When Nick was born in September, 1986, Mom came to stay with us. She took Suzanne for a walk one day around our yard and discovered the wild grape vines full of ripe fruit and decided she could not let them go to waste. She picked some and started to cook them in a small stock pot. She quickly learned these wild grapes produced way more juice than she anticipated and soon we were pulling out every kettle we had to accommodate the results. I can still hear her laugh as the project unfolded. That started what would become a yearly tradition. She became a master of grape jelly. We learned about the tartrate crystals that form after cooking grapes. We would cook the grapes, refrigerate the juice overnight and strain the juice to can.  She would can the juice at our house and take it home and make jelly. Our kids didn’t have store bought grape jelly until our wild grape vines disappeared. The jelly from these small, very deep purple, tart grapes was not as sweet as commercial jelly. It was excellent. I miss her so.

Ingredients

3-5 pounds grapes (we never weighed them, she was estimating here) 

sugar

Method

Wash grapes. Put in kettle. Mash. Turn on low heat. Bring to simmer and cook for at least 30 minutes. Run through mill. Measure 1 cup juice to 1 1/2 cup sugar. When sugar and juice mixtures starts to boil, turn off heat and put in jars and seal.