Wine Wizard
Questionable ‘Premium’ Grapes
MEMBERS ONLYThat’s an interesting data set you present there. What I’m about to tell you, please take with many grains of salt because I am not privy to the growing locations of your California Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes and, for instance, would expect very different quality numbers from a Zinfandel grown in Dry Creek
Ripper Test On Red Wine
MEMBERS ONLYThe short answer to your question: yes, if you dilute your wine sample before running a Ripper analysis for SO2, you then need to multiply your result by the dilution factor you used in order to get a correct result for the true batch of wine. It’s indeed common for winemakers to dilute red wine
Wine Pump Options
FREEWow, can I fly to the Philippines for a little research and equipment-scouting trip? We can sample some of your wine, do a little research into tropical fruit winemaking, go see what
How To Date A Country Wine
MEMBERS ONLYWell well, what do you know? That’s a question I’ve never been asked before in all my years of writing this column! The spirit of the vintage laws for commercial wine is that the year on the label, if one is listed, reflect the year that the fresh fruit was grown. This is so consumers
Over-yeasting?
MEMBERS ONLYThere are a few effects on a wine if you add more yeast. Number one, the fermentation might start a little faster and go to completion faster because there are simply more cells to eat the sugar, and each can only eat a certain amount of sugar at a time. This will, in turn, increase
Bottle Selection For Sparkling Wine
FREEAh, the Wiz has visions of broken bottles in your future and it’s a prognostication I wouldn’t like to see become reality. Let’s just say my Fermentation Magic 8 Ball says, “See
Vinifera in Florida?
MEMBERS ONLYI would be very cautious (or at least very realistic) about buying Vitis vinifera vines for your Florida vineyard. Most states in the country have their own burgeoning vineyard and winery region but there is a reason America’s “wine country” flourishes in places like Napa, California, and not Naples, Florida. It can be summed up
Post-Fermentation Acid Adjustments
FREEI would only adjust with tartaric acid, and not an “acid blend” that contains either malic or citric acids. Both of the latter can be fermented by organisms in the bottle. On
Finding Ideal SO2 Levels
MEMBERS ONLYYou do an excellent job of outlining one of the major conundrums we all experience in the winemaking world. How much SO2 do we need to add to our wines to keep them safe? How much is too much? To be very honest, it’s something even commercial winemakers do “by feel.” While I wish we
What Kind Of Water To Use In My Wine Kit
FREETo address your first question: A chemistry teacher in high school once mentioned that since distilled water was free of minerals and many dissolved gasses, it behaved differently in osmotic equilibrium situations
Color Problems In My Pinot Noir
MEMBERS ONLYI had this exact problem happen to me this year with one of my lots of Russian River Pinot. Thankfully, the original brick-red color disappeared and was replaced by bright red once the fermentation got going and the wine got back into a reductive carbon dioxide-rich environment and after a few day’s skin exposure. On
Transporting Wine
FREEWhen moving wine, the main thing to be concerned about is temperature change and since you’ve got carboys, spillage! For the first factor, any kind of moving truck where the back payload
Harvesting Decision Making
MEMBERS ONLYThat is indeed a situation I face every year and is part of the delicate dance of being a winemaker. As many of my readers know, I believe that picking is the single most important decision you will ever make in a wine’s life. Once you do that, the road to what that wine can
Growing Grapes In Albuquerque
MEMBERS ONLYI’m thrilled for your new move because Albuquerque is just about as far north in New Mexico as you want to be planting traditional wine grapes of Vitis vinifera. Many grape types thrive in this drier, sunnier and often higher-altitude state, and some fabulous wines (Gruet’s amazing sparkling wines are some of the best-known) are
Sluggish Fermentation Woes
MEMBERS ONLYHmmm, it sounds like you’ve got a little bit of sugar left there. I would start, however, with a quick check of your numbers to be sure. A °Brix of -1.0 (0.995 specific gravity) is where “dryness” starts when measuring with a hydrometer. Please make sure you are temperature-correcting your hydrometer reading. If your juice/wine
Hangover Myths Revealed
FREEI just read the article you refer to, which seems to claim that “natural wine” (an ill-defined term, which in the article seems to mean “minimal sulfites added except at bottling” or
Cooking With Wine
MEMBERS ONLYMaking a red wine reduction is a great way to create a concentrated, flavorful sauce! I do it frequently myself when I’m cooking and it works great with red, white or sweet wines. Just be aware that when you have a cup or so of wine simmering away on the stove, what is simmering off
Using Tartaric Acid
FREEI absolutely recommend that you bring your TA up and your pH down after MLF is complete. This is best accomplished by tartaric acid, because wine bacteria will not consume tartaric acid;
Hybrid Grapes Winemaking
MEMBERS ONLYGood for you for planting a nice selection of grapes! You’re absolutely right, that with Utah’s higher latitude, often-high altitude, and warmer summers, you get a bit more extreme growing season than many of us in the rest of the country. For you, winterkill is a real issue, so frost and cold hardiness is essential.
Over-Sulfited Wine
FREEOh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Sounds like you have a lot of sulfur dioxide in that wine! Assuming standard FSO2 for bottled wine being around 25 ppm, am I correct in
Free SO2 Levels
MEMBERS ONLYIt seems that you and Craig are going through many of the same issues (see this question and answer). Like I mentioned to Craig, it’s really impossible to add enough sulfur dioxide to retard a yeast fermentation because, contrary to popular belief, yeast just aren’t that sensitive to SO2. Unlike bacteria, yeast can still have
Stuck Fermentations
MEMBERS ONLYBefore you start going crazy with a fermentation restart protocol, are you sure that it is really stuck? The first thing that I would advise you to do is to taste and compare your wine with your stepdad’s. At 9%, and compared to 15%, you should notice sweetness on the palate. If your wine tastes
Pomace Compost
FREEPomace, which is the skins, seeds and stems leftover from wine processing and pressing, can indeed be returned to the field as a soil amendment. You deposit it in a thin layer
Ring Around The Carboy
MEMBERS ONLYThe short story — and the good news — is that no one will get sick from this batch because no human pathogen can survive in wine. Alcohol and acidity will kill off any bacteria or yeast that could survive in the human ecosystem and make you or your friends and family sick. For example,
Transplanting Vines
MEMBERS ONLYDepending on the age of the grapevine, and it sounds like it could still be young since you say it’s “small,” it is indeed possible to transplant grapevines. It takes a lot of care and often takes a lot of time and elbow grease, however. Grapevines quickly establish very deep, wide-reaching root systems and the