener is doing her best to set aside a few of the six or seven bottles she gets from each batch of wine to age. That takes discipline, she said, because there’s nothing more satisfying than setting homemade wine back on the table — this time in a bottle, ready to share.