Yesterday evening I told the kids about my find. So the three of them and I trudged up the hill and picked a small pail full of grapes. There are a lot of grape varieties, so I'm not sure of my identification of the exact species... But I'll put my money on what Steve Brill calls "Fox Grapes". They were big, delicious, and very similar to Concorde grapes.
Thing #2 was especially interested in making juice out of them, so that's what we did. We weren't sure exactly what we were doing, but in the end we had about 12 oz of grape juice. (I think now that I'm slightly more experienced, I could have gotten like 30% more juice from the same batch...) Thing #2 wanted to drink it right away, but based on the advice in Thayer's book, I insisted we put it in the fridge overnight. Sure enough, by morning there was a small layer of sludge at the bottom, which according to Thayer is all the nasty tartrate stuff. I poured the good juice off the top and everyone in the family, except Thing #3 who is shy about new things, had a taste. Everyone gave it two enthusiastic thumbs up!
Thing #2 is all excited and is asking if we can go pick some more. I think the patch I found yesterday probably could give us at least as many grapes as I already harvested, plus I remember seeing another patch of big grapes closer to the main road. I may pick those myself, since I'm uncomfortable having the kids so close to a road where the cars are going that fast.
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