Techniques
Hyperoxidation
FREEAs a home winemaker, you’ve likely spent years taking every precaution at your disposal to assure that your juice does not oxidize prior to fermentation. However, there are a small-yet-growing number of winemakers out there who intentionally oxidize their juice with an aim to reduce phenol content. The technique is called hyperoxidation, and it is only for the brave.
Site Planning and Prep: Designing a modern backyard vineyard
MEMBERS ONLYFor anyone who plans on creating a small-to-moderate-sized backyard vineyard, this column should be mandatory reading. Because the best advice one can receive is to spend a lot of extra time in the planning stage, which will save an exponential amount of time later.
Using Oak Alternatives: Cutting into the granular details
MEMBERS ONLYThere is no denying that oak alternatives are a lot gentler on the wallet and on the environment. Bob Peak takes a spin through oak chemistry, available options, and techniques to incorporate them to elevate your wines.
Delicious Endeavors: The science of food-wine pairings
MEMBERS ONLYApproaching food-wine pairings can be complex given the nearly endless options available . . . but there is a science to it. Learn the basics to matching a wine with a food course to impress even the sticklers in the group.
Wine from Frozen Must: Tips from the Pros
MEMBERS ONLYWhen you want to make wines from grapes but it isn’t harvest season, one option home winemakers have is purchasing buckets of frozen must or juice. Three industry experts share their coolest tips.
Prepping Wine For Competition
FREEIf you’ve got a wine aging in your cellar you would like unbiased, expert opinions on, then entering it in a competition for judging is one of the best options. Get some pointers for getting the best feedback.
Dear Wes: A new vintage of backyard Q&As
MEMBERS ONLYThe reader letters have been piling up, so Wes decides it’s come that time again to pick up the pen and share some of the most useful questions (and his answers) that readers have sent to him over the past year regarding backyard viticulture.
Tune Up: Calibrating your wine equipment
MEMBERS ONLYWhat good is having a thermometer or titration kit if the numbers you are getting from them are off? Make sure you are properly calibrating all your wine testing equipment.
Finding Balance with Hybrids
MEMBERS ONLYHybrid grapes pose certain challenges to winemakers including higher acidity and lower tannins. Three cool-climate winemakers share their advice to create a balanced wine from these grapes.
Versatile Vino: Using wine in other hobbies
FREEThere is so much more you can do with wine than simply drinking it. Bob Peak walks readers through several side projects winemakers can perform starting with their homemade wines to create other items of interest.
Put Some Sparkle In Your Wines
FREEThere are several techniques a home winemaker can create bubbles for their wine. Learn about the methods for crafting a sparkling wine of your own.
Making Lemonade: Vineyard fixes for underwhelming grapes
MEMBERS ONLYNot every harvest is going to be perfect. When the grapes come in at less than ideal numbers or with other “flaws,” make sure you’re well positioned and able to make the best of an inferior harvest. Plus, learn how to identify what went wrong in the vineyard so the same mistakes aren’t repeated in future vintages.
Going The Distance: Crafting age-worthy wines
MEMBERS ONLYWhen you set your sights on making a “keeper” wine, one you plan to lay down for several years, there are certain techniques you can employ to make sure it doesn’t round the bend too soon. Learn how to make that wine worth holding on to.
Cooking with Wine
MEMBERS ONLYWine isn’t just the best beverage to pair with food, it’s also great to use as an ingredient in meals. With that in mind, we asked some experts in the kitchen for their advice when it comes to cooking with wine. White, red, or other, wines always have a place in the kitchen.
Maceration Enzymes: Making the most of these additions
MEMBERS ONLYThere are a lot of enzyme products available to winemakers, but in general they can be broken into just a few classes. Learn when and why a winemaker might use some of these various enzymes, especially during maceration.
Flex Your Terroir: Expressing your white wines
MEMBERS ONLYTerroir has been a bit of an esoteric topic for a long time in winemaking. But as we come to learn more about it we are figuring out ways to use it to our advantage. Learn techniques to express terroir in your white wines.
Growing Pains: Aging and packaging big batches
FREEAs your winemaking production scales up, so does the space required to store the wine as well as the miscellaneous items that come along with it. Bob Peak guides readers through some of the various bottlenecks that winemakers experience during the aging and bottling processes as their operation grows.
Dear Wes: I asked for questions and you listened!
MEMBERS ONLYTwo attendees of the Backyard Grape Growing Online Boot Camp
had some follow-up questions; one on their spray protocol, the other about coming back from a devastating loss of vines. Wes dishes out some advice.
Backsweetening Fruit Wines
MEMBERS ONLYBacksweetening is a popular method to balance and bring out the fruit character in fruit wines. We enlist two experts to share their tips to backsweetening success.
White Wine Aromatics: Factors to guide your white wines
MEMBERS ONLYIt’s hard not to find appeal in the aromatics of a tropical fruit or floral Sauvignon Blanc or hints of vanilla, citrus, and caramel in a Chardonnay. But the road to get to those aromas takes vastly different paths. Alex Russan helps readers navigate the maze winemakers can take to maximize their white wine aromatics.
Scaling Up: Crushing, pressing, and fermenting larger batches of wine
MEMBERS ONLYScaling up to larger and larger sized batches of wine may save money because of bulk buying, but new equipment will become necessary at some point. Bob Peak runs through considerations winemakers need to ponder for crushing, pressing, and fermenting larger-scale batches.
Blending Italian Red Wines
MEMBERS ONLYThree North American winemakers share their best advice for blending red Italian varieties that are often lesser known and less common in the New World. These grapes bring their own challenges, but can be worth the work. Rusty Folena: Vino Noceto, Plymouth, California Sangiovese is the primary red Italian varietal we work with, with 24
Scaling Up Grapes
MEMBERS ONLYThere is a certain set of hobby winemakers that are happy with their current winery set up and volume. But for those that are looking to grow their hobby, here are some finer points to expanding your volume with fresh grapes.
The Basics Of Racking Wine
FREEFor anyone that has been in the hobby for a while, you’ve seen the instructions, “Siphon wine into a vessel for aging,” or some variation of that. But tips and tricks to
Traditional Meadmaking: Tips from the Pros
FREEWant to try something new between grape harvest seasons? How about trying your hand at making mead, a wine made from honey. Meads come in many different forms — from dry to