Articles

Seven important tips to remember when making your next wine from a kit.

Two pros offer advice to make a great blueberry wine at home.

Country wines. The name evokes a cottage in a peaceful countryside, set amid fields of lush vegetation, with birds and bees blissfully coasting on the late-summer breeze. Imagine hearing someone in the

As WineMaker celebrates its first five years of publishing, we stop for a minute to reflect on the classic world in which we’re immersed — the world of wine. Who could ever

Has this ever happened to you? You bottle what seems to be your next, greatest batch of wine, carefully set it aside to age for as long as you can possibly stand

D. Genasci (southern Oregon) asks: “I am harvesting Pinot Noir and am getting rather strange readings — 22 °Brix, pH of 3.4 and acid at 0.25. The grapes are grown on gravelly

Winners from the 2002 WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition

Pinot at a Glance Pinot Noir is a heralded red table wine. It is usually made in a dry style that features delicate fruit aromas and flavors. The wine typically has a

Winter is a good time to take a critical look at your cellar techniques. With a nod to the new year and its requisite resolutions, we asked two professional winemakers to discuss

Learn to make your own Port-style wine at home.

View the winning labels of the 2002 WineMaker Label Contest.

Mead is a classic fermented beverage with a long history. Ancient text and drawings, some dating back as far as 4000 BC, mention both wine and mead. Several Biblical writings describe this

Like the proverbial little girl with the curl, when it’s good, Gewürztraminer is very good; but when it’s bad, it’s awful. This noble white variety with the pinkish grapes can produce spectacular

The first year of vine growth is meant to establish a strong and vigorous root system and build stores of nutrients to hasten growth in subsequent years. Learn how to ensure this happens in your home vineyard.

In the old days of winemaking, equipment came in many shapes and sizes. An old pickle crock here, a discarded water jug there and maybe some whiskey barrels that fell off the

In Spain, where many historians claim the variety originated, this versatile grape is called Garnacha. The rest of the world calls it Grenache … and home winemakers call it a great grape

The grapes and apples are picked, crushed and pressed. Everything is a go for fermentation. Except it’s too hot! You want a cool fermentation, around 60 °F (16 °C), but the coolest

It was early August 1988. My mother lived near Temecula, California on a property with 100 Cabernet Sauvignon vines. My husband and I were bringing the small vineyard back to life after

Build a cart to roll your fermenter around easily, a stainless racking cane, and cap plonker.

If you are like most home winemakers, you’ve been making great wines from concentrate and juice, and you also may have experimented with small batches of grapes. Now you want to increase

Ah, spring! The trees come into leaf, plants bloom again and the green lawns are covered with … dandelions. Dandelions, whose scientific name is Taraxacum officinale, are a member of the aster

Establishing a vineyard is an exciting and rewarding adventure. Like all of life’s challenges, your success or failure will be dictated by the amount of research, planning, effort and perseverance you exhibit

The modern wine kit, with its gleaming plastic bag in a jazzy-looking box, didn’t start out as a miracle of modern technology. Arguably, the first wine kits were actually used in ancient

Marechal Foch, named after a famous French general in the First World War, has proven to be a worthwhile red grape variety for many colder regions of the world. Technically identified as

Winemaker: Greg Pollman started working at Fountain Wine Cellars in Cincinnati in 1974 and went to Sublette Winery in Cincinnati in the late 70s. He joined Valley Vineyards Estate Winery in Morrow, Ohio