Wild Muscadine Picking and Juicificationating

I was out back, trimming some branches last week when I happened to look up and notice the wild muscadine vines.
They were sagging under the weight of their fruit.
Sweeeet!
Literally.
Sunday morning, I grabbed a colander and went a pickin'.


After all the easy low ones were picked, I activated the grapepickerelevatorial device and ascended into the trees where luscious clumps of darkly sweet fruit awaited.


The muscadine family isn't big on clustering so these groupings are about as good as it gets. They also don't all ripen at the same time in a cluster ... often ... but for some reason this year most of the clusters were at the same point of ripenicity.
That was much appreciated, because muscadine picking can be much like blueberry picking where you spend a lot of time picking individual fruits.


Here's a nice set.

After a while, I had a full colander and now the question was ... what the heck am I gonna do with all these wild grapes?

I was not motivated to make jelly, wine, or other labor intensive dishes, so I decided on juice.

Yes, juice would be fine and it had the added benefit of being a stepping stone to those other dishes should I feel inspired later.


The first thing I did was wash the grapes well under warm water to remove critters, twigs, leaves, etc.

Then I put the grapes in a large pot and added just barely enough water to cover them. This pot was allowed to simmer for about 20 minutes.During this time, I used a hand potato masher thingie to crush as many of the grapes a I could. When the mashing and simmering was complete, I allowed the pot of grapes to just sit and cool down for awhile.

When the blue pot had cooled, the grape mush was poured through a cone-shaped colander so the juice could drain into a bowl. I used a plastic spoon to force as much of the juice as possible through the strainer.

The grapes produced a nice amount of juice which I poured into a container to store in the fridge.

The guidelines said the juice would settle and separate overnight, but the next morning it was still beautifully colored ... which is just fine with me.

This morning, I took my first real sampling taste of the end product and it was delicious. Not as sweet as store bought grape juice, but really, really good.

And just look at all those dark phyto-pharmaceuticals in that glass ... gotta be good for ya.

From this point, I could make syrup, jelly, or wine ... with a little more kitchen work.

I think I may just drink it though.

It's that good.