Kitchen Garden Forum

Hi all,
I'm looking to plant a grapevine in our heated south facing conservatory. The rootstock will be outside, the rest inside. There's only roomo for one, so, any suggestions for the best all-round grape? I'd like to use it for wine, as well as just general munching and juicing. Not really fussed whether it's red or white, although a slight preference for seedless white has been registered.

I saw Brian Edwards website who has masses of info, what I'm after I guess is someone to say "Black Hamburg mate, can't go wrong for wine or for dessert...." or something similar. Even though that is neither seedless nor white!

Thanks,
GaGa.

We've had a Reisling vine planted outdoors for 3 years now. It is not seedless, but if we leave the grapes to mature as long as possible into the autumn before picking they are quite sweet enough for eating and they make a very acceptable wine. We get between 1 - 2 gallons of wine from our 3 year old plant. The grapes are fairly small, mainly because I don't have the time or patience to go thinning each bunch out with a pair of nail scissors but I imagine that if you had time to go through this process the grapes would be much bigger. But seedless I'm afraid they're not.

If its for wine and you can pamper it in a conservatory, you might want consider growing "the real thing".

Generally, people in Britain used to be advised to grow varieties suited to our climate. This used to consist of mainly white varieties, and rarley anything you'd see in a traditional bottle of wine. Having said that, you can make wine from anything...

Anyway, I've grown "British-suited" vines in my previous house and they produced loads of fruit, which made ok wine. One of these was Siebel I think.

I've got 3 varieties in my current garden - all in the open, growing up a south-facing wall:
- A Cabernet Sauvignon
- A Gerwurstraminer
- Another "British-suited" variety (will have to check which one).
I bought all of these from my local garden center - no specialist suppliers needed.

Out of these, all produce fruit and the two tradtional varieties definitely taste like the wine they're associated with. However I've never had high yields of the first 2. This is probably because I've been too distacted at the allotment & not pruned them properly.

With your conservatory, you might do better.

And the Jonny No Name variety?

The weight of these broke the aging pergola the vines was growing over! The bigger container is 3.3 gallons. This lot easily made a gallon of grape juice, which is now ready for sampling.

Good luck & let us know what you decide!


Colin