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Topic: Techniques

106 result(s).

Cold Climate Grape Growing

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


Making Sherry-Style Wines

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


Big Reds: How To Make A Blockbuster Wine

. . .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.


Making Wines with Finesse

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


Techniques to Reduce Sulfite Additions

In spite of their long history as wine preservatives dating to the days of the Romans, sulfites can receive a bad rap. Many suspect that sulfites cause headaches or believe that any preservative is harmful, and so, there is a strong push to eliminate — or at least reduce — the use of sulfites and any additives perceived not to be “natural.” Let’s take a look at some of the strategies to reduce sulfite use.


Pinot Noir Winemaking Techniques from Burgundy

We have all heard the expression that great wine is made in the vineyard. And while we home winemakers generally accept this as truth, nowhere has this been more obvious to me


Reducing Use of Winemaking Sulfites

Inexperienced amateur winemakers are often misled thinking that making red wine is easier — or at least more foolproof — than making white wine because reds are better protected by polyphenols from


Red Wine Color Stability

Keep the color in your reds by learning about color stability and how to achieve it.


Making Port Style Wine from Mustang Grapes

By far, the most prolific wild grape in Texas is the widely distributed Vitis mustangensis, or Mustang grape. It was historically the major wine grape of early settlers and remains a dominant


Small-Space Home Winemaking

You can make wine even if you live in a small space. Here are some winemakers who do just that.


Chardonnay Winemaking Tips from Burgundy

Being a lover of Pinot Noir, I am intrigued and mystified by Burgundy. During my visit to Burgundy as part of a film crew working on a television series about wine, I


15 Keys to Winemaking Success

As we look back at the many wines we made, we cherish the memories of those winners that amazed our friends and family. But there have been failures too and perhaps some


White Wine Skin Contact

Today’s proposed violation takes on one of the dominant conventions of modern white winemaking: no skin contact.


Wines Two Ways: Oaked and Unoaked

To Oak, or not to Oak, a phrase I took from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet and changed the words around a little. But going a step further and delving into the tools that


Performing Bench Trials

At first glance, bench trials for home winemaking may seem like more trouble than they’re worth. Variously called bench trials, bench tests, or even kitchen table trials, they are focused experiments targeted


Small Batch Wine Experiments

Making small batches of wine at home can be a real labor of love. If you primarily make wine by the barrel it might be easy to take this idea for granted,


Maceration Tips and Techniques

“Maceration,” says the Concise Oxford Dictionary, is to “soften by soaking.” In red winemaking it is so much more! Indeed, maceration may be viewed as the very essence of what distinguishes the


Making Country Wine from Berries

Summer is the time for berries, and that means berry wines. Loaded with flavor and unique aromas, chilled berry wines on warm summer afternoons lend credence to the lyrics, “It’s summertime, and


Bâtonnage Winemaking Techniques

You want to add extra body and mouthfeel to your wines, or perhaps enhance those buttery or yeasty aromas and flavors in your barrel-fermented Chardonnay? Or maybe even round out those sharp


Malolactic Fermentation Timing

Home Winemakers, Let’s Take a Vote: Those of you who put your wines through malolactic fermentation only after the alcoholic fermentation is complete, raise your hands. Now those of you who do


Sparkling Techniques

There is nothing as refreshing and enjoyable as a chilled bottle of mousseux (foamy), or fine bubbly. No longer are sparkling wines simply uncorked to celebrate a new year or a kid’s


Fining Your Way to Clear Wine

Fining of wine is the addition of one substance to remove another. It is a diverse subject with several classes of materials involved in its use and lots of different intended outcomes.


Pairing Yeast with Grape

Start with the grapes. Whether you make wine at home from fresh grapes, juice, or frozen must, there are many influences over the quality and character of your wine. Grape variety itself


Cool Climate Winemaking Tips from Ontario

There is no better way to get to know a wine region than paying a visit and chatting up the winery management and their staff. It is then that you can learn


Maximize Wine Aromatics

The aromatic calculus for whites differs from that for reds, and aromatics in young wines are a world apart from the aromatics of well-aged wines. There are lots of places where you can do things in your home winery to amplify aroma, which are also the same places you can let them slip away.


106 result(s) found.