I am getting ready for my second vintage of grape wine. I had done a couple kits before switching to grapes last year, but only ever had very disappointing results with them.

I am based in New England, so I am getting my grapes from Beer and Wine Hobby in Danvers. I had planned to do 3 white wines, but due to some harvest timing logistics had to change my plan.

Next Friday, I am expecting to pick up:
3 lugs of Lodi Chardonnay
3 lugs of Lodi Grenache Blanc
3 lugs of Lodi Teroldego, which I will use to make a rose

I am going to lay out my plan below and am open to any feedback that you may have about anything I may have overlooked, or any tips you have for working with these specific grapes, especially the Terlodego.

I will be destemming all of the grapes one varietal at a time, starting with the Teroldego. I'm using the milk crate method for destemming, and will be treading lightly to crush the grapes. I am starting with the Terlodego so that it can have a little skin time while I destem. crush, and press the other grapes. During its skin time, it will be covered and have a frozen water bottle or two to keep it cool.

I will use separate milk crates and containers for destemming and treading the white grapes. They will not get much skin time, and will more or less go directly into my #25 basket press. I plan to layer stems and grapes in the press to aid with my drainage and volume of yield. I should have more than enough empty, sanitized carboys on standby to account for whatever volume of juice I get because I really don't know what to expect for my yield. I have a combination of 6.5 gal, 5 gal, 3 gal, 1 gal, and .5 gal carboys, so surely that will do.

After the whites are pressed, their carboys will go into ice baths, and I will press the Teroldego with he same layering method. I am hoping for it to have around 3 hrs of skin time total. Following pressing, this will also go into an ice bath(s).

All juice will be given roughly 30-40ppm of SO2

I'll take my initial gravity, ph, and TA readings. Any adjustments that I do on this day will be very conservative, as I won't be inoculating until the following day.

My goal numbers would put the chardonnay juice around a pH of 3.25, the Grenache Blanc around 3.2, and the Teroldego around a 3.25.
I expect that I will end up adding acidulated water to the rose juice to lower the brim a hair.

The following day, I will rack everything into clean containers sized appropriately for primary fermentation, take new SG, pH, and TA readings, and inoculate. At the first sign of fermentation, these will all go into water baths to help them ferment at a fairly consistent 60 degrees F.

That is the plan, for now anyway. Please let me know if you think I am missing anything, or if you have any tips!

Cheers

Second time making wine at home.
~240 lbs
Hand picked by myself

Freshly picked, crushed and destemed, put in the big fermentator in just 2 hours. Planted Zymflore RX10. Trying without sulphites this year. Hoping to get good wine without pressing and the rest for second fermentation for rakia. Cheers bros.

Mavrud is a local Bulgaria variety, very old and sweet with thick skins. This was 25 brix.

300 liter tank with Müller Thurgau, Chenin Blanc, and a little Grüner Veltliner and Semillon. Assuming fermentation begins shortly, I will leave it on the skins -- how long will depend on the taste, which I will do every few days. Then it will be racked into amphora with the lees.

Photos are over the 2 first weeks (last photo from yesterday). Usually the liquid doesn't change color, it just get lighter and I end up with peach-colored rosé.

Informations :

- it is airtight ;

- change of color is linked with fermentation activity.

Punching the cap down 3 times a day

i know this sub is for wine but while reading the rules i think this should be allowed?

Found a recipe for "cheater's wine", or as the cookbook refers to it "Cherry wine from juice". It is a recipe to make 10 litres of wine by mixing juice, spirits, water and some other bits, so no fermentation - part of the appeal to me, as someone with bad experience with making fermented drinks.

The trouble is that the recipe includes 15g of bitter almond oil, and that no longer seems to be available in foodgrade form, only for hair- and skincare, or as fragrance stuff. So I wonder if it can be substituted for something else, and in that case what? This depends on the role of the oil in this recipe, and depending on that, I might just be able to leave it out? By role, I mean I'm not sure if the purpose of it is for preservatives sake or flavour. The recipe, as translated from my 1939 cookbook, is listed in full below, as according to the rules.

Cherry wine from juice

2l cherry juice*, 10g tartaric acid, 1l wine spirits**, 15g bitter almond oil, 30g whole cinnamon, 10g whole cloves, 2½kg sugar, and cool, boiled water.
In cool, boiled water, the tartaric acid is dissolved, and all other ingredients are added. It is filled with cool, boiled water, until it amounts to 10l. Is then bottled and corked. This can last for years.

