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Your Home Vineyard Site

Ever wondered how to start your own Home Vineyard well, here it is.  I’ve always wanted to have a vineyard but wasn’t really excited about risking $50K-$100K between acreage, vines and more.  Practicing with a few vines in your own back yard is the easiest and most economical way to go. This site will record the steps to get your own home vineyard started.  A home vineyards can be as small as just a few vines, to hundreds even thousands of vines depending on how many acres you have in your back yard.

There is a wide variety of options for the small-scale grape grower. These grape can range from local native  grape varieties to the more exotic French vinifera. You must remember that grape varieties should be used in their own climatic regions (cold, hot, dry, wet).

Access to world-class grapes for home wine making, lifestyle landscaping, and historical connections, home gardening,  real estate enhancement, tax incentives, erosion easements, exotic table grapes, and, of course, great wine bottled under a personalized label are among the incentives we have observed.

Before starting my vineyard, I attended a basic series of vineyard and enology classes put on by a respected Texas school, Grayson Community College viticulture and enology program.  This program took me from bud break through harvest, from grape pressing to bottling. One of the early question I asked about vineyard layout was how important it was for the rows to be placed one way or the other, i.e. North-South or East-West. He explained the various reasons for row orientation, but finally ended his dissertation with “but it really all comes down to ease of farming.” In keeping with his recommendation, I tried to set my small backyard vineyard in a way to use the available space along with ability to tend my vines.  Remember, this is not a job, it’s a labor of love or a test to see if you will make a good farmer so have fun.