Product Information: Fresh and Frozen Grapes Available
Fresh grapes are available at either Hayward, California or Underwood, Washington. These grapes must be picked up within hours of the actual harvest. These same fine grapes are also available as frozen must and juice.
- Our Grapes are NOT concentrates.
- Our Grapes are NOT aseptically packaged.
- Our Grapes Are 100% premium wine grape must or juice.
Red grapes are destemmed, crushed and frozen. White grapes are pressed and the settled juice is frozen. The freezing process reduces bacteria and unwanted natural yeast, while not altering the character or quality of the resulting wine. Freezing does contribute to better color extraction and increases the yield for red grapes.
This freezing process was pioneered by Peter Brehm in 1974. Many wine makers have won prestigious awards with the wine made from Peter's fresh and frozen grapes and juice
Our frozen grapes are available in 5 US gallons or 44 US gallons volumes.
Brehm Vineyards is your Harvest Manager
Let Brehm Vineyards act as harvest manager for your home winery. We will provide you with premium wine grapes, hand selected and harvest them at their maximum potential and then hand them over to you for you to make your own fine wine.
Fresh grapes are picked up while we are crushing the grapes. You can take the whole berries, or let us destem and crush the grapes right into your fermentors.
If you live to far away, we will process the grapes and then freeze them. Once you receive the frozen grapes, simply thaw them out, give them a thorough mixing, put them in you fermentor and add yeast.
Brehm Vineyards professional crew attempts to bring these precious grape berries to you in the most transparent way possible. This allows us to harvest the fruit at each varietal's peak potential for making a fine wine.
Freezing has proved to be the equivalent of Burgundy's 'cold soak'. While a small increase in color and yield is experienced with frozen must, the wine is the same or better - you get the skins! Juices that are frozen are exactly the same as fresh, only colder and on your time schedule. Frozen grapes often win 'Best of Show' in the toughest competitions. It works!
Grape Labels
The containers of grapes sold by Brehm Vineyards include information about the grapes. It will indicate the amount of SO2 added (if any), the percent sugar in degrees brix, the pH and total titratable acid of the grape must.
There is usually a recommendation as to the style of winemaking best suited to the grapes, as harvested. The addition of sugar may be advised on the drum label. There may also be a recommendation of adding acidulated water.
The sugar and pH noted on the label of a pail or drum of red must will usually vary from the contents actually pH and sugar. The label is a pre-harvest average. The contents of one particular pail or drum may be from vines on the crest of the hill, while another might be from the bottom of the hill.
Always check the sugar level, pH, and titratable acidity of your lot of grapes.
This requires full defrosting and vigorous stirring of the must. There may remain cream of tartar (tartaric acid) on the bottom of the bucket or drum. White juice labels will be accurate for all containers.
That total amount of SO2 (if added) is indicated on the label along with degrees brix, total titratable acid and pH.
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