Posts

• Article

  Preparing Your Winery for Harvest

  Harvest season is the most important — and demanding — time of year for home winemakers, and it’s not something you want to leave to l

• Wine-wizard

  Dandelion Wine Troubleshooting

  Troubleshooting dandelion wines that carbonated in bottles or browned early.

• Wine-wizard

  Adding Fruit Character

  The Wizard offers recommendations to boost the light fruit flavor in a red wine that is lacking.

• Wine-wizard

  How Wine Evolves in the Bottle

  The Wine Wizard explains how wines evolve in the bottle, which is not always linear.

• Wine-wizard

  Flat Sparkling Wine

  After three months of settling, 10 bottles out of 30 were carbonated. Why were the other bottles flat?

• Wine-wizard

  Role of Sulfur Dioxide

  Explore the role sulfur dioxide plays in winemaking and why a batch of wine that uses SO2 will have more lees than one that does not.

• Wine-wizard

  Oxygen’s Role in Fermentation

  Is oxygen needed at the start of fermentation? And at what point do we stop giving fermentation oxygen?

• Article

  Live Chat with Phill Plummer (2026)

  Watch the playback from our Live Q&A with professional winemaker and WineMaker author Phil Plummer from May 2026.

• Technique

  Shaping Body and Mouthfeel in Wine

  Whether the body of your wine is too thin, fallen out of balance during bulk aging, or has stubborn tannins that resist softening, there are

• Technique

  Carbonic Maceration Techniques

  Used to emphasize fruity character or reduce earthy or “foxy” flavors, carbonic maceration is a red winemaking whole bunch fermentation

• Technique

  North American Grüner Veltliner Tips

  Winemakers from four North American wineries share how they approach the high-acid Austrian variety Grüner Veltliner when it’s grown clos

• Wine-wizard

  Reducing quercetin levels in red wine

  I am looking for strategies to reduce quercetin in red wine. Does using PVPP help with this and if so, are there thoughts on how to best use