2021 WM DECEMBER-JANUARY 2022

WINE DIY: MAKING VINEGAR, APERITIFS & MORE

26

TURNING KITS TO GOLD

Wine kits come with all of the necessary ingredients to make a great tasting batch of wine. So how come all of these wines don’t come out tasting the same? The short answer is that the creativity often associated with fresh grape winemakers must also be applied to kit winemaking, and then solid technique and practices are key. We asked four highly decorated kit winemakers to share their best advice in this kit winemaking roundtable.

by Dave Green

30 TOP 100 WINE KITS OF 2021

There were 499 kit wines judged in the 2021 WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition. Many of these kit wines received medals and top honors. Here are the 100 wine kits that performed best.

34 PRESERVED IN AMBER

Orange wines, created by fermenting white grapes on the skins, are likely as old as winemaking itself. However, these complex and age-worthy wines are becoming more popular thanks to a renaissance led by winemakers along the border of Italy and Slovenia. Adapt their techniques to your own winemaking.

by Phil Plummer

40 DRAWING INSPIRATION FROM VALPOLICELLA

Wineries can, and often do, create four distinct wines from a single vineyard in the Italian Valpolicella region. Amarone is the most famous, requiring the grapes to partially dry prior to pressing, but all four unique wines highlight techniques that the home winemaker can learn from.

by Gian Pietro Carrozza

departments

8 MAIL

A reader recommends a linear flow regulator for the purpose of blanketing bulk-aging wine with inert gas to protect against oxygen. Plus, a first-time entrant into the WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition shares his appreciation for the judging notes (and medal) he received.

10 CELLAR DWELLERS

During harvest we asked our social media followers to post pictures of their 2021 grapes. With dozens of gorgeous images to choose from, we share a select few of our favorites. Also, learn about the methods for crafting a sparkling wine of your own as well as the latest news and new products on the market.

14 WINE WIZARD

It’s hard to get universal ripening of your grapes in a small vineyard with lots of variability. The Wizard provides some pointers as well as clues to determining grape ripeness when the refractometer is left home. Plus, the threat of contamination from “killer” yeast.

18 VARIETAL FOCUS

As with many Old World grapes that are grown widely, Blaufränkisch goes by many names. And thanks to its versatility in the winery and cool-climate tolerance, its popularity is surging. Learn more about this mysterious grape.

46 TECHNIQUES

There is so much more you can do with wine than simply drinking it. Bob Peak walks readers through several side projects winemakers can perform starting with their homemade wines to create other items of interest.

49 ADVANCED WINEMAKING

Using all your senses when tasting wine is always encouraged by wine evaluation experts, but make sure that you are taking in the whole experience and not simply breaking it down and compartmentalizing the elements.

56 DRY FINISH

One reader who is also a medical doctor discusses the potential health benefits of wine tasters who swish and spit their wines. It may be one of the healthiest things you can do . . . but that doesn’t mean he abides by the spitting aspect.

Made in Germany

As a family business in its fourth generation, Speidel operates resource-saving production in Ofterdingen, Swabia, on more than 30,000 m². Rational production in connection with committed employees has always been part of the company philosophy.

www.speidel-stainless-steel-tanks.com

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Chik Brenneman, Alison Crowe

Dominick Profaci, Wes Hagen

Bob Peak, Phil Plummer, Alex Russan, Jeff Shoemaker

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Jim Woodward, Chris Champine

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Charles A. Parker, Les Jörgensen

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Ed Kraus

EC Kraus

Maureen Macdonald Hawk Ridge Winery

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I started taking wine classes in college because they sounded like a fun diversion from the heavier topics I was actually there to study. I quickly fell in love with wine and decided I needed to try my hand at making it, turning my campus apartment into a clandestine home winery. After landing a part-time job at a local winery, I realized that winemaking was exactly the type of career I was hoping to find and decided to pursue it full-force — it’s probably the best decision I’ve ever made.

Sometime around 1991 I helped my grandmother move.

In her fridge she had a 375-mL bottle of Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon from 1974. I don’t know how long it had been there but it must have been several years. She saw my interest in the bottle and gave it to me. At that point I had enjoyed a bit of wine but was still very new to it. That one bottle changed my life. 1974 was an amazing vintage, and the wine was simply sublime. I had never tasted anything like it and it started me on a quest to understand how something so simple as grape juice could convey such a transcendental experience. I have been obsessed ever since and I’m still trying to capture that magic in a bottle.

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Make Your Kit Wine Shine

Today’s top kits produce balanced wines with good character and varietal identity. Still, many home winemakers wonder if they can improve their kits right at the carboy. Along with good practices, there are a few pitfalls you will need to avoid. https://winemakermag.com/ technique/459-make-your-kit-wineshine

MEMBERS ONLY

Dessert Wines

Perfect for after-dinner treats, dessert wines are some of the most complex wines in the world. Get tips for making your own icewine, Sherry-style, and Portstyle wines at home. https://winemaker mag.com/article/dessert-wines

Amarone-Style Wine Kits

All contents of WineMaker are Copyright © 2021 by Battenkill Communications, unless otherwise noted. WineMaker is a registered trademark owned by Battenkill Communications, a Vermont corporation. Unsolicited manuscripts will not be returned, and no responsibility can be assumed for such material. All “Letters to the Editor” should be sent to the editor at the Vermont office address. All rights in letters sent to WineMaker will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes and subject to WineMaker’s unrestricted right to edit. Although all reasonable attempts are made to ensure accuracy, the publisher does not assume any liability for errors or omissions anywhere in the publication. All rights reserved. Reproduction in part or in whole without written permission is strictly prohibited. Printed in the United States of America. Volume 24, Number 6: December 2021-January 2022.

