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Vineyard Canopy Management

Summer in the vineyard means it is time to manage your vines’ canopy. Spraying, suckering, leaf removal, adjusting lateral shoots, and eve

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Restarting a Stuck Life

Stuck in a rut and at the cusp of retirement, a couple buys a home with a backyard vineyard in Calaveras County, California. Determined to n

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2025 Wine Education

Looking to advance your winemaking knowledge? Check out these wine education programs to start your journey down the path to a higher educat

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Live Chat with Ken & Leah Stafford (2025)

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Live Video Chat with Chik Brenneman (2025)

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Kings of Zin

Lodi, California, is known for its production of Zinfandel wines that run the spectrum of wine styles. Three Lodi winemakers share their app

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Understanding and Measuring Residual Sugars

Looking at Brix (or specific gravity) alone isn’t a great indicator whether a wine is microbially stable, and therefore determining if the

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Experimenting With Ways to Craft Rosé

A pair of home winemakers share the results from trials they conducted this past harvest in techniques for making rosé. The results offer i

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Fermenting Whey? Yes, Whey!

If you’ve made cheese, then you’ll be left with a considerable amount of whey as a byproduct. Why not use it to start a new fermentation

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Make Your Own Cheese!

Wine and cheese go hand-in-hand in the WineMaker office. While making cheese may seem complicated, making wine probably did before you start

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Tempranillo: The Noble Grape of Spain

The dark-skinned Tempranillo grape is most associated with the red wines of Spain and being the most prominent grape in the famed Rioja blen

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Chitosan: For more than just fining

Chitosan is a product every home winemaker should be familiar with, and likely has around their cellar. It is used to help clarify wine, but

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Taming Tartness, Adding Body, & Non-Alcoholic Wine

The Wine Wiz offers her wizdom to bring a tart wine into balance, as well as ways to add body to a wine and why non-alcoholic wine productio

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Live Video Chat with Wes Hagen (2025)

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Live Q&A with Bob Peak (January 2025)

Watch the video playback of our January 2025 Live Video Chat with Bob Peak.

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Bag in a Barrel Build

An amateur winemaker/woodworker shares a do-it-yourself project that combines both of his favorite hobbies. The build repurposes a 5-L (1.3-

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Temperature-Controlled Cooler

Realizing the large temperature swings in his garage don’t make for a great environment to conduct fermentations, a home winemaker convert

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Mastering Pest Management

The hardest part of growing grapes may be keeping them healthy and on the vine until harvest. From fungal diseases to insect and animal cont

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2025 Label Contest Winners

We share our favorite amateur wine labels entered into WineMaker’s 2025 Label Contest — from a faceless woman and a woman’s face seemi

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Backyard Pruning: Tips from the Pros

Two amateurs who have won Best of Show medals for their estate-grown wines share advice for late-winter pruning and vineyard care.

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Traminette

Traminette is a white hybrid grape grown all over the northern areas of North America that can make extremely aromatic wines. From crisp, dr

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Racking in Moonlight, Acetobacter, Fermenting “dry,” and White Winemaking

While there are a lot of urban myths surrounding winemaking, the one about racking under a full moon isn’t totally hogwash. Plus, what to

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Pruning and Spring Care

After harvest is over may seem like a great time for the home viticulturist to sit back and take a deep breath. Just don’t take too long o

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Friendships Forged by Wine

The annual WineMaker Magazine Conference isn’t just about attending seminars and learning, it’s also about camaraderie. One longtime at

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Top 100 Wine Kits of 2024

We reveal the 100 highest scoring kit wines judged in the 2024 WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition.