Writer: Tim Patterson
Barbera
MEMBERS ONLYBarbera frequently comes in with high acidity but, with the right winemaking approach, it makes a food-friendly red for people who drink wine every day.
Big Reds: How To Make A Blockbuster Wine
MEMBERS ONLY. . .lurking inside the heads of many home winemakers is the urge to make an absolute blockbuster, a jaw-dropping, mind-bending, 800-pound gorilla of a wine.
Making Wines with Finesse
MEMBERS ONLYThe mantra for the quest for making a big blockbuster type of wine is “more is better” — more sugar in the grapes, more alcohol in the wine, more extraction, more color and more wood. (And in the commercial marketplace, usually more bucks per bottle.) So if that’s not your style, what’s the alternative? No,
15 Wine Styles You Need to Make
MEMBERS ONLYOne of the things that makes wine irresistible is the endless variety: every grape, every region, every vintage, every bottle tastes a little different from the last. And so while there is no crime in getting better and better at making one wine or one style, there is much to be learned — and much
White Wine Skin Contact
FREEToday’s proposed violation takes on one of the dominant conventions of modern white winemaking: no skin contact.
Malolactic Fermentation Timing
MEMBERS ONLYHome Winemakers, Let’s Take a Vote: Those of you who put your wines through malolactic fermentation only after the alcoholic fermentation is complete, raise your hands. Now those of you who do both at the same time, in order to get it all over with, raise your hands. Congratulations: Both teams are right — depending.
Perfecting Pinot Grigio
MEMBERS ONLYPinot Grigio is everywhere, flooding every supermarket wine aisle and all over the wine lists at restaurants that don’t give much thought to their wine lists. It’s the single biggest (by volume) import category into the US. The annual crop in California has increased by 1000 percent in the last decade, positioning it second only
Maximize Wine Aromatics
MEMBERS ONLYGetting and keeping attractive aromatics is a major goal of winemaking, home or commercial, and it isn’t easy. It is a goal and a concern at every step along the way, from harvest to bottle aging; it’s not something you do all at once, like tannin extraction during fermentation. The aromatic calculus for whites differs
Viognier
FREEIn the 1960s, Viognier seemed to be an endangered grape, planted only in dwindling numbers in a pair of obscure redoubts in France, the shrinking Condrieu region and the one-winery Château-Grillet AOC.
Tannin Myths and Methods
MEMBERS ONLYFrom modern wine chemistry labs to your home winery — what is known about tannins and how can winemakers control their impact on their wine? Research is debunking many widely-held beliefs about tannins, but there are still proven ways to get the structure you desire without excessive bitterness or astringency. Here’s a quick summary of
Cabernet Sauvignon – Syrah Wine Blends
MEMBERS ONLYHome winemakers often resort to a little blending to improve their wines — to add a little more body, tweak the acid balance or deepen the color, or just because it takes one more gallon of something to fill that barrel. But many of the world’s great wines, and maybe even a higher percentage
Cab-Syrah
FREEHome winemakers often resort to a little blending to improve their wines — to add a little more body, tweak the acid balance or deepen the color, or just because it takes
Aim for Age
FREEWhat makes a wine age-worthy, and what can you do to create a wine worth cellaring.
How to Make 10 Classic Wines
MEMBERS ONLYMost books about home winemaking feature sections on “Making Red Wine” and “Making White Wine.” But when real, live vintners, amateur or professional, clean out their fermenters and get down to business, they’re not making red or white — they’re making Zinfandel or Riesling, or aiming to put together a Bordeaux-style blend. Maybe you’ll be
Riesling Lessons of the Mosel Masters
MEMBERS ONLYGerman wines, particularly great German Rieslings, are unlike any other wines in the world, with unmatched fruit intensity, striking minerality and remarkable aging potential. Once you’re hooked, you’re hooked, and soon the urge to make your own becomes a fixation. Here are some simple steps to get you there: Find a 500-year old cellar, preferably
Cool Refreshing Riesling
FREEIn her exhaustive survey of grapes and grapegrowing, Vines, Grapes and Wines, Jancis Robinson ends the chapter on Riesling with a summary that’s all-too-true: “Unbeatable quality; indisputably aristocratic. Ludicrously unfashionable.” Recognized by
Super Syrah!
FREESyrah can do well in a wide variety of climates and produces wine in a number of styles, from drink-it-today fruity to structured and age-worthy. Syrah also blends well with Rhône varieties,
It’s Lysozyme Time
FREEHome winemakers have an important new resource in the ongoing battle against spoilage organisms — it’s called lysozyme. Discovered in the 1920s and used for decades in the pharmaceutical, dairy and cheese
The Joys of Blending
FREEBlending different grape varieties to make a better finished wine is a bedrock practice in the commercial wine world — and one often overlooked by home winemakers. If they do it in
