45 Bottles of Marechel Foch

Last August we started our first batch of wine from grapes... Marechel Foch! We have bottled quite a bit of wine from concentrate, but this is our first experiment with grapes and it is finally bottled. We started with 3 - 5 gallon carboys of wine that we let set for a couple months and then racked the wine off the sediment and into 2 - 5 gallon carboys. We were quite nervous this past 6 months and wondered how it would turn out, but so far we are very pleased with the quality. Last weekend we racked the wine again to help get all the sediment out of the carboys and let it set. Then the next day we bottled 45 bottles! We followed the same bottling steps that we did for our Phase 2 of Pinot Noir. We will let this wine set for at least a month or two before cracking into them...which is perfect timing because I'm 33 weeks along in my pregnancy and have only 7 more weeks to go! This will be a fun celebratory wine for the arrival of our 3rd child! 

Canning Grape Jam

I used the juice we crushed from the Marachel Foch grapes to make this jam. I made 2 different kinds of jams and just followed the directions listed on the packet provided with my powdered pectin. This is by far the easiest! I have searched far and wide for a good jam recipe but it always seems that the directions given with the pectin packet will contradict a good recipe. So trust the packet! I did 1 batch of jam with "No sugar added" and 1 batch of jam with "minimal sugar added".

The recipe will be similar to this. Measure out your juice and heat to a boil adding sugar if necessary (the recipe may or may not call for extended boiling times).

Have your jars sterilized and in a 200 degree oven to keep warm and sterilized.

 Add the powdered pectin and stir.

Fill your jars and clean the rims with a damp cloth.

 Process in a water bath canner for the time designated on your canning directions. My directions called for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath canner.

Canning Grape Juice Step by Step with Pics

After we crushed the Marachel Foch grapes and extracted the juice, we made 10 gallons of wine and saved 5 gallons of juice for jams and canned juice. This 5 gallons was put in the refrigerator for a minimum of 24 hours (ours set for several days) to let all the sediment settle to the bottom. Once the sediment has settled to the bottom you will want to siphon the juice off the sediment (without disturbing the sediment). Henry thought this was the best thing ever! He held the hose for me and was a tremendous amount of help...or else I would have probably ended up with grape juice all over my kitchen!

 
Get your area ready! I sanatized my jars and put them in the oven at 200 degrees to stay hot and sterilized while I was getting everything else together. I have 1 large water bath canner on the stove getting boiling and 1 stock pot filled with as much grape juice as I could fit in there. Then behind the pot of grape juice I put my lids in a pot of steaming water to sterilize.

Bring the juice to 190 degrees and heat for 5 minutes stirring regularly to avoid scorching (adding sugar if you want). Remove from heat and fill your jars with the juice. Clean the rims and adjust your sterilized lids and bands.

Boil in a water bath canner for the designated time for your altitude. Mine was 15 minutes at a full boil.

Remove your jars from the canner and let them cool 24 hours. Remove the bands (not the lids obviously) and clean your jars thoroughly, label and store!

This was quite easy! The tast is unbelievable being from fresh crushed grapes. I did this process 2 times with 7 jars each time and ended up with 14 Quarts of Grape juice :)

Marachel Foch Wine

We used 10 gallons of the juice we crushed  and extracted to begin our batch of wine.

We made a simple syrup with about 8 cups of water and 8 and a half pounds of sugar that we added to the juice (looking back we wish we would have used juice to make the simple syrup instead of adding water, but we will make sure to do that next time). Then we filtered the juice through our "handy dandy filter system" (picture to the left) and  divided it into 3 different carboys (to avoid overflow we did not fill them to the top...yet).

Marechal Foch Grapes into Juice for Wine, Juice and Jams

So the time has finally arrived and we have had the opportunity to get our hands on some wine grapes! With 240 lbs of grapes we have ended up with 10 gallons of wine, 14 quarts of canned grape juice, 8 pints of jam and 9 half pints of jam. This was quite a bit of work and even more mess, but so much fun!!

Marachal Foch Grapes

This crusher is intended for a 55 gallon barrel, but all we had was a 6 gallon primary fermentor so we set the crusher on top of that. I highly recommend using one of these if you have the opportunity, it was very easy and very fast. We did all our grapes in less than 30 minutes.

They enter the crusher and one person holds on to the crusher and the other cranks the handle.

All crushed!

Grapes in the primary fermenters to set for 1 day and extract the juices!

Add Potassium Bisulfite to break down the natural yeast in the grape skins so you don't end up fermenting your grapes before you are ready to...especially if you are making juice for the kids!! (follow directions given on the back of the container)

The next day you will see a big difference in the amount of juice to pulp ratio!

Crush down your grapes to get one last squish out of the pulp. (I used a sterilized wooden rolling pin...but if you have a fancy wine crushing rod that would work good too.)

Grapes are ready to be filtered into juice! We started by scooping out as much pulp as we could and squeezing the juice out.

Then we lined a 6 gallon bucket with organza fabric and poured the remaining pulp and juice into that so we could easily gather the top of the fabric and squeeze the remaining juice away from the pulp. We talked to someone who prefers to crush their grapes directly into a bucket prepared with fabric like this and then they never have to transfer buckets since all the fermenting and straining can take place in 1 bucket...smart idea!

 Pour and gather!

JUICE!! We did this 3 more times with 3 more buckets and ended up with 15 gallons of juice... With that we made Wine, Canned Juice, and Jams.