Straw wine

Common card · No. 449954

Straw wine, or raisin wine, is a wine made from grapes that have been dried off the vine to concentrate their juice. Under the classic method, after a careful hand harvest, selected bunches of ripe grapes will be laid out on mats in full sun (originally the mats were made of straw, but these days the plastic nets used for the olive harvest are likely to be used). This drying will probably be done on well exposed terraces somewhere near the winepress and the drying process will take around a week or longer. Under less labour intensive versions of the technique, easily portable racks might be used instead of mats or nets, or the grapes are left lying on the ground beneath the grape vines, or even left hanging on the vine with the vine-arm cut or the stem twisted. Technically speaking the grapes must be cut off from the vine in order for the wine to be a 'straw wine'. If the grapes are just left to over-ripen before being harvested, even if this is to the point of raisining, this is a late...

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