Wine Wizard

You are really onto something here! Water is added to recipes for many different reasons. If you’re making a wine with flowers or dry fruits (like dandelion wine or elderberry wine) you’ll

Maple sap is a great source of natural sugar and certainly qualifies as home winemaking material. What is less certain, as you’ve found out, is how much of those subtle maple aromas

Ah, the glory and heartbreak that are citrus fruits in winemaking. So many aromas! So many bright flavors! So much acid! And so many potential bitter compounds.  This is where a good

Ah, blueberry wine! Blueberries, huckleberries, and black currants are all favorites when it comes to home winemaking, partly because they can make dark, mouth-filling wines that can resemble the finest red wines

Because cantaloupes have high pH, my guess is that the red speckles you’re seeing in a layer on top of your wine are bacteria colonies and no, they are not to be

I really applaud you for keeping such detailed records and testing regularly. This really helps me when diagnosing issues and coming up with ways to help. I want to start off by

You want to know what my standard, go-to, never-fail, keeps-most-wines-happy yeast is? It’s called Prise de Mousse, EC1118, Davis 796 or Premier Cuvee. Why all the names? I guess so a lot

Well, I will admit I have never made a passion fruit wine (living in Napa, those pesky grapes just seem to be the most convenient sugar source at hand) but I will

Well well, what do you know? That’s a question I’ve never been asked before in all my years of writing this column! The spirit of the vintage laws for commercial wine is

I definitely would re-think your pre-bottling aging and fining procedures. Many wines, especially those made with fruit other than grapes, are susceptible to flocculation (a fancy term for sediment) and visible fallout.

There’s nothing like a wine with what I call “the elbows sticking out” to ruin one’s mood. Especially frustrating is when one has followed a recipe or kit instructions to the letter

The short answer is that yes, I would absolutely cut down on the amount of clarifying agent you use if you don’t have enough wine volume for the recommended 5 gallon (19

I just saw your picture and wow, that does indeed look like a floating brain — or two! Luckily, that is a great shot of what I would call typical “fruit floaties”

Certainly feel free to experiment with food coloring in your strawberry wine but be sure to keep it food-grade and keep it modest to maintain the color within the realm of believability.

Cane sugar, or sucrose, derived from the sugar cane plant, has a chemical structure of C12H22O11, is a di-saccharide comprised of the mono-saccharides glucose and fructose and is found in many plant

So you want to put some chocolate flavor, texture and aroma into your wines, eh? My approach would definitely be to use the chocolate grace-notes as an ending treatment to your wine,

I wouldn’t worry too much about anyone getting sick from your wines as long as the water you use is clean and the alcohol is above 10%. As a professor of enology

It seems like you already have the acidity-adjusting situation well in hand — this is often one of the areas in which non-grape wines meet their downfall. As you already have realized,

The most general guidelines the Wine Wiz can give you for aging wines from fruits, vegetables and herbs are these: Always cellar any wine at least six months before opening the first

Stop right there! Don’t pour your wine down the drain. Your problem is both curable, and most important for future batches, preventable. It seems you’ve got an overload of tannins in your