Topic: Wine-Wizard

Cap recycling QCan I reuse bottles with screw on caps for bottling wine? Jim Neumeistervia email AWhat you describe, reusing commercial screwcap wine bottles for subsequent bottlings, is something no commercial winery

QI grow and make Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in southwest Idaho. The season is intense but short. In order to reach decent ripeness (~25 °Brix), I have been growing with a very

I have 7 gallons (26 L) of 2009 Chardonnay made from home-grown grapes. This was my first year of production from these vines and I did not use oak or MLF. Fermentation

Barrel tests QCan you tell me what I really need to handle one to one and a half barrels of juice annually? The TA and pH kits that I have seen are

QHow many pounds of grapes will make five gallons (19 L) of wine? Are there guidelines for reds and whites and varieties within each of those groups? How much does vintage affect

Sugar solution I am fairly new to home winemaking having only made a few kits and three batches of Muscadine wine. I have been using Daniel Pambianchi’s book Techniques in Home Winemaking

QI am planning to try a new product on some older cabernet wine (2015 vintage) that has not yet been bottled. It has a harshness that might be related to tannins. It

The Wizard explores the many sensations that tasters experience as a wine goes from grapes, through fermentation, and into the early stages of aging; in order to be a better judge of a wine’s character when finished. Also, a reader has a question about properly adding acid to a barrel.

Q How do I get copper sulfate in accurate diluted food grade form? I would like to treat 5 gallons (19 L) of stinky fruit wine to get rid of the rotten

A reader wonders about the usefulness of gum arabic in their winemaking process. The Wiz also talks about chilled red wines, the ups and downs of Pinot Noir, and increasing mouthfeel in your wines.

A concerned reader asks the Wizard why commercially-purchased wines might have their corks raised. She also answers questions on metabisulfite use before malolactic fermentation, when to re-test for pH, and dealing with Acetobacter issues.

Q I have a Merlot to which I added SO2 thirteen days ago and it smelled ok. but last night I pulled a sample and it had a bruised apple smell and

I need help to prevent oxidation. I make about 40 gallons (151 L) from California grapes each year, usually finishing quite nice, but last year’s Sangiovese suffers from oxidation. After fermentation and

Dear Wine Wizard, I am in the process of vinting a Champagne, and after having read of a couple of different ways to create the “sparkling” effect, I am now thoroughly confused.

Remember, every time you open your barrel, you introduce air and potentially some undesirable spoilage organisms.

Oak barrels (and barrels made of other woods, sometimes acacia wood or even cherry wood) are really structurally amazing.

Pasteurization operates on a sliding scale and its effectiveness depends on a coefficient between time and temperature.

Excluding bacteria that can eat malic acid and turn it into lactic acid is the only way to make sure you don’t get refermentation in the bottle.

Your Zinfandel probably had a good reason (in the wine’s opinion, anyway) why it didn’t go through ML fermentation.

Spices and other added flavorings in home winemaking are one of the trickiest things to get right.

Wine clarifiers, or ‘fining agents’ as they (and a whole host of other wine-finishing additives) are called, are creatures of degrees.

I suspect you’ve got a fatty acid issue caused by your stuck/sluggish fermentation. S. cerevisiae can emit fatty acids when under fermentive stress . . .

. . . you could also buy some powdered grape tannin, use oak chips, or even use a cup of strong black tea to add some tannin backbone to the wine if it’d be tough for you to obtain grape skins.

No matter which strain you use, be sure that you read up on all the specifications from the manufacturer around ideal performance conditions.

. . . a lot of sediment we find in wines actually forms after the wine is bottled, and is nothing that filtration can control.