It’s the first of the year and for the past several years I’ve made some winemaking resolutions. Last year I was three for four only failing on the resolution to harvest grapes grown at my house. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong including birds and rain prior to, during and after harvest [...]
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At the urging of another wine writer, I decided to once again give a kit wine a try. My first kit wine attempt was a Cabernet Sauvignon. Since then I’ve come to discover, that for me a red wine needs to be made with grapes and kit red wines or juice don’t measure up [...] Kathy’s peach wine has been sitting quietly clearing nicely. We decided to rack it off the lees today. The aroma prior to racking reminded me of aromas in the kitchen when Kathy bakes bread. There was an yeasty aroma from the wine. Later we place a small amount in a wine glass. At first [...] Since we are going to travel for a few weeks we decided to rack the peach wine. The wine was in a 3-gallon carboy, a half-gallon carboy and a 750 ml decanter. Both the decanter and the half gallon carboy had about an inch of sediment and dead yeast cells at the bottom. The [...] Since the bubbling in the airlock was significantly slower than a couple days ago, we decided to rack the peach wine into a carboy. First Kathy gathered the floating peaches and put them in a cheesecloth. I’ll get back to this later. Then we measured the specific gravity of the wine at 1.010. It [...] Both the peach wine and Sauvignon Blanc are in primary fermenters with an airlock. It’s interesting to note that I’m drawn to observe the bubbling in the airlock. One might think that is a boring activity, however, I find it fascinating to stare at bubbles being released. The Sauvignon Blanc was the first to [...] After making wine from juice and grapes both at home and at wineries, making another wine from a kit seems like a step backward. On the negative side, I don’t like the “kit wine taste” that I often pick up. So I decided to only look at higher quality kits. Since I only want [...] Ever since we started making wine in 2007, Kathy has wanted to make peach wine. Finally we decided to just do it. Our first decision was how much to make. Since we have two empty 3 gallon carboys we decided on three gallons. Next we needed to find a recipe or two to follow. [...] After bottling our 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon earlier this month, my youngest son Kevin, asked what other wines did we have in the making. When I told him none he was reflective and said that this was the first time since 2008 that we didn’t have something aging. Well, we couldn’t let that last for [...] |
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How Do You Know if Your Wine Is Good?
We have been opening some of the bottles that we bottled in August after spending 20 months in French oak. How do we know if the wine is good? Taste is obvious, but are there other external factors that may indicate that you have a winner or plonk?
I took several cases to my [...]