Making wine in the concrete jungle

posted by philip in Wine

Despite living in the heart of the largest urban conurbation in the United States, Latif Jiji, manages to not only grow grapes, by training the vines up the walls of his Upper East Side Manhattan Townhouse, but to actually harvest, crush, ferment and then age the resulting wine, all while never leaving this concrete Island.

Laying claim to the only winery (albeit unlicensed with the product never being sold on the open market) in Manhattan, this years crop was 500 pounds of Niagara grapes, which was then made into 100 bottles of wine. The first vine was planted in 1977, but the area ‘farmed’ has now spread the an entire wall of the house, as well as the roof.

So how does the home made wine taste? According to Jiji, “it’s fruity, it is smooth. I would call it balanced. But the quality varies from year to year and even from batch to batch.”

Best of all, and a potential copyright infringement claim if I ever saw one, the wine is called “Chateau Latif”.