When To Harvest Grapes
What you are going to use the grapes for goes hand-in-hand with the variety. Each variety has been bred for specific uses and climate. Others are table grapes. These are for eating. Some. Another thing, there are grape wine growing. Each are concentrated by sugar content and acidity.
Table grapes don’t need much sugar as wine grapes to be considered ripe. They usually reach the level between 16 and 18 percent sugar before they are ready to harvest. For the homeowner with grapes in the backyard or garden this is difficult to measure. But since you are going to eat them, you just need to taste the grapes to check if they are ready. The flavor components are as important as the sugar level of the grapes. When they get to the point where they taste good, then pick them.
Be sure to taste more than one berry to determine this though. Not all grape berries ripe at the same time. Berries in different parts of the cluster ripen at slightly different times. Clusters don’t all ripen at the same time either. Clusters in the sunshine ripen quicker than those that are shaded. Clusters towards the base of the shoot ripen earlier than those towards the tip of the shoot.
Wine grape vines need more sugar to produce a higher alcohol content when fermented. Ideally, grape growers like wine grapes to reach 20 – 24 percent sugar. Here again, this is variety dependent. Acidity content is also to be important when ripeness of wine grapes. Too high acidity will make the wine taste acidic and bitter and too low will make the wine flat.
If you are growing your own grapes to make wine, you might want to invest in an instrument called a refractometer to measure the sugar content of your grapes. This instrument makes it easy to find out how much sugar is in one or more berries. The juice of the berries is squeezed onto the refractometer plate, the plate is closed, and then by holding the instrument towards the light you can look into the eyepiece and see what the sugar reading is.
If you are interested in wine growing, just search from the internet.
