The next time you hold a glass of your favorite wine in your hand, you may want to do a little math.
That glass of wine represents about 75 grapes, which is approximately the number of grapes contained on the average grape cluster. The typical vine will contain about forty clusters of grapes so each vine will produce slightly less than a case of wine.
There are about 400 vines to the acre. Those 400 vines typically produce 5 tons of grapes which will fill just over 13 wine barrels, the equivalent of slightly less than 4,000 bottles of wine or just over 330 cases. That means the acre of grapes that produced the glass of wine you’re holding probably produced over 17,000 additional glasses of wine.
Each of the above barrels required about 1200 clusters of grapes or roughly about 90,000 single grapes. That represents less than 10% of the yield from the average vineyard acre.
Oh, did we mention the barrel is probably oak. Out of the hundreds of species of oak, less than 2 dozen are suitable for barrel making and less than 10% of those are utilized for high-end wine barrels. The average age of a French oak tree utilized for wine barrels is 175 years old.
That’s a lot to think about as you sip!
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