Vineyard and wine facts!

As wise and knowledgeable and all knowing as we are, about, well about stuff ,including the wine industry, occasionally some smart rear end will catch us off guard with a useless question about quantities of grapes per Salmanazar or some such nonsense. So to avoid the inevitable, of getting into an awkward dressing down of said smart rear end, we decided to put pen to paper, er well, finger tip to keyboard, and get the stupid questions out of the way. Now all we have to do is respond to said stupid questions with, “What! You didn’t read our blog?” and all is answered.

Vines need about 3 years to start producing and about 5 years to be mature. Different varietals mature and produce at different rates. The following are approximations for Cabernet Sauvignon using a 5’x8’ spacing in the vineyards of the Napa region.

How many tons of grapes per acre? Valley: 4 tons – Mountains: 2.5 tons
How many pounds of grapes per acre? Valley: 8,000 lbs – Mountains: 5,550 lbs
How many pounds of grapes per vine? Valley: 7.3 lbs – Mountains: 5.0 lbs
How many pounds of grapes in a bottle? 2.5 lbs
How many bottles of wine per vine? Valley: 3 bottles – Mountains: 2 bottles
How many gallons of wine in a standard barrel? 59 gallons (always stuff in the bottom that you don’t want)
How many cases of wine in a barrel? 21 cases
How many cases of finished wine in a ton of grapes? 60 cases
How many bottles of wine in a ton of grapes? 720 bottles (we know our math skills are amazing)

How much does an oak barrel cost?

French $500-$1500

American $300-$700

Hungarian $400-$900

Customizations can increase these costs

How big can a wine bottle get?
Capacity (Liters) followed by the number of standard size bottles contained:
Standard (.75) 1
Magnum (1.5) 2
Jeroboam (3) 4
Rehoboam (4.5) 6
Methuselah (6) 8
Salmanazar (9) 12
Balthazar (12) 16
Nebuchadnezzar (15) 20

After all this talk about numbers, the real question (not the stupid one) is– do we you like the wine? No matter how many tons, pounds, clusters, barrels or gallons it takes it’s all about whether or not it’s any good! So enough with the math questions.........

Happy Wine Adventures,

Cheers,

WineWalkabout

Kiwi & Koala

Oh by the way, just so you know, the censor would not let us use the term, smart ass, and made us use ‘smart rear end’ instead of the more common term smart ass. Can you believe that, they wouldn't let us use smart ass?