Wine Wizard

You say you have a Syrah that is not purple, and how do you know it’s Syrah? To address your second question first, I would say you really have to trust your

Welcome to the wonderful world of fortified winemaking! Making Port-style dessert wines is really fun. One of the side benefits of making these types of wines is that fortified wines are typically

I wish I could help you out with your off-odor issue a little bit more than I think I’ll be able to. Because you didn’t include many details about what your off

I wouldn’t worry too much about anyone getting sick from your wines as long as the water you use is clean and the alcohol is above 10%. As a professor of enology

Before you set about making any major changes to this wine, make sure that when you taste you are not tasting a sample that has a lot of dissolved carbon dioxide gas

I am making wine from my own grapes in Alpine, California and have noticed that occasionally a light film forms on the inside of some bottles. I am very meticulous about keeping

I have a number of novelty corks I brought back from Europe in 1960. They haven’t been used since then, so they are quite dry. Can anyone tell me if there is

It seems to me like your Carmenère is a candidate for one of the “Wine Wizard’s” cheapest, easiest and most favorite ways to improve a tannic wine; egg white fining! What could

I think your barrels should be salvageable. Since you fished out the sulfur stick and are aware that you might have some residual sulfurous acid hanging about, you’ve already won half the

Since you don’t mention whether the 15 ppm is free or total SO2, it’s tough for me to refer specifically to either the instructions or your protocol. However, I routinely add up

Egg whites are an ancient, traditional and natural additive and are sometimes used to pull excessive tannins out of wine in a gentle treatment process known as “fining.” Practiced for centuries all

Is the salmonella (commonly associated with eggs) a problem to consider when fining with egg whites? Bob McKee Tucker, Georgia Egg whites are an ancient, traditional and natural additive and are sometimes

Dry ice can be a tremendous help for small-lot winemakers in the grape or must stage. Dry ice is really just frozen carbon dioxide gas and will cool the air (or liquid)

First off, one should never burn a sulfur wick in a wet barrel; only do this (which releases the antimicrobial SO2 gas, which we want) when your barrel is well dried-out. This

  Wine barrel testing My barrels are American oak, repeatedly used for wine, and about five years old. When empty, I fill them with water containing a strong solution of potassium metabisulfite

For readers who don’t know, adding a solution of egg whites to wine does a nice job of pulling out excess tannins and phenolics that might cause your wine to be overly

A dear professor of mine in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at University of California at Davis used to say, while pointing down at his wooden podium, “Technically, you can ferment

Here’s a simple rule of thumb to keep handy when using any kind of enzyme in winemaking. Enzymes are proteins and proteins don’t mix well with bentonite or with sulfur dioxide. Always

Dear Wine Wizard, Though most of us think “grapes” when we think wine, I live in Michigan and can’t help but notice that wineries out here make wine out of a lot

Hmm . . . this is a good question and one that more people should ask when getting into a hobby. It also serves as a natural follow-up to my previous mistakes

That’s a great request. Sometimes I forget to really distill what I believe when it comes to fine winemaking. Just like anything in life, having a concentrated, bullet-pointed list of the essence

Wine Wizard replies: Absolutely. There are an increasing number of filters out there for the small-scale producer. From rough filters that’ll just knock out large, visible particles all the way down to

Wine Wizard replies: Though ozone is an excellent tool for winery sanitation, the short answer is that unless you’ve got over fifty barrels of wine and sell it for a living, you

The Acid Test I crushed and sulfited my Cab grapes. In doing the initial tests I got the following readings. Brix was 23.5 (+.22 temp correction) = 23.7, S.G. 1.099 (+.013 temp

The Zin of Blending Since I can’t taste your wine and so don’t know the profile of each individual component, it’s hard to give you “the right” answer. And I would hazard