how much wine per vine ?

[deborahandricky]

Just sitting over lunch, and looking at a large empty section of garden, and the question sprang to mind, how many vines would we need to plant to get 500 bottles of wine?

[Russ]

1 hectoliter of grapes per hectare produces approximately 133 bottles or 11.1 cases of wine (a standard bottle is 750 milliliters). 1 hectoliter of grapes per hectare would be equivalent to .0741 tons of grapes per acre. A ton of grapes produces about 727 bottles or just over 60 cases of wine.

If my maths are correct , you'll need about 4 hectares (40,000 sqm) for your 500 bottles, but each year will vary in yield according to rainfall/temperature.

Good luck!

[deborahandricky]

Originally Posted by Russ

1 hectoliter of grapes per hectare produces approximately 133 bottles or 11.1 cases of wine (a standard bottle is 750 milliliters). 1 hectoliter of grapes per hectare would be equivalent to .0741 tons of grapes per acre. A ton of grapes produces about 727 bottles or just over 60 cases of wine.

If my maths are correct , you'll need about 4 hectares (40,000 sqm) for your 500 bottles, but each year will vary in yield according to rainfall/temperature.

Good luck!

Thanks for that.........but now with my lunch head firmly in place............roughly how many vines is that .......

[Heiko]

1 hl/ha would be an extremely low yield. Even the finest Bordeaux allow 50 hl/ha. 1 hl/ha is used for the most expensive such as Ch. d'Yquem at £250 a bottle (equivalent of one glass per vine)! 200 vines on half an acre (1000 sqm) should be more then enough at a rough guess. The real wine producers will give you more precise info.

[Mathematician]

Our little vigneto of 500 sq meters, and even with some older vines not producing too well provides enough wine for a family of 4 for the year (i.e., one liter per day), more or less depending on the weather. Last year was a good year in Puglia, we shared with a neighbor, about 150 liters each.

[piedmont_phil]

Sorry not to have answered this sooner (this is the busiest time in the vineyards - and it has been a heck of a season so far!)...
If planted under DOC/DOCG yield is controlled. If planted for yourself you could take more wine per vine (at the cost of quality), but here are the facts:
1 acre (2.5 acres to a Ha) of mid age vines (15-30) would give you between 2,000 and 4,000 botles depending upon the growing season and fruiting variables that we experience. Perhaps you can translate that as 1-3 bottles per vine. Younger vines (once aged 4 and over) are more vigerous (and as we know to our cost this year, take a lot more work to keep under control!) - so after the 3 year wait you would get more not less grapes in early years.

Our 1 Ha of very tightly controlled moscato d'asti DOCG produced 8,000 bottles last year.

[deborahandricky]

Originally Posted by piedmont_phil

Sorry not to have answered this sooner (this is the busiest time in the vineyards - and it has been a heck of a season so far!)...
If planted under DOC/DOCG yield is controlled. If planted for yourself you could take more wine per vine (at the cost of quality), but here are the facts:
1 acre (2.5 acres to a Ha) of mid age vines (15-30) would give you between 2,000 and 4,000 botles depending upon the growing season and fruiting variables that we experience. Perhaps you can translate that as 1-3 bottles per vine. Younger vines (once aged 4 and over) are more vigerous (and as we know to our cost this year, take a lot more work to keep under control!) - so after the 3 year wait you would get more not less grapes in early years.

Our 1 Ha of very tightly controlled moscato d'asti DOCG produced 8,000 bottles last year.

Thanks a lot Phil.......can understand every bit of that......

[bosco]

Nice idea, isn't it, making your own wine from your own vines. I've been musing about it for some years, reading books about it, and looking at the vines on our land which we keep from getting totally out of control but don't do all the work required to make them adequate producers of grapes for wine.

So why haven't I done it?

First, there's all the equipment required to make your wine, crushers and vats etc. And you need somewhere largish to store it. And in a reasonably hygienic and temperature-controlled environment while you're making the wine. Second, there's all the labour required in putting in reasonable posts and wires and maintaining them, the regular meticulous pruning and burning, and the regular spraying (of fungicides in particular) to prevent all your vine leaves turning white and brown and all the grapes ending up as tiny brown wizened dots.

Then thirdly there's the labour and watching and worry while you're actually making your wine, knowing all the time that it could well turn out (like some of our neighbours' wines) to taste rather worse than something you can buy in a cardboard carton at the supermarket for 80 centesimi a litre. You can avoid this stage by selling/giving your grapes to a producer and getting bottles of 'your own' wine back - but they're fussy about the quality that they will take off you and may reject your whole crop, and what they produce may not taste very good either.

So all in all one reasonable option might be to admire and wonder at people on this thread who do make wine, buy a few bottles of your favourite tipple that you know you like and has a reliable quality, and sit on your terrace drinking it and continue dreaming!