I Need A Scuppernong Grape Wine Recipe

Scuppernong grapes for making wine.I have almost 4 gallons of Scuppernong grape juice that I’ve gotten with my steam juicer this year. I would like to know how to make Scuppernon grape wine with it. I was needing to know how much water to add to it. I would like to know what other wine making materials/ingredients I will need. I already have equipment. Can you help me with a Scuppernong grape wine recipe?
Thanks Fred
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Hello Fred,
If you were making wine with actual wine grapes you would use 100% grape juice. This means if you have 5 gallons of juice, you make 5 gallons of wine. However, this is not the case with Scuppernong grapes. Their flavor is much stronger and more acidic. The Scuppernong juice needs to be diluted with water for these reasons.
Most Scuppernong grape wine recipes you run across will call for about 30 to 50 pounds of grapes to make a 5 gallon batch. This equates to about 2 or 3  gallons of juice. This is what I also suggest you use to make 5 gallons – 2 or 3 gallons of the Scuppernong juice.
If you want to get more accurate, you can purchase and acid testing kit and keep diluting the Scuppernong juice until the acidity drops to an acceptable level. This would be somewhere between .60% to .70% acidity. The directions that come along with the acid test kit will help you through the testing.
In an average growing season this should take about a ratio of 3 gallons water to 2 gallons of Scuppernong juice. Sometimes it can be equal part, 2.5 gallons water to 2.5 gallons of juice. Keep adding the water and testing the acidity until you reach at least the .70% acidity.
Because you have diluted the Scuppernong juice with water, you have also diluted the sugar concentration of the wine must. Sugar is what turns into alcohol during a fermentation. If there is not enough sugar in the wine must, there will not be enough alcohol in the wine when the fermentation is done. You will need to add sugar to keep the fermentation’s potential alcohol in a normal range. I would suggest adding 2-1/4 pounds of cane sugar for every gallon of water you use. This should get you a wine with about 12% to 14% alcohol.
Shop Wine Making KitsA more accurate way of controlling your wine’s alcohol content is to use a wine hydrometer. One of the scales on a wine hydrometer is called potential alcohol. This scale will tell you how much alcohol can be made with the sugar that is currently in the wine must. You just keep adding and dissolving sugar into the wine must until the potential alcohol scale reads the alcohol level you’d like to have. This is a limit to how much alcohol wine yeast can make. For this reason do not shoot for an alcohol level higher than 13%.
Other ingredients you will need to add for the Scuppernong grape wine recipe are as follows:

If you need more information about how to go about making the wine, you might want to take a look at How To Make Wine that is on our website. It will give you a good overall run-down of what you need to do to finish this Scuppernong grape wine recipe.
Happy Wine Making,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

12 thoughts on “I Need A Scuppernong Grape Wine Recipe

  1. You can use Parsons square to figure approximate amount of water to add if you take a acid reading first. I would shoot for .70 first in case measurements are a little off, but if you add a little too much then you can bring it back up with acid blend.
    Once you have your dilution right measure s.g note it (You stated you have the necessary wine making equipment, so I assume you have a wine hydrometer) , add 1 pound sugar, dissolve completely and take another s.g. reading, then it’s simple math to figure how much more sugar to reach your target. Good luck with your juice!

  2. I think you might mean musk dine grape. Never herd ot the grape you are talking about.

    • The variety is Muscadine…not Musk Dine! Muscadine is the variety family “overall”…and the “family” consistes of many different grape flavors that include black, white, bronze and other colors of grapes. One of the most popular with grapes is the “Doreen” which makes an extremely good scuppernong wine in the true Southern tradition. I make at least 5 gallons of it every year, and I get rave reviews every time! Another variety, the “Carlos” is a little more tart, and the skins impart a light pink to light red color dependig on the year.

  3. You evidently are not from the South. Scuppernong grape belongs to the muscadine family but it is a variety of itself. Great wine.

  4. Scuppernong wine is great !!! I agree he must not be from the South ! (Wine Heaven)

  5. I made some scuppernong wine ( 1 Gallon) one time and I forgot how much sugar to use. My recipe was : 1 Qt. plus 1 cup of fruit, 1 pk. yeast, Sugar and fill a gallon jug with water and put a Playtex rubber glove over it and secure and let it work for 28 days, and strain. It is really good. Would you happen to know how much sugar too use? Thank You, Barbara guy

  6. Good Morning. I use the E.C. Kraus – Recipe for Muscadine/Scuppernong. Key factors – Each year the taste of the grapes and sweetness will change some due to weather conditions here in the South. Use your Hydrometer or as the — Old Timer said, ” If it Taste Good Son! – Drink it! glv

  7. Dear Sir,
    I recently got 2 boxes, 20 lb each of scuppernongs to make wine, but I was unable to process for about 2 weeks durong which time they sat in their boxes. Upon opening i see that some are still fresh looking, many are soft and brown, there is a whitish groth among them, and a web of some kind is on top.

    Yesterday I crushed them anyway and got about 4 gal with the hulls in. My intention is anyway to drain through cheesecloth to remove hulls, then to heat the juice to 200 deg to pasturize, and add yeast, water and sugar, using your recommendations for proportions, then allow to ferment. They smell fine.

    When I was in Kuwait one year I could not buy alcohol but bottled grape juice was available in the supermarkets, even Chardonney etc, (which did not have to be pasturized, of course). I made better than acceptable wine adding water, yeast, and sugar, and leaving to ferment in a new clean 5-gal plastic garbage bucket. Wine was ready after 4 weeks.

    My questions are:
    1. Do you think the batch of grapes is ruined with that white stuff that grew while they sat in the boxes. If that is some kind of undesirable yeast and do you think the pasturization idea will work? Will the flavor be destroyed?

    2. I notice you recommend using Campden tablets, I assume to kill bacteria before adding yeast. Some time after Kuwait I made a successful batch of Scuppernong here without pasturing the juice and without tablets. Once after that, however, a couple of years ago, I made a batch and used the tablets, and the wine was ruined. So I’m shy of them.

    I love homemade Scuppenong, I grew up in eastern NC and the commercial brands are far from my memory of that delicious homemade from which I got my first ever buzz. At 90 years old I expect this may well be my last year to make a batch of real Scuppernong to leave to my grandchildren, so I will appreciate any advice you can give.
    Thanks, Matthew

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