Re: Note - Breaking the grapes starts the fermentation process."

Most grape have a soft dusty look to the skins,if you wash and wet them they look shiny, but they dry to the same soft dusty bloom.

The soft dusty bloom is wild yeast that grow on the grape skins. Once you crush or press the grapes, the yeast will start to work on the juice-

press the juice out of the grape, and you will, at the same time, wash the yeast bloom into the juice, and unless its almost immediately sterilized, it will start fermenting.

(apples do the same thing, but most commercial produced apples have a wax coating, that kill the natural yeast, and prevents new yeast from growing.) i don't know if all fruits have this natural yeast -- but american blueberries do. (wild blueberries, and mullberries will ferment on the bush, birds love the slightly fermented berries and get drunk eating them!)

You can get white wine from red skinned grapes,-- the color (and most of tannin) are in the skins. Red wine is the result of letting fermations start with the both the juice and pulp in the 'fermatation tank'. (but i didn't know the pressed grape pulp was called marc- i did know the word must for fresh grape juice.)

(crushed apple pulp is called pumice, and is (was) used as animal fodder, it too would ferment-- which helped to preserve it. and fresh cider will ferment, too, unless sterilized.)

i like to go up Faldage's/AsP's neck of the woods, the NY Finger Lakes region is also NY's wine region, and i have gone on a few tours of the wineries!--i know all sorts of odd details about wine making. The old Gallo winery was one of the nicest, with the 'wine cellars' carved into stone cliffs, with beautiful arched doorways. (now it belongs to some big commercial winer company)


my other obsession