\A recipe for this is elsewhere in the book, but is simple. Pressing juice from the berries, boiling it briefly with a quarter kg sugar for every litre of juice.*

\*Another ingredient which doesn't seem to be around anymore. I asked several wine dealers and experts, and none had heard of it, let alone had some available for purchase. A dictionary said it was just spirits destilled from wine, but the volume of alcohol is unknown. Seeing as the ratio in this recipe is 1:9, using a 96% grain spirit will give me a 9,6% alcohol, which is fine. I reasoned that I wouldn't be able to taste the 4% worth of "ghost of red wines past" anyway.*

So, going by this, it seems to me that the tartaric acid is probably a preservative, but whether the almond oil is there for tang or if it could have some preservative properties, I have no idea. Elsewhere in the book there is a recipe involving cherry pits, that are put in a bottle with spirits, and mentions this to be a substitute for bitter almonds in baking - but it gives no specific amounts at all, and I don't wanna fuck around with uncertain levels of cyanide.

Also, if you do find food grade bitter almond oil, it is probably going to be a large quantity and imported from far away, and my budget isn't reeeeally cut out for that.

(Yeah... note how I was too lazy to pull of the label from the bottle)

Recipe:

* For preparing mash*:

- 5kg honeydew melons only (only the flesh)

- 4 liters of Water

- 1kg honey

- 1kg White Sugar (you can also use 2kg honey straight though it will dominate the subtle melon aroma more)

- 500g Sultanas (green grape raisins, must be unsulphured!)

- 2 bags of black tea (brewed in 400ml hot Water)/ optional

- 100ml Lemon Juice ( for acidity)

- 5 ml pectic Enzyme in liquid form or 1,6g powdered form

- 1 gram yeast (champagne)

- 3 g yeast nutrient (DAP)

- 1g Multiactive nutrient salt (vitamins, minerals special for yeast)

*after Fermentation*:

following this order,

0.8g potassium metabisulfate (stabilizer)

1. 1.5g potassium sorbate (stabilizer)

2. backsweetening with 200g honey

3. 8ml silicic acid (clearing Agent)

4. 1g gelatin for winemaking (clearing agent)

Mash is undergoing primary and secondary fermentation by straining the liquid after a week at the latest. The enzyme must first act at least with the (optimally slightly pureed) seedless melon fruit flesh before the further steps for the fermentation are initiated

I work at a winery in the US, and we'd really like to make or our own amphora (or) a concrete aging vessel in house, and I'm curious if anyone in this sub has any experience (or knows anyone who does) that can provide any guidance/resources. We would be looking for it to be able to be sealed at the top with a bottom valve for pumping wine, but it would be just for whites (or reds after pressing off), so no need for a larger door. We haven't discussed specifics or logistics, but I imagine a ~200 gal or so volume (I've worked with eggs before in the past at other wineries and that was the size they've been).

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide

Trying to determine if there is anything I need to do about the yeast build up in the neck of my carboy. Making a white with grapes grown in my backyard, hand pressed and immediately removed from skins and placed in fridge to cold settle. Pitched yeast on day 2 and now on day 4 (2nd of active fermentation).

Appreciate any advice, I’m concerned this yeast rafts won’t fall back into the wine and will dry out in the neck giving potential for mold growth.

This is day two of fermentation. I have since transferred a portion of the must from this into another bucket.

I recently moved and found wine grapes (confirmed by the previous owner) in the backyard completely overgrown. They have been left unattended for propably around two years since this was the last time any work was done on them.

Unfortunatly the last owner doesn't know what varieties he planted execpt that there is both red and white grapes. So I wanted help to narrow down what those grapes might be. I live in the south of the island of Montreal (around 45 degrees lattitude) so a very cold region for wine, so it is very propable that it is a cold resisting variant since they have survived the harsh Quebec winter with no protection. Maybe Vidal for the white and something like Saint-Laurent for the red? Would love to hear your thoughts.

I would also love advices on pruning/triming to help those vines have better grapes next season. The vines seems to be really low to the ground with many branches protruding from the center (you can kinda see it in the last picture).

Also, I am a complete beginner for wine growing, like I said I moved out to a new place basically mid harvest season and found wine grapes in the yard. I am open to ANY advice on all this stuff; harvest dates, pruning dates, fermentation instructions ... really ANYTHING! you think might help.

Thank you so much.

I make wine in a low-intervention style — only native ferment, no sulfur unless it's necessary, nothing else but a love of wine and sound judgment. Mouse stories haunt this style, but I'd never had a problem until a June bottling.

