How do you tell great grapes from average grapes

I win the lottery and have a bunch of money to make my own wine. Im standing in Napa and there are two massive bins full of grapes in front of me, one is filled with wonderful Screaming Eagle quality fruit, one s filled with $20 a bottle cab grapes.

How would I with zero experience be able to tell which bin was which ? what are the characteristics of great grapes if tasted before they start the whole process ?

by height

The easiest way to make a small fortune in the wine business is to start with a large one.

The Screaming Eagle grapes would be near a helicopter.

Maybe you’d find a cow horn in the good bin, too.

Hire me! Often you would have asked the vineyard selling the grapes for a wine sample from the previous vintage before you commit to buying. If you forgot that part, the Australians have done the best job trying to make berry quality assessment Objective (see reference Winegrape Berry Sensory Assessment in Australia by Dr. Erika Winter, Jacques Rousseau, and John Whiting). Most Cab winemakers I know say harvest is determined based on how fine the tannins are in the skins (although science has never been able to correlate the tannin in grapes to the tannin in wine, c’est la vie).
Assuming both grape bins look the same, you’d taste for acidity/sugar balance, and chew up the skins to look for a pleasing tactile sensation on your tongue.
And if you find $20 bottle Napa Cab grapes, let me know, I’d like to see that.

I would step into the bins barefoot. Which everyone feels better when I squish the grapes between my hairy toes is the one i buy.

Are the smartass answers because nobody knows or you just a bunch of smartasses ?

probably both

[winner.gif]

I’m standing in front of 2 answers . One says “nobody knows” and one says “just a bunch of smartasses”. Which do I pick ?

You ever taste a grape before? I know sour grapes when I see 'em.

The ‘super expensive Napa Cab’ fruit would have a highly uniform level of ripeness, from grape to grape. And, generally, the ripeness will be pushed to the edge, but none past that into overripeness.

The inexpensive bin would be much more variable in grape ripeness, with some noticeable amount being overripe and some underripe (by current standards of over/under ripe).

Also, I’d expect to not see any leaves in the super expensive bin, and a fair amt (+) in the cheap bin. Another tip that it’s the expensive fruit is being in a 1/4 ton bin (as opposed to a std 1/2 ton bin)…or in a FLYB (funny/fing little yellow bin…if you’re the buyer it’s funny, if you’re the grower it’s not…small bins, small enough that one person can carry it when full, and none of the grapes get crushed by the weight above it).

…but none past that into overripeness: It’s possible the strategy here has changed, by allowing some degree of overripeness through and letting an optical sorter make the determination. From a Pinot Noir perspective, a cluster with a few overripe berries makes the entire cluster suspect, so optical sorters have never struck me as a universal win. High end Cab Sauv isn’t my bailiwick, so don’t know what the range of opinions is here.

The harder question is how to tell the difference between a bin of grapes destined for, say, a $75/bottle vs another bin for a $300/b. And you’re better off making the determination based on the vineyards and farming practices, but you knew that already.

The $20 bin has the mega purple container on top.

Smartass answers for dumbass questions.

Its OK David, the other kids will like you if your a dick

Eric

So uniformity and ripeness are the key factors, dont sweetness, acidity, flavour etc play any role ?

The beauty of it is that I don’t care.

Makes sense why your avatar is a pussy

The things I mentioned (uniformity/ripeness) are more observations to identify grapes destined for high end vs grocery store wine, rather than a reasonable list of key qualities that necessarily cause the wine to have one style or characteristic or another.

Sweetness, acidity, flavour, etc definitely play a role. Trying to determine this purely based blind with grapes presented to you seems like an impossible task, except in the extremes (high end vs grocery store cab for example). For example, the flavors of grapes has a complex & highly non-obvious relationship to the flavors you’ll get from wine (for the varieties I work with), and that assumes you can get past the massive sweetness!

In addition, trying to understand the relationship between grape chemistry, or wine chemistry, and their relationship to wine quality is a difficult task, at least given our current understanding of wine chemistry. For example, we’re still trying to get a firm handle on the perception of acidity (is it based on pH, TA, or both…or neither one in the case of wines with any amount of citric, however unusual that would be). For my own wine, I avoid numbers based winemaking (except for a few standard/obvious ones) and instead focus on the vineyard, farming and my palate. Not very helpful for the current discussion tho unfortunately.

It’s you’re, not your , btw . Am I being a smartass to a dumbass?