Your Home Wine Lab

Sooner or later, most serious winemakers conclude that it isn’t good enough to simply follow a recipe blindly. That’s a bit too much like painting-by-numbers. The expression of one’s own skill and artistry makes the difference between an ordinary wine and something uniquely personal. But to do that, it’s necessary to understand a bit about the composition of the wine. There’s an old saying that if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist. So it seems to be self-evident that – if we are serious winemakers – we should understand the measurements that add up to our favorite beverage. If you want to analyze what is right, or wrong, about your wine, you need to do some science. This can be very simple, or a little complicated, or even ridiculous. For the amateur, there are a few options that help to avoid the extremes. This means we will not be trying to emulate a research lab, but rather use readily available equipment and simplified techniques to discover what we can do to improve our wine. Your home laboratory, which may