Old vines can still provide some good grapes.
So, you're looking over at the fence at the back of your section, to that gnarly old grapevine that's been there since WAY before you bought the house and it occurs to you (again), "I wonder whether we could make wine from the grapes on that?"
Well, here's the thing,
Chandler Bing. (Friends fans will get that). You absolutely could, but whether it'd be any good would be questionable. Most kiwi backyard grapevines are table grape varieties like Autumn Muscat, Albany Surprise, Buffalo, Candice, Cardinal, Flame, Niagara, Thompson Seedless or Himrod (oo-er) - they're a tad sweet and watery to win much in the way of medals, but hey, by all means grab a winemaking book from the library and give it a nudge.
Spare a thought, however, for Olivier Bernard, owner of Domaine de Chevalier and Domaine de la Solitude in France's Pessac-Leognan region of Bordeaux. He and a group of volunteers harvested the region's oldest grapevine on September 23 in order to turn it into wine. It's old, at least 200 years, in fact, and it grows in a canopy across a pergola in the Place de la Victoire, smack in the middle of the city of Bordeaux.
Until the 1970s, there were six vines in the Place de la Victoire; this is the last. The grape variety, Txakoli Noir (also known as Tchacouli), is highly unusual and thought to have originated in the Basque country.
"The challenge of making wine with this historic grape variety was impossible to resist," Bernard told decanter.com. "And the possibility of taking cuttings and planting them in other parts of downtown Bordeaux is wonderful. I love the idea of helping the city reclaim this piece of its history."
