Wine Wizard

Ask almost any commercial winemaker and they will say that pH is one of the most important – if not the most important – winemaking parameter. Even though TA is important for

 Home winemakers use bananas, both dried and fresh, as a source of perceptible sweetness and body. Both effects are derived from the complex polysaccharides (that’s a fancy name for big, long-chain sugars)

Dear Wine Wizard, Our Zinfandel wine is now in secondary fermenters, with free-run wine separate from the pressed. Do you have advice on allowing the free and pressed wines to go their

Seems like an attack of your friend and mine, the acetic acid bacteria. These bacteria live in wineries, on winery equipment and in the air. In fact, you’re probably breathing some in

Dear Wine Wizard, I did not rehydrate my yeast before I pitched it. How do I do this and what happens if I don’t? John Eastwood Cleveland Wine Wizard replies: Rehydrating yeast

Dear Wine Wizard, I make wine in five-gallon batches from juice that I buy in Canada. I also buy skins, stems, and small bags of toasted oak chips, then let it all

You’ll need about 85 to 90 pounds (39 to 41 kg) of fresh grapes (still on their stems) to make five gallons of wine. It will start off at about 2.5 lug

As Miss Manners would say, “Do not despair, gentle reader.” It is absolutely a falsehood that homemade wine “goes bad” after two years. It has just as much potential for staying power

Dear Wine Wizard, My partners and I, for the first time, bought Merlot grapes last year. We followed our normal procedure, which we have been using for the past five years for

Stop right there! Don’t pour your wine down the drain. Your problem is both curable, and most important for future batches, preventable. It seems you’ve got an overload of tannins in your

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

Your yeast packet is almost guaranteed to be past its prime. Yeast cells, even those that have been freeze-dried, certainly do have an expiration date. Using yeast that is more than six

Wine Wizard replies: To sulfite or not to sulfite: That is the question. It’s one that fires hot debates in the cellars of wineries worldwide. Sometimes seen as a personal choice, the

Wine Wizard replies: Even though I’d have to see the recipe and an outline of what you do every step of the way to truly diagnose the cause, I can, however, tell

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