Date: Apr-May 2017

Even my “purist” winemaking friends usually aren’t opposed to doing a little egg white fining when it comes to smoothing out the rough edges on their big reds. It’s an ancient and

Most folks I talk to say that sodium bentonite and calcium bentonite are interchangeable in winemaking.

Spring is here, and that means a new winemaking season is upon us! A couple of experienced winemakers share the joys that come with making wine from South America and South Africa, as they recall their recent experience making Pinotage wine from South Africa last spring.

If you have ever encountered volatile sulfur compounds in wine, of which hydrogen sulfide is the most common, you know how repulsive the smell can be. It can shoot one’s anxiety up a few notches because it always seems to catch you by surprise, and that the source of the problem is often difficult to

It its simplest, degas means “to remove gas from.” While the practice can apply to any unwanted gas, we have a very specific objective in mind in winemaking. We mean to remove excess carbon dioxide (CO2) from a wine during production. Why we do this may be a bit more subtle than it looks at

Wine is frequently transferred or “racked” into another vessel to leave the byproducts of the process (known as lees) behind. If you make larger batches of wine at home, using a pump can make this process easier.

Balance in a vineyard is defined as a vine that has enough leaves to ripen a small to moderate crop load. To achieve that goal, a good vineyard manager needs to pay close attention to what’s happening among the vines this time of year.

There are many components in wine that all need to work together to create balance. Find out how to juggle acidity, alcohol, residual sugar, tannins, color, flavor components, and more.

In the fourth installment of our year-long series about how homemade wine is made using home-grown grapes in Upstate New York, it’s time to check on finished fermentations and prune the grapevines.

Wine, as I’ve often written, is a complex chimerical soup. Wine naturally contains lots of different amino acids and some of those amino acids are in long-chain form and actually are proteins. Because proteins are pretty big molecules (as molecules go), they sometimes are so big they can’t be dissolved in the wine as a

There is a lot more to off-dry wines than what you may perceive from mass-produced discount bottles from the supermarket. A little sweetness with balanced acidity can add complexity and create a whole new tasting adventure. These aren’t the easiest wines to make, but they are rewarding on a summer day. Winemaker: August Deimel, Keuka

Learn the basics of how and where to age your homemade wines.

A long time ago, brave souls looking for an easier route to the Far East set sail west across the Atlantic Ocean. Controversial at the time given the prevailing philosophy was that the Earth was flat. But these believers were living outside of the conventional norms, and I recall in my own personal circle someone

That is a great question. The “simple” answer is that no, hydrometry and refractometry are not interchangeable and that you shouldn’t try to use a refractometer during active fermentation. Refractometry relies on measuring how a ray of light will bend (refract) through liquids of different densities to be read out on a scale. Hydrometry relies