Articles

QI am a beginning winemaker. I have yet to make my first batch, but I just got a kit that contains Pinot Noir juice. I want to make a sulfite-free wine because

QI’ve been brewing beer for about 10 years, so I’m pretty well acquainted with the cleaning process. This is my third year making wine, and I recently received some corking advice that

Winners from the 2012 WineMaker amateur label contest.

Winners from the 2013 WineMaker amateur label contest.

Here’s the winners of the 2014 WineMaker label contest.

Live Chat with Dwayne Bershaw, which took place on October 16, 2019.

QI recently inadvertently added the wrong yeast to a new batch of frozen Chardonnay juice. I had planned on using Lallemand’s ICV-D47 but picked up Red Star’s Côte des Blancs, it was

QHere’s one problem you may have been asked about before. My finished wine has an aroma and taste of rubber and burnt toast, a bit like burnt rubber. Since I will be

QI have just made my first batch of wine, a white one. Funny things have been happening to it. Everything seemed to go well with the fermentation of the wine. When it

QI had a great Riesling going this vintage, but now I’ve stuffed it up. I nursed it along until the last racking, when I seem to have put in an overload of

Live Chat with José Pizarro, which took place on September 18, 2019.

A fermentation is “stuck” when it fails to reach the desired conversion level of sugar, usually coming to a halt somewhere below 10 °Brix. It does not refer to a failure to start,

A look at the causes and corrections winemakers can make for some of the less common, but still serious, winemaking faults.

He was about 55 years of age, short sleeve shirt, jeans, and a big grin on his face. He approached us, barely able to conceal a giggle. He had a humorous question;

If Cabernet is the King of Grapes, Chardonnay is probably the Queen. It’s the most popular wine among US drinkers with about 20% market share, and in California there’s more of this

QAfter I stabilized my wine, I added French medium toast oak beans to the Chardonnay 3/4 cup (new beans), Sauvignon Blanc 1/3 cup (new beans), Ruisseau Blanc 3/4 cup (used beans), and

QHow can I increase the sugar content and body of my juice without using refined sugar? I am looking for cheaper alternatives. Please point me to specific recipes. Azubuike OgalaOxford, New Jersey

QI have been making wines for more than 20 years, but I have a problem with initial sugar determinations, added sugar requirements and subsequent alcohol content. Hydrometer readings on the initial crushed

QA few years ago I toured some wineries on a trip through Michigan and found one that was quite unique. One of the methods of this winery was called “solera.” This method

QI own a small store in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. I have two customers with the same problem and I have no solution. Both batches were made with a four-week wine kit. The

QI make wine in five-gallon batches from juice that I buy in Canada. I also buy skins, stems, and small bags of toasted oak chips, then let it all age in five-gallon

Dear Wine Wizard, I came back from Australia six months ago and was fortunate enough to visit the Hunter Valley. I brought back some wine and among the bottles was a Chardonnay/Verdelho

An invasive cactus plant native to the Americas has caused decades of massive economic hardships for many pastoralists of Kenya. Explore how one permaculturalist turned this scourge of the region into a nascent wine industry.

Dear Wine Wizard, I am planning to brew my first mead this weekend. I will be using a recipe that calls for “yeast extract,” which I take to be the same as

It’s been a few years since we’ve run a Backyard Vines Q&A. Wes Hagen answers several hobby vineyardists’ questions. Learn about tackling black rot, sunburnt grapes, and hedging vines.