Articles

I have a confession: my father was a life-long university chemistry professor who was never proud of his eldest son’s chemistry grades. Sure, I could play “Chem-O” with the best of them!

A healthy backyard vineyard is a treasure. It can produce delicious wine, serve as a wonderful setting from which to appreciate the miracles of nature and offer a leafy refuge from the

Edelweiss is best known as the European mountain flower with a pleasing floral scent. The 1959 Rogers and Hammerstein musical, “The Sound of Music,” immortalized the Edelweiss flower as Captain Georg Ritter

10 items that will make your home winemaking more enjoyable. From old mechanical stand-bys to new computerized state-of-the-art doo-dads, here’s a list that every gadget junkie will want to ponder.

Most books about home winemaking feature sections on “Making Red Wine” and “Making White Wine.” But when real, live vintners, amateur or professional, clean out their fermenters and get down to business,

In the beginning, there was wine . . . just wine. There wasn’t “wine” (made from grapes) and “country wine” (made from fruits other than grapes). A pomegranate wine is mentioned in

My husband Dene and I fall into the category of gourmet food aficionados. We started raising cattle after moving to our place 40 miles northeast of Denver, Colorado and got our first

David Koball, Vineyard Manager at Bonterra Vineyards in Hopland, California. David has been growing winegrapes in Mendocino County in California for 14 years, all of it in certified Organic and Demeter certified

In 1955, at age five, my grandparents taught me to make French/German/Native American mead wine. After finishing two days of hot grueling work canning fruit, Grandpa asked me if, “I could keep

“Quantity has a quality all of its own.” -R K Ratch Someone once said, “good things come in small packages.” I’m pretty sure this was a shopkeeper who sold very small consumer

Pro winemakers share their best advice for amateurs looking to make the leap.

Your hydrometer shows that your must has a specific gravity of 1.100 – but how do you know that’s accurate? Learn how to calibrate your hydrometer and all your winemaking tools, so you can be sure.

It may be plonk, but – our grand prize winner shows – that doesn’t mean the label can’t be cool. See all the winners of WineMaker’s annual label contest.

Call it a midlife crisis before mid-life, but at the age of 29 I was four years out of graduate school and faced with the prospect of working 30 years at a

You know from art class that red and white make pink, but is the same true for wine? Often rosès and blush wines are made from red grapes that are briefly exposed

The first thing you notice when someone hands you a glass of wine is its color and clarity. We all expect wine to look clear and appealing and there are many ways

Overlooking the San Pasqual Valley is our winery, established solely for the enjoyment of friends and family. Designed to make the best of our 200-gallon allowance, the 303 Syrah vines entertain drivers-by

Are press cuts scientific or subjective? What about combining the free run with the press runs? Do different cuts get different treatments? If you’ve ever wondered about concerns like these, take some

For winemakers, grape harvest is a period of intense activity. Important decisions and preparations need to happen well in advance of crush day in order for things to go smoothly. These decisions

What could vacuums have to do with wine kits? While there have been times when a wet/dry vacuum would have been very helpful in my wine cellar, there is a specific benefit

Ken Korando came to winemaking by way of entrepreneurship. Educated as an electronics engineer, he and a colleague patented technology used to decline balance debit cards – the sort of technology that

From April 20–22, 2007, a record total of 3,422 different wines were judged at the Equinox Resort in Manchester, Vermont. The 2007 edition of the WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition represented the

This article originated as I was explaining to my son Christian the differences in the way I make wine and the way his grandfather used to make it. It all began in

‘Talent Borrows, Genius Steals’ -attributed to Oscar Wilde As I set out to structure this issue’s “Backyard Vines,” I revisited previous articles to see what vineyard subjects I’d neglected. Surprisingly, I found articles

I’m sure many a home winemaker has thought, “I wonder what it would be like to make this a full-time job?” Well, I took the plunge and that’s exactly what I did.