Apr-May 2025
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 approaches to crafting wines from the quintessential American grape.
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 there is risk of refermentation. Even home winemaking tools that measure residual sugar lump fermentable and non-fermentable sugars together. After years of performing tests, Daniel Pambianchi explains how winemakers can predict with confidence whether their wines are safe to bottle.
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 insight into what works, what doesn’t, and why rosés shouldn’t be judged by their color.
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 project, such as whey wine, mead, or even liquor?
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 started too. Follow this advice and you’ll be on your way to making cheese, including recipes for cheese curds, Asiago, and Caerphilly.
Vegan Winemaking Products
Manufacturers have recently released many plant-based or microbial-sourced products. Learn about these products, even if vegan isn’t your primary goal.
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 blends. Learn to craft your own Tempranillo at home.
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 its benefits go well beyond that. Newer chitosan-based products are also beneficial for microbial stability as well as malolactic and acetic bacteria suppression.
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 production should be left to the pros.
Can I make non-alcoholic wine?
With the increasing popularity of non-alcoholic (NA) wines, it’s no surprise that home winemakers are wondering if they can craft their own. The short answer is that while it’s possible to remove
Adding body to wine
Enhancing the body of your grape wine with bananas is a time-honored technique among home winemakers. Bananas are rich in complex polysaccharides — long-chain sugars — that, when extracted, can impart a
Taming Tartness
Your wine’s sharpness after adding tartaric acid is a classic case of how pH and perceived acidity don’t always play by the same rules. You did the right thing for microbial stability
