Techniques

Determining when grapes are ready to harvest is one of the most important decisions of the entire vintage. Here’s what to look for.

You may be curious about a way of making wine intermediate between using fresh fruit and making kit wines. Increasingly popular, the hobby of making wine from grape juice comes in two

Terms such as “mineral taste” and “minerality” have entered the modern wine lexicon and into common usage probably by traditionalists in an attempt to link the equally ill-defined concept of terroir to

You make your own wine, but have you tried making cheese to go with it?

When it comes to clarifying your wine kit, there are five “S’s” that will guide your way: Start, stir, smash, sweep, and suppress.

There are many points throughout the winemaking process where a winemaker must make adjustments
in order to influence the final outcome. When the grapes come into the winery, the very first choices you will make as a winemaker will be done in the unfermented must.

One of the most useful techniques used in blending wine is performing bench trials, which is the process of treating a series of small wine samples with varying degrees of conditions. In

Relentless heat can be an anxious time for winegrape growers. But the worry of vineyard heat stress doesn’t need to cause stress in the grape-grower’s life. Two professional winemakers discuss dealing with excessive heat in your own vineyard.

Not all white wines should be treated equally when it comes to processing juice. Here are some helpful tips and insights winemakers should consider when they approach their next batch of white wine — when to go for a more oxidative approach to the juice and when to go for less.

Blends are most often made from varietal wines prior to bottling, but field blending, where all of the varieties are harvested and fermented together, has its own benefits.

You’ve worked long and hard to craft that awesome red wine but now, you go down to the cellar to taste a sample out of the carboy or oak barrel to see

Fermentation and aging vessels winemakers have to decide between include oak, glass, plastic, and stainless steel. Each has its own pros and cons to be weighed.

Commercial winemakers and wine industry professionals don’t become experts overnight. It can take many vintages to figure out what works and what doesn’t work in a home or commercial winery. But that

Looking to try something new? How about making mead, also known as honey wine. Meads come in many different forms, from dry to sweet, with added fruit (melomel), malt (braggot), spices (metheglin)

Indeed, for 4–6 months of the year, the frigid and snowy landscape hardly seems like a great place to plant a vineyard. Temperatures in January and February drop sufficiently low to kill

Sherry is the fortified wine from Jerez, Spain, made in soleras and conditioned with flor yeast.

. . .lurking inside the heads of many home winemakers is the urge to make an absolute blockbuster, a jaw-dropping, mind-bending, 800-pound gorilla of a wine.

Grape juice is a pretty tough environment if you’re a yeast cell. The pH is low, there’s high osmotic stress (stress from the environmental conditions being such that the flow of water

And you thought there was only one time each year to make wine from fresh grapes; in the autumn season. But, surprise, there is another whole world south of the Equator. As

Thanks to the University of Minnesota, wine grapes can thrive in some of the coldest climates in North America (and beyond). In this issue, two winemakers discuss making wine with the Minnesota-bred,

There is no denying: Sulfur dioxide (SO2) can be a source of headaches for winemakers — even without drinking any wine. Why does SO2 continue to be such a perplexing and confusing

The two changes we are going to discuss in this article are alcohol levels and tannin. It’s important to remember before we start that any change you make is completely interconnected to the character of the wine in what can be very subtle ways.

Materials for Project: 1.) sand paper grits 40, 80, 120, 240 2.) matte black paint 3.) 3 or 4 coach bolts with washers and nuts 4.) drill and drill bits 5.) 3

The mantra for the quest for making a big blockbuster type of wine is “more is better” — more sugar in the grapes, more alcohol in the wine, more extraction, more color

We can probably all agree that readying equipment for winemaking is not exactly a carboy of fun; nevertheless, it is an absolutely crucial aspect of winemaking. Reports of wine gone bad and,