Wine, From Grape to Glass, by the Numbers

When folks see a vineyard or even a single vine they often wonder, "How many grapes does it take ...?"

Using some averages here are ways to understand the process of the grapes in the field to your glass of wine. Hopefully, you are currently holding a glass of Sonoma County wine to help with that visualization.

A bottle of wine equals about six to eight grape clusters or 600 to 800 grapes. So that's maybe 150 grapes in a glass. You get two or three bottles of wine per vine.

A barrel of wine is 60 gallons of 600 bottles of wine.

One ton of grapes gives more than two barrels. Lets says you're getting four tons of grapes to an acre of vineyard (this varies widely as 1.5 to 8 tons is often seen). Anyway, that four tons is good for over eight barrels or 200 cases of wine (12 bottles/case). Figure about 30 pounds of grapes in a case of wine.