Columbus, Ohio USA
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Make Your Own
By Joel Knepp
July/August 2018 Issue
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Winemaking is a tradition as old as civilization, and maybe older. Despite highfalutin claims to the contrary, it doesn’t take scientific expertise, fancy equipment, and an old European family tradition to come up with an eminently drinkable product. However, I certainly don’t want to pooh-pooh tradition, because our corner of the Short North has a longstanding tradition of grape cultivation and winemaking, thanks to the Italians who used to live here. Italians, God love ‘em, like to drink wine. Better yet, they like to make wine from their own grapes. Those beloved immigrants who lived in our immediate neighborhood in the early days had backyard grape arbors for that exalted purpose, some of which were still evident in the 1980s when we arrived, although they had fallen into disuse and disrepair when their original owners moved on.
Being folks who like to uphold local tradition (and drink wine), we erected our own grapevine-bearing structure consisting of wooden 4x4 uprights, a few connecting 2x4s, and copper pipes. Besides looking cool, the copper supposedly discourages fungus on the vines. For a bit of pizazz, I added a peaked arch above a passageway between the two sections of the arbor. We started out maybe twenty years ago with a red vine on one side and a white on the other. After some years of decent production overseen by the vintner-in-chief (my wife), the red grapevine succumbed to disease, in spite of the copper, and mostly stopped producing, while the white vine kept going strong. We recently replaced the red with another white, which has dug in nicely and after a few short years is producing equal to its older neighbor.
A word or two about grapevines: they are bountiful, bodacious, crazy-vigorous plants. I’m surprised they haven’t taken over the world. Those of you who remember the campus scene from the 1970s and earlier might recall a business on the south side of 15th just off High Street called Morris the Florist. They had a catchy radio jingle, “Morris the Florist,” sung to the tune of The Who’s “Boris the Spider.” This shop had a grapevine in its small front yard which was so old that it had become a regular tree with a big, fat, twisted trunk.
But back to our vines. Each winter we whack the dickens out of them, which is what an Italian lady told us to do, and come spring they return bigger and stronger than before. You can practically watch them grow in real time, creating a cascade of leafy vines from which soon emerge beautiful bunches of grapes. The vines practically leap over the arbor and make a green wall that shields us from the noise and passersby on our increasingly busy street. They would be dynamite landscape plants even without the grapes.
Ah, but the grapes make the wine! The main challenge is to harvest as close as possible to ripeness but before the critters, mainly birds, get ‘em. We’ve tried draping nets over the arbor but that’s too much hassle. The introduction to the property a few years back of Bernie the Democratic Socialist Cat has definitely helped with the marauding bird situation. The Bernmeister strikes fear into the hearts of those feathered foragers, but they have free rein when he’s not around. Even birds have to make a living, so we figure if we get 80 percent of the grapes we’re still doing fine.
For many years we harvested the grape bunches in big baskets made, appropriately, of woven grapevines. Unfortunately, those lovely wedding gifts eventually disintegrated and we haven’t yet been able to locate new ones at anything approaching a reasonable price. The vintner-in-chief’s attempts to make workable baskets out of our own vines have, so far, been less that successful, so we use any less-elegant containers that are handy. We then rinse the bunches in old drywall-mud buckets, pick the grapes off the stems, and feed them through a harvest gold Champion juicer. This process is quite labor-intensive and time-consuming, involving about a whole day for two people. A fellow winemaker from the ‘hood told us about an appliance from Finland in which we can steam the juice out of the grapes without even picking them off the stems or running them through the grinder. We obtained one, and we’re hoping for an easier time this year, especially because this year’s grape harvest is looking to be quite a good one.
Though the venerable grape is the mainstay of the commercial wine industry, the creative and industrious home winemaker is by no means limited to that delightful fruit. The Short North and other Columbus neighborhoods are plentifully endowed with other foodstuff from which to make tasty wine. We regularly make apple and pear wines from our own trees. The homemade label on the later variety reads “Pear Ordinaire: It Gets the Job Done.” The aforementioned neighbor, a true connoisseur of homemade wines and beers, recently gifted us with a delightful bottle of his dandelion wine, which I would classify as a light desert wine best served cold. We were especially grateful to receive it, knowing that its making required hours of delicate petal-picking.
A huge red mulberry tree formerly grew in Goodale Park near the caretaker’s cottage. We made fine wine from those mulberries before the tree was removed to install the fancy iron fence. Plenty of other mulberries are scattered around our streets and alleys, although I’m told they didn’t produce well this year. Many Juneberry aka serviceberry trees are planted as ornamentals all around the Short North and produce excellent wine-making fruit similar to blueberries. A bunch of these trees are planted along the sidewalks on Park Street by the North Market. They produce way more fruit than the birds ever eat. Most of the dark red berries dry up, fall to the ground, and are wasted, so don’t think you are taking food from the mouths of wild creatures by harvesting them.
Cultivating friends with fruit trees is another good way to get raw material for winemaking. Most folks with fruit trees have much more than they can handle and are glad for someone to remove what might end up as a mess on their lawn which attracts yellow jackets. Some of the finest wine we ever made was from a large Indian blood peach tree at the home of a friend who unfortunately moved away. In addition to having excellent color and flavor, this lovely wine produced a secondary fermentation which lent a Champaign-like quality to each glass. A few years back we were at a play downtown and at intermission we overheard a lady saying she needed someone to pick her peaches at her east side home. Naturally, we stepped up to the plate. Same for some cherries a few blocks from our house. Ask around, walk around, keep your eyes open, and you will find winemaking material.
As for the actual mechanics, process, and tools of winemaking, look on the Internet, get a book, visit a winemaker’s shop, invest in a few pieces of basic equipment, and start saving commercial wine bottles. If we can do it, anyone can. Make your own!Joel Knepp lives in Victorian Village with his wife Lynda McClanahan, an artist.
They performed as the musical duo Nick & Polina for many years in the area.© 2018 Short North Gazette, Columbus, Ohio. All rights reserved.
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