Cooking
How much wine or olive oil do you get from your harvest?
Liters of wine from your grapes and liters of oil from your olives, with bottles, demijohns and what to expect at the mill.
Quick answer
Home winemaking returns about **65%** of grape weight as finished wine once destemming, pressing and racking losses are counted. Formula: **litres ≈ kg grapes × 0.65**. Example: **100 kg** of grapes → roughly **65 litres** — one filled demijohn plus a dozen bottles. Oil at the average **15%** yield: **100 kg** of olives → **15 kg** of oil = **16.4 litres** (oil weighs **0.916 kg/L**).
Wine you’ll get
~65 L
- In bottles (0.75 L)
- ~86
- In demijohns (54 L)
- 1.2
Home winemaking yields ~65-70% wine from grape weight after destemming, pressing and racking — the calculator uses 65%, the honest figure once you discard the gross lees. So 100 kg of grapes make about 65 liters: one 54 L demijohn plus a dozen bottles. Reds ferment on the skins 7-10 days before pressing; whites are pressed at once. The mistake that ruins garages full of wine: topping up demijohns poorly — air is the enemy after fermentation.
How it works
Every autumn the same two questions echo through Italian garages: how much wine will this grape make, and how much oil will the mill hand back. Planning by demijohn is the right instinct for wine — a 54-liter demijohn filled to the neck plus bottles — and the calculator does the bottle-and-demijohn math for you. Oil is the moody one: mill yield swings from 10% to 20% with variety, ripeness and the year’s rain. Early harvest gives less oil but more polyphenols; waiting fills the cans but flattens the flavor. One rule outranks all yield talk: mill within 24-48 hours of picking, because olives waiting in sacks ferment and acidity climbs.
Frequently asked questions
How many liters of wine from 100 kg of grapes?+
About 65 liters of finished wine — 70+ if you press hard and keep more of the fine lees, closer to 60 if you rack strictly for clarity. Practical shopping list per quintale: one 54 L demijohn, a case of bottles for the overflow, and don’t forget the topping-up wine — demijohns must stay full to the neck after fermentation, and that reserve has to come from somewhere.
What’s a normal olive oil yield at the mill?+
Between 12% and 18% by weight for most varieties and years, with 15% the fair average expectation — that’s 6-7 kg of olives per liter of oil. Below 10% usually means very early harvest or a wet year that swelled the fruit with water; above 20% means very ripe olives and usually a flatter oil. The mill’s stated yield is by weight: divide by 0.916 to get your liters, and bring more containers than you think.
How should I store homemade wine and oil?+
Both share three enemies — air, light, heat — but rank them differently. Wine: full containers always (top up after every racking), cool and dark, and bottle with decent corks when fermentation is truly done. Oil is even more delicate: stainless steel cans or dark glass, never half-empty clear demijohns on a windowsill; it doesn’t improve with age, so the good oil should be eaten within 12-18 months while the polyphenols still sing.
Is it legal to make wine and oil at home?+
For personal and family consumption, yes in Italy and most of Europe — no license needed for the garage demijohn or taking your olives to the mill. The lines appear at selling: commerce requires registrations, labeling and in wine’s case a whole regulatory apparatus. Community mills and shared pressing days are the traditional (and legal) way small harvests get processed; many mills batch small lots together, so ask how yours handles quantities under 200-300 kg.
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