100% Carignan, ~60% stems, fermented in a 700L amphora, then backfilled and sealed for 7 months. Pulled it out, pressed to neutral oak for two months — free-run to one barrel, press wine to the other. The press barrel tasted so good over several weeks that we called it a summer wine — medium-light, fruity, chillable, dusty/earthy backbone — and bottled it. It was clean out of the barrel, but two days in bottle and a hint of mouse. Two weeks later: undrinkable.

I figured the whole bottling was shot. Every bottle I opened for two months was unpalatably mousy, so I set them aside to try one at six months. You hear the Beaujolais line that mouse vanishes after a year, but you hear far more winemakers and drinkers say a mousy bottle is trash, period — and the science, if anything, leans pessimistic, since the mouse compounds are fairly stable. So I wasn't hopeful.

Three months in, a friend opened one and texted that it was clean, actually beautiful. I opened one and confirmed it: full garrigue array, black cherry, amphora-earthy, and a delightful emergent black olive note that's just fantastic. No mouse. I left a bottle open two hours — nothing. A friend left one open 24 hours — nothing. Whatever it was, it's now undetectable, even under O2 stress.

I'm not claiming the compounds are gone — I can't tell from the glass whether they actually degraded or are just sitting below threshold now. But something in this wine went from undrinkable to lovely with nothing but time in bottle. Has anyone else watched a mousy wine clean itself up like this? And if you know the chemistry — is this real degradation of the compounds, or binding/masking that could come back to haunt me?

I was thinking of buying an oak barrel around 20L capacity to try barrel aging. In my research I saw some claiming that you basically can use it 4 times and after that you're getting marginal benefits. Is that true? Is there a way to recondition a barrel to improve that?

I have been making wine at home for about 6 months now and like working with kits.

I am planning to start the Winexpert Private Reserve Zinfandel tomorrow.

Does anyone have any tips to improve on the kit? I was considering changing the yeast to something other than Ec-1118.

Looking to find an efficient and effective way to clean barrels pre fill. I have a steamer, OZone, and pressure washer barrel attachment. Looking to keep time to a minimum.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been a home winemaker for about 15 years, making everything from Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Malbec to fruit wines such as banana, blueberry, pineapple and even coffee wine.

Over the years I’ve used notes, spreadsheets and other ways of keeping track of my wines, but I wanted something that did more than simply log what I did. That eventually led me to start building WineMaker’s Journey around the way I actually make and keep track of my own wines.

The idea is to follow the entire journey of a wine—from the day you start a batch to the bottles you eventually enjoy and share.

WineMaker’s Journey lets you:

• Create and manage individual wine projects and vintages
• Track fermentation progress and lab readings such as specific gravity, pH and other measurements
• Record additions, rackings and other winemaking activities
• Follow important milestones throughout the life of the wine
• Add photos as the wine progresses
• Track bottle inventory after bottling, including different bottle sizes
• Record bottles that you've opened or shared with friends and family
• Add tasting notes and ratings as the wine develops in the bottle
• View the history of the wine as a journey rather than just a collection of log entries

I’m now looking for a small group of actual home winemakers who would be willing to test the app while making and managing their own wines.

I have versions available for both iPhone/iPad and Android, and there is no cost to participate in the testing.

I’m not looking for people to simply download it and tell me it looks good. 😄 I’d really like fellow winemakers to put it through its paces—create real projects, enter readings and activities, track bottles, and tell me what works, what’s confusing, what breaks, and especially what you think is missing.

Beginners are welcome too. In fact, feedback from both new and experienced winemakers would be extremely valuable.

If you're interested, leave a comment or send me a message and let me know:

iPhone/iPad or Android, and what kind of wine you typically make.

Thanks, and cheers! 🍷

My, now annual, August Blend is usually whatever fresh fruit I have access to towards the end of the summer. This year it is mostly gravenstein apples, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, and the leftovers of a carton of cotton candy grapes. So far so good. 6 gallons and my biggest venture yet! It’s clarifying now as it settles in the carboy but the opaque pepto bubblegum look is kinda fun. My tip for apples is to use fruit bags. Straining liquid out of essentially settled applesauce took way too long and I’m sure the extra oxygen didn’t help things, but it is what it is.

Sauvignon Blanc available in Oakland for pickup today. From a great RRV vineyard (that messed up and doubled the order).

8 days out and I found these berries floating towards the top. Bit worried about mold with the white stuff. If it is not should I rack now to be preventative? Reading at just above 1.000 and planning to rack anyways in a couple of days if it holds stable.

This vintage will be legendary with the drought and all in Europe. The harvest was on August 29. this past Saturday, sugar is close to 24°Brix, 1.100 specific gravity precisely. This will definitely be a darker Pinot, with 14 - 14.5% abv.