Techniques

Ten tips to making better kit wines (beyond just reading the instructions). If your ambitions are greater than just getting drinkable wine into a bottle on a schedule there are quite a few things you can do to make better wine from kits, from the perspective of the physical processing of the must to your storing conditions you store it in, and even the knowledge you need to judge and assess your wine.

Three West Coast wine professionals give advice about what they learned in their first ten years in business.

Q. What is the difference between good and superlative wines? A. The WOW! factor. A good wine offers everything that the varietal or style is meant to provide. While it can provide

Like so many things, you get two winemakers together, you get three different opinions. But that’s probably because there seems to be nothing a professional winemaker loves to do more than talk

Every area of human endeavor has its own legacy of mythopoeia (Mythmaking), where stories accrete around the changing character of human action and accumulated knowledge. Myths and stories are the way human

“Quantity has a quality all of its own.” -R K Ratch Someone once said, “good things come in small packages.” I’m pretty sure this was a shopkeeper who sold very small consumer

The better you plan for grapes to come in, the smoother the big day of harvest and crushing grapes will go. Do you have all of the equipment on hand and cleaned? Is the space cleared? Start planning now.

What could vacuums have to do with wine kits? While there have been times when a wet/dry vacuum would have been very helpful in my wine cellar, there is a specific benefit

Ken Korando came to winemaking by way of entrepreneurship. Educated as an electronics engineer, he and a colleague patented technology used to decline balance debit cards – the sort of technology that

Have you ever wished you had an experienced winemaker looking over your shoulder as you prepared to harvest your first crop of grapes or tested acid levels? How about as you scratched

Most wine drinkers who have been exposed to Amarone probably consider it to be another one of Italy’s signature wine styles — perhaps the most brutally powerful and distinctively flavorful, but one

An insider’s view of the more technical aspects of malolactic fermentation (MLF).

Ah! There’s nothing like a nice bottle of chilled bubbly to sip as an aperitif while preparing dinner, or for those of you who already cannot wait for summer, to sip on

Dom Pérignon is a symbol of luxury engrained in pop culture. But beyond the hype, Dom Pérignon is also recognized by serious wine critics as a consistently exceptional example of the top tier of Champagnes.

German wines, particularly great German Rieslings, are unlike any other wines in the world, with unmatched fruit intensity, striking minerality and remarkable aging potential. Once you’re hooked, you’re hooked, and soon the

A wine kit can save you time and trouble and allow you to make a great batch of Port with little fuss. Most Port kits come in a half-batch size, 3 U.S. gallons (11.5 L), in either ruby or tawny styles, and yield approximately 14–15 750-mL bottles, rather than the standard kit size of 6 U.S. gallons (23 L).

Sparkling wine usually comes packaged in either standard-sized wine bottles (750 mL), half-bottle-sized splits or Magnums, which hold the equivalent of two standard wine bottles. However, less common, larger bottle sizes include

Positive effects of oxidation? How can that be? Winemakers know that oxygen negatively affects wine and they process wine with the utmost care to prevent oxidation. Two common winemaking practices that have

Stephen Smith attended wine appreciation classes at Denver University in 1982–84, winemaking seminars at the New Mexico Wine and Vine Society in Albuquerque from 1984 to the present, and extension courses at

As an enophile, I enjoy almost every type and style of wine. However, my true love is — and always has been — big, bold, oak-aged reds, the type built for the

Ah, the wine kit — is there any invention of mankind that has contributed more happiness and pleasure than the simple box of delicious juice, clarifiers, stabilizers and thoughtful, well-written instructions? Well,

A saturated, dark-ruby colored, full-bodied wine with a velvety texture and round mouthfeel, oodles of blackberry aromas and oak flavor overtones with just a hint of spiciness, all with a persistent, memorable

This chart illustrates the average nutrients removed from soil per acre (rounded off in pounds) in a producing vineyard per year (at 2.5 tons per acre, or about 5 pounds of fruit

Pesky cloudy wines! Sediments in the bottle! There is nothing more frustrating to home winemakers than a wine that will not clear or that continues to throw sediments in the bottle. Making

You: a happy winemaking citizen, going about your lawful fermentation business, enjoying the marvellous convenience and quality that the wine-kit industry has provided you. Your kit wine: usually a tractable and pleasant