Six Essential Winemaking Techniques

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 doesn’t mean hobby winemaking has to be hard — and it helps to get some pro-level advice to boost your confidence. We spoke with some of our most trusted hobby and commercial wine professionals to see what they think are the essential skills you need to make the best wine possible at home. THE PRO: Anna-Katherine Mansfield, Associate Professor of Enology at Cornell University’s State Agricultural Experiment Station (NYSAES) in Geneva, New York. Anna first worked in the wine industry in North Carolina’s Yadkin Valley, received graduate degrees at Virginia Tech and the University of Minnesota, and served as the first Enology Project leader at the University of Minnesota from 2001-2008. Mansfield returned to the East Coast in 2009, and currently focuses her efforts in aiding small regional wineries through enology extension, wine sensory evaluation, and research on hybrid wine phenolics and fermentation nutrition. Anna will spoke at the