Techniques

Chaptalization is the act of adding sugar to juice or must in order to increase alcohol content post-fermentation. Learn the basics of this technique.

In ancient Greece and Rome, honey was sometimes stirred into wine just before serving. Maybe they just liked the taste of honey. More likely, though, the sweetness of the honey corrected some

Step 1: Measuring What You Have The first step in figuring out how much sugar to add is to find out how much is present in the starting material/juice. These days, most

We’d all love to make wine from the perfect grapes picked with ideal sugars, acidity, and pH. Unfortunately, often due to reasons beyond our control, that is not always how grapes arrive at the home winery. In that case, the winemaker has a number of decisions that must be made.

Chaptalization — the practice of adding sugar prior to fermentation — has numerous benefits to wines with low sugar content. Chief among those is increasing the potential alcohol of the resulting wine, which can impact mouthfeel, help protect against spoilage, and more.

You are interested in your friend’s opinion on your most recent vintage — most likely a wine you have assessed to be your best ever. You meticulously withdraw a sample and pour

Sooner or later, most serious winemakers conclude that it isn’t good enough to simply follow a recipe blindly. That’s a bit too much like painting-by-numbers. The expression of one’s own skill and