Topic: Techniques

Chaptalization — the practice of adding sugar prior to fermentation — has numerous benefits to wines with low sugar content. Chief among those is increasing the potential alcohol of the resulting wine, which can impact mouthfeel, help protect against spoilage, and more.

Home winemakers have an important new resource in the ongoing battle against spoilage organisms — it’s called lysozyme. Discovered in the 1920s and used for decades in the pharmaceutical, dairy and cheese

You are interested in your friend’s opinion on your most recent vintage — most likely a wine you have assessed to be your best ever. You meticulously withdraw a sample and pour

No matter how fantastic your grapes or juice, rarely do you get the exact flavor you’re after without some kind of intervention. Here are some methods to personalize your wine in the fermenter prior to bottling.

Let me start answering your multi-part question by breaking it down. For starters, “fortified” wines are just that. They’ve had alcohol (usually in the form of neutral grape spirits (brandy without the

First let this Wine Wizard ruminate over the techniques mentioned above. Adding a little sugar (called priming sugar in the beer trade, dosage in the wine business) to newly fermented wine and