Articles

Detailed steps every home viticulturist should take before planting their first vineyard.

Somewhere, buried deep within the psyche of almost everyone who makes his own wine, there is a grape grower trying to get out. As someone who once successfully ripened Seyval Blanc grapes

“Mark? Don’t you want to take a look inside the house?” Hmmm. Check out that land. “Mark? The house?” Yeah … sure. The house. I take one last, inclusive look at the

Some truly remarkable changes occur when a wine is allowed to age. The more simple initial aromas eventually give way to a panoply of rounded, complex bouquets. Cabernet can take on the

Gold Medal Winners Joan Huff Louisville, Kentucky Joan won honorable mention in last year’s contest with a similarly colorful label. She and her husband ordered some Muscat grapes from California and things

Harvest is swiftly approaching and we need to get ready. Learning some of the lingo and common practices of commercial vineyards will help you choose the perfect day for bringing the fruit

Do you know why two identical grape varieties from geographically similar viticultural areas will turn out different wines? Or, could you correlate a wine’s quality and aging potential to its acidity, pH

It’s easy to forget that it takes two full years to make good wine from your own grapes. The first year is spent in the vineyard tending the vines, spraying sulfur, removing

The Seyval Blanc (Seyve-Villard 5276), a cold-climate white grape variety, is the leading choice for many winemakers who live in the chilly eastern and northern regions of North America. This hardy varietal

Two pros who make fruit country wines give their tips for making these non-grape wines.

Cleaning and sanitizing is the boring, dull part of the process. Never mind that this is the most important part of winemaking. It is a lot like work, so let’s do it well and get back to having fun!

Get an understanding of pH, why it’s important, how to measure pH, and how to correct it.

Why bother with wine competitions? It’s a fair question. Entering a competition means putting your wine up for evaluation against those of other winemakers, and that can be a bit daunting. Some

Americans love the taste of blueberries, and with good reason. Blueberries are uniquely American. Maybe that’s why I always think about blueberry wine when summer rolls around and I start planning Fourth

The moment of truth in winemaking often comes when you taste your wine to see how it turned out and you wish it could be just a touch better. Maybe the wine

Let’s try to demystify sulfite by reviewing some fundamental chemistry. This will help us understand how sulfite protects wine and how much “free SO2” we are introducing into our wine.

To understand how pruning your backyard grapevines will affect growth, crop load and wine quality, you must first understand how grapevines grow in the wild. When vines sprout from seed, the vine

During the mid 1980s in New Zealand, when the Cloudy Bay Winery captured the attention of the world marketplace with its version of Sauvignon Blanc, a new era was born. Today, many

After crawling our way out of the large piles of boxes, envelopes and packages that have been collecting on the floor of the editorial department for the past two months, we managed

You’ve followed all the rules. From the arrival of the grapes through pressing, racking, aging and bottling, you have meticulously scrutinized every step of the winemaking process. Nothing has been overlooked in

With all the excitement of harvest and crush in the air, it’s easy to forget about planting. But if you’d like to start a small, backyard vineyard next spring, there are some

Learn about Zinfandel and find instructions to make Zin in three different wine styles.

Malolactic fermentation (MLF) may sound mysterious, but it’s a technique every home winemaker should master. It’s quite different from “regular” fermentation, in which yeast convert sugar into alcohol. MLF involves bacteria instead

One of the most enduring — and evocative — images in the winemaking world is that of the barrel room. Virtually every commercial vintner has one, and it’s among the “must sees”

Nothing feels as satisfying and authentic as making your first batch of wine from fresh grapes. And there’s no better time to try it than in early autumn, when grapes all over