You can make wine-like drinks out of most any fruit. My understanding is anything with sugar will ferment. But grape wine is far and away the most popular form of wine. My understanding from Wikipedia is that it was one of the first wine-like drinks, too.
Is the popularity of grape wines (as opposed to apple wines or plum wines or whatever) entirely based on tradition now? Or is there some property of grapes that makes them ferment into wine more easily than other fruits?
As I dimly recall reading from an uncertain source, grapes are more likely to naturally harbor small amounts of fungi on them that can readily convert the grape juice into wine. With other fruits, it’s more hit or miss, until one gets the science of fermentation down a bit better.
Hopefully someone with more knowledge on the subject will be along soon.
Grapes have sufficient sugar to ferment naturally.
I think to make a wine from any other fruit you need to add sugar. Possibly modern varieties have breeched this barrier in some cases.
Yes, that is correct. It is known as the Noble Rot.
stored fruit or juice will naturally ferment. yeasts on the skins will do this. grapes, plums and apple will all do this naturally to a good end. other microorganisms can also take to a less desirable end.
You don’t need any specific amount of sugar to ferment naturally. Sugar ferments.
What you mean is to have enough sugar so that you get enough alcohol so you don’t have drink gallons of it to get a buzz.
It’s probably a combination of the fact that grapes are naturally pretty high in sugar, and the acid content is low enough not to inhibit fermentation. Plus you don’t have to mash them like you do grains, so there are a few steps that you can skip vs. beer.
Add to that the fact that they taste good, and you have a shoo-in for some of the first and most popular fermented beverages.
Apples can be fermented pretty easily into cider like you mention, but I suspect that the enduring popularity of grape wine is due mostly to culture, tradition and taste. In non-grape regions alcoholic beverages like beer, cider, whiskey and vodka are traditional, because barley, rye, wheat and corn grow well there, while grapes don’t do as well.
If cost were the only consideration, we’d all be drinking neutral grain alcohol, but we’re not.
It’s called ‘bloom’ , and is found on other fruits as well:
Yeah I think cause they are so small. I have read stories about birds crashing into windows all over the place and they found a BAC in a blood sample. Turns out these birds were eating berries nearby that had fermented and were semi drunk
No. Noble rot is what gives real Sauternes its flavor, but is not a part of fermentation. It eats through the skin of the grape so the water evaporates and the sugars increase (it also adds some flavor).
Fermentation is done by plain old yeast, which is also on the skin of the grapes. The grape juice has a lot of sugar, so once the skins break, the yeast goes to work.