by Karl Lidral
What WESTERN VINES is all about:
Western Wines is a column devoted to spotlighting the boutique (small and personal) wineries in the American West. Boutique wines are sometimes known as artisan or small production wines
Boutique western wines are also referred to as hand-crafted wines.
Typically, boutique wines consist of as many acres as can be effectively managed by the principal winemaker, who then hand crafts the wines. The vineyard can be quite small, up to a comfortable maximum of acres that the winemaker and “staff,” if any, can handle. Smaller vineyards would generally be under 10 acres in size.
Wine production is usually around less than 10,000 cases annually, or 500 barrels, with a barrel producing 20 cases, 1,200 glasses, and so forth. 60 cases or 720 bottles of wine are produced from each ton of grapes (a bottle, by the way, contains five 150 ml pours of wine). A single vine produces about 4-6 bottles of wine, or 20-30 glasses. Each bottle of wine contains about 2.8 lbs. of grapes.
Therefore, 500 barrels=
10,000 cases of 12 bottles each=
120,000 bottles, each of which contains five 5-oz. glasses=
600,000 glasses, requiring around 20,000-30,000 vines, and
around 336,000 lbs. of grapes!
Feel free to double check my math: I used to be pretty good at it, but it’s been a while…
Many boutique western wines are available for sale and shipping online.
The distribution or availability of the wines through shipping to places other than those of their origin is important to the mission of Western Living Journal. Many of our readers (not all, of course!) don’t/can’t/aren’t interested in traveling to the places where the wines are made and would rather approach the sampling of wines of various wineries from the comfort of their armchairs. So sit back and enjoy western wines from western vines.
