Topic: Turning-Pro

Whether you are considering a career in winemaking or just want to further your knowledge, a formal education in enology and viticulture has its benefits. Here is what you should know before you enroll.

Looking to advance your winemaking knowledge? Check out these wine education programs to start your journey down the path to a higher education in winemaking and the business of wine.

Many hobby winemakers spend evenings sipping their wine and wondering if their hobby could become a profession. If you are serious about it, here is what you need to consider to get that career jump started.

In our annual Reader Survey, hobby winemakers looking to go pro usually account for about 1 in 5 readers. Here is the story of one couple who made the leap and some of the details about how they’re making it work.

As your winemaking production scales up, so does the space required to store the wine as well as the miscellaneous items that come along with it. Bob Peak guides readers through some of the various bottlenecks that winemakers experience during the aging and bottling processes as their operation grows.

Scaling up to larger and larger sized batches of wine may save money because of bulk buying, but new equipment will become necessary at some point. Bob Peak runs through considerations winemakers need to ponder for crushing, pressing, and fermenting larger-scale batches.

There is a certain set of hobby winemakers that are happy with their current winery set up and volume. But for those that are looking to grow their hobby, here are some finer points to expanding your volume with fresh grapes.

Thinking about taking your winemaking hobby commercial? There’s a lot of planning that must go into the endeavor, as Jason Phelps (a longtime home winemaker who opened a commercial meadery earlier this year) explains. Here’s what you need to consider before the actual process of making wine begins.

How do you break into the wine industry? Do you volunteer to help out at a local vineyard for a vintage? Do you go to winemaking school? Do you start out as

In the life of the amateur winemaker, there may come a time when the idea of starting a commercial winery pops up. Making wine can be a gratifying and engaging career, so

Maybe you made a truly spectacular batch of Cabernet Sauvignon two years ago and haven’t been able to make another like it since and can’t figure out why. Maybe you’ve been making

If you are thinking about taking your amateur winemaking to a more professional level, it might be time to consider taking some winemaking classes. In this issue, two wine school instructors discuss some tips for finding your way in winemaking school.

There definitely has been an explosion in the number of people making and selling wine in this country! Every year, the number of brands listed with the TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Tax

Clos Pepe: A Vigneron’s Quest for Great Dirt (Carneros Press, 2009) chronicles the years between planting Sauvignon Blanc vines in Stephen Pepe’s Long Beach, California backyard to becoming a Pinot Noir and

Pro winemakers share their best advice for amateurs looking to make the leap.

Call it a midlife crisis before mid-life, but at the age of 29 I was four years out of graduate school and faced with the prospect of working 30 years at a

I’m sure many a home winemaker has thought, “I wonder what it would be like to make this a full-time job?” Well, I took the plunge and that’s exactly what I did.

The Cat’s Meow Vineyard has been the moniker for my homemade winemaking operation in Warsaw, Kentucky for the past four years. My eight cats that “patrol” the grounds were the inspiration for

The professional world of viticulture (grape growing) and enology (winemaking) has become its own amazing universe. To be part of it, there are two routes you can follow. The first is owning