May 4, 2021 · By Evan Ineman
A popular subject during harvest for both farmers and winemakers is “yield” – or how much we are getting in fruit from our vineyard, or liquid in our cellar. We generally refer to our grape yields by ‘tons to the acre.’ For example, we harvested roughly 6 tons of estate Sangiovese this year from our 3 acres, making our yield 2 tons to the acre. Interestingly, this number is on the small side from a larger industry perspective. From here, the number game gets fun.
From that number, we might say each ton of grapes (2000 pounds) yields an average of 160 gallons of wine at pressing. When barreled down, that will yield around 2.5 barrels. Each standard-sized barrel (225 liters) holds approximately 59 gallons of wine. That’s 25 cases – or 300 bottles. So, for each ton of grapes, we strive to make around 750 bottles of Carhartt wine.