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Winemaking Gear Guide

When it comes to winemaking gear, home winemakers an impressive range of choices. The following equipment will get you started making wine f

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Grenache: Varietal Focus

The Grenache grape variety is highly recommended for the home winemaker. The variety is readily available in fresh-grape form and the price

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Evaporative Cooling

Evaporative cooling is a simple and inexpensive way to cool a small fermenter. We’ll go over the details.

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Ice Your Wine! Hot Weather Tips

Real wineries deal with real heat and make wonderful wines. It isn’t all that difficult. Here are some suggestions.

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Build 3 Winemaking Projects

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

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Upgrade Your Home Winery

When you start getting more serious about the winemaking hobby and find yourself making more batches a year, you may be in for an equipment

Dandy Dandelion Wine

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Planting Dormant Grapevines

Establishing a vineyard is an exciting and rewarding adventure.

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Picking the Right Wine Kit

Modern wine kits first began appearing in the 1970s. While they still follow the format of ready-to-dilute-and-ferment stuff in a package, t

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Marechal Foch

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Bottling: Tips from the Pros

Three longtime pro winemakers share their advice for amateurs related to bottling wines.

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Amplify Your Taste, Bud!

The wine tasting technique that I describe in this article was developed over the last fifteen years out of sheer frustration.

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The ABCs of Making Z

In the early days of the California wine industry, growers found that Zinfandel was a good “workhorse” grape that did well in a variety

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Building a Cool Cellar

Many options exist for storing wines. But if you do plan for that dream cellar, this guide will help you, too, save headaches and money.

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The Joys of Blending

Blending different grape varieties to make a better finished wine is a bedrock practice in the commercial wine world — and one often overl

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Tasting Wine with Dr. Olmo: Dry Finish

A former student recalls spending time and learning from the great grape breeder and professor Dr. Harold Olmo at UC-Davis.

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Build a Filter Clamp: Projects

This DIY clamp allows you to change filter pads more quickly and with less effort, and costs less than $20 to make.

Avoiding Kit Pitfalls

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Riesling: Varietal Focus

Riesling is known for its potential longevity and ability to develop characteristics of individual vineyard sites without losing traditional

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Grape Breeding 101

Learn what goes into breeding a new grape variety.

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Plan Your First Vineyard

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

Pick Your Grapes

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My Backyard Vineyard

I take one last, inclusive look at the “backyard” of the home in Chicago Park, California. I see one-and-a-half acres of fertile land th

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Aging Gracefully

All of the factors that go into when and how to age a wine make this a topic worth spending time on.

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Home Harvest: Backyard Vines

Here are ten steps you can take in late Summer and early Fall to grow great wine.