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Live Chat with Pat Henderson, which took place on May 22, 2019.

Live Chat with Pamela Zorn, which took place on March 13, 2019.

Cap recycling QCan I reuse bottles with screw on caps for bottling wine? Jim Neumeistervia email AWhat you describe, reusing commercial screwcap wine bottles for subsequent bottlings, is something no commercial winery

QI grow and make Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in southwest Idaho. The season is intense but short. In order to reach decent ripeness (~25 °Brix), I have been growing with a very

I have 7 gallons (26 L) of 2009 Chardonnay made from home-grown grapes. This was my first year of production from these vines and I did not use oak or MLF. Fermentation

Barrel tests QCan you tell me what I really need to handle one to one and a half barrels of juice annually? The TA and pH kits that I have seen are

OVER 2,300 HOMEMADE WINES, CIDERS, AND MEADS WERE RECENTLY JUDGED IN THE WORLD’S LARGEST COMPETITION FOR HOBBY WINEMAKERS! RESULTS ARE HERE! Year after year the WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition is the

QHow many pounds of grapes will make five gallons (19 L) of wine? Are there guidelines for reds and whites and varieties within each of those groups? How much does vintage affect

Sugar solution I am fairly new to home winemaking having only made a few kits and three batches of Muscadine wine. I have been using Daniel Pambianchi’s book Techniques in Home Winemaking

The world of wine grapes is expansive and continues to grow. Here are a select few profiles of lesser-known wine grape varieties.

It is not lost on the well-informed winegrower/winemaker that fungi — ancient, single-cell organisms that have been on this planet hundreds of millions of years longer than humans — are our best

Wine brings people together. This is cause for great reflection for me personally because as you read this, I will have been retired from the University of California Teaching and Research Winery

I’d never seen my father drink a glass of wine — until he became a winemaker. He retired from a full-time sales career and besides golf, gardening, and a part-time job selling

QI am planning to try a new product on some older cabernet wine (2015 vintage) that has not yet been bottled. It has a harshness that might be related to tannins. It

Get to know the most common wine faults, their causes, and fixes you can try to alleviate them.

He’s been called the “God of Cabernet,” been named the Winemaker of the Year, and has produced “virtually perfect” wines, according to wine critics. Now, Robert Foley shares his best advice on how you can make the best wines at home.

Méthode Champenoise is the most traditional way to make sparkling wine. It requires extra time, attention to detail, and more steps than other methods of sparkling wine production. However, it also makes the highest quality bubbly, which is why it is the only technique used by Champagne makers. Learn how to master this technique at home.

Live Chat with Wes Hagen, which took place on April 25, 2019.

This past April, 50 experienced judges evaluated a total of 1,224 wine kit entries as part of the overall 2015 WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition. This large collection of kit entries was

The culinary world and hobby winemaking collide in an upstate New York college campus where one man’s mission is to introduce the winemaking hobby to chefs-in-training.

There are many reasons that 10 wines made from the same grape may taste completely different, and often it is because the winemaker planned for them to. Learn about how the location a grape is grown, as well as the decisions a winemaker must make, impact the outcome of a wine.

Barrels offer a lot more benefits to wine than just oak taste and tannins, but full-size barrels are often out of reach for the home winemaker. Smaller barrels that are more home winemaker-friendly pose some nuances when it comes to wood-to-wine ratio, but they offer the same benefits when you know how to use them.

If a barrel isn’t in your immediate winemaking plans — or if your barrel has been filled so many times it has become neutral in oak character — there are many other options on the market in the forms of oak alternatives. Get to know the options to see which may be best for your cellar.

Riesling is one of the noble grapes of Germany and can produce a wide array of complex white wines. Learn some of the key elements and techniques that winemakers can utilize when crafting wine from these grapes.

The Wizard explores the many sensations that tasters experience as a wine goes from grapes, through fermentation, and into the early stages of aging; in order to be a better judge of a wine’s character when finished. Also, a reader has a question about properly adding acid to a barrel.