Most wine drinkers who have been exposed to Amarone probably consider it to be another one of Italy’s signature wine styles, but one that is a challenge to make at home. Learn to tame this style using wine kits instead. https:// winemakermag.com/technique/716amarone-wine-kits

MEMBERS ONLY

How Kit Manufacturers Choose Yeast

While alcoholic fermentation is the most important aspect of winemaking, yeast does more than just bubble out happy-juice. It also produces compounds that influence flavor, aroma, body, structure, and the finish of wine. https://winemakermag.com/ article/367-how-kit-manufacturerschoose-yeast

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* For full access to members’ only content and hundreds of pages of winemaking articles, techniques and troubleshooting, sign up for a 14-day free trial membership at winemakermag.com

What inspired you to start making wine?

WINEMAKING TIPS FROM DOWN UNDER

THANK YOU FOR THE HARD WORK

I just received this year’s WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition judging notes, along with a medal and prize certificate for one of my six entries this year.

The only reason I entered at all was to get the notes of non-partial, non-biased wine tasters that knew what they were tasting for. My hope was to get notes — no matter how bad they thought my wines were — that would help me become a better winemaker. I was sure they would find my wines horrible . . . but I am glad for the feedback they gave, the professionalism they showed, and the useful information they offered. To receive any honor from the competition and the judges made me elated, to say the least. I am truly humbled and appreciative.

This note is to pass on a very heartfelt THANK YOU! to you and your team for setting up such an awesome and open event. To all of your staff for the hard work that no doubt goes into setting up and organizing a large-scale event like this.

A special thanks goes to Events Manager Jannell Kristiansen who held my hand with just getting the entries shipped across the border to this competition. Please pass on my gratitude to all of the judges, and make a point of letting them know how important their notes are as suggestions and critical feedback in making us all better winemakers; I am sure most of the competitors feel the same as I. I am looking forward to next year with even better results.

Mark Cerson • Mount Forest, Ontario

Thank you for the kind words, Mark. Your intention of entering to receive the judging notes is common among entrants newer to the winemaking hobby as this feedback often proves invaluable in putting words and solutions to issues that winemakers suspect are there but can’t place a finger on. And congratulations on the medal — hopefully there will be many more in years to come as you keep learning from each year’s entries. On that note, we’d be remiss not to remind everybody that the entry deadline for the 2022 competition is March 22. It’s time to start getting your entries ready!

BLANKETING WITH INERT GAS

First off, I love the magazine. I’ve been subscribing for a couple of years and always learn something from each issue, or remind myself of something that wasn’t exactly front and center in my head. In

Phil Plummer has been a student of wine since 2004 when he began his formal education in the subject at Rochester Institute of Technology. For the past 11 years, Phil has worked for the Martin Family Wineries (Montezuma, Idol Ridge, and Fossenvue) in New York’s Finger Lakes Region, serving as Head Winemaker since 2013. In his time as Head Winemaker, he has developed a diverse portfolio of unique wines made from grapes, fruit, and honey. Phil’s passion for wine and winemaking is boundless, as evidenced by his constant experimentation with new techniques, materials, and mindsets.

Starting on page 34, Phil shares the borrowed techniques of red winemakers to create orange wines from white grapes aged on the skins.

Gian Pietro Carrozza is a wine writer and high school teacher of agricultural chemistry in the hills around Lucca (Tuscany), in a DOC (denomination of origin) wine zone, called “Colline Lucchesi” (Lucca’s hills), boasting a centuries-long tradition of winemaking. He holds a degree in agricultural sciences from Pise University. He has authored two books — Il Vino Al Naturale (in Italian) and Italian Terroir and Winemaking (in English). He has also authored numerous papers on winemaking. As a teacher, he has been making red and white wine with his students (age 14–19) for more than thirty years, annually making about 185 gallons (700 L) of red wine and about 130 gallons (500 L) of white wine. Students grow the grapes in a vineyard of about 1.5 acres that include international and local varieties.

For his latest article on page 40 he travels north to the Valpolicella region of Italy to explore the techniques to make Amarone and other unique wine styles.

Alex Russan is the Owner and Winemaker of Metrick wines, working with grapes from around California that he feels are particularly suited to their site and to produce elegant wines. Fascinated by uncommon grapes, unheard of regions, and diverse winemaking techniques, he also scours and consults for Spanish wine import company ¿Por Que No? Selections. A former member of the Cellarmasters of Los Angeles Home Winemaking Club, Russan made his first vintages dragging hundreds of pounds of grapes up a flight of stairs, destined to be made into wine in his apartment closet. He has written WineMaker’s “Advanced Winemaking” column since 2018, although he will be passing the torch in 2022 as he pursues graduate school.

In his final “Advanced Winemaking” column starting on page 49, Alex explains why it requires more than just taste to truly taste your wine. Thank you, Alex, for sharing your winemaking knowledge with WineMaker readers for the past four years and best of luck in graduate school!

Alison Crowe’s answer to a question in the June-July 2021 “Wine Wizard” column, she recommended using a pressure regulator on a compressed gas tank when using inert gas for blanketing against oxygen. She also made the point to not just blast the inert gas into the container but to flow it in gently. Having used both, I’d recommend instead a linear flow regulator (pictured to the right). One really doesn’t want the gas coming out at anything but the lowest pressure so that it comes out gently, as Alison described. I’ve always found trying to get 1 psi or less out of a pressure regulator pretty hard to achieve, at least with the type of a single-stage regulator. A linear flow regulator is easy to dial from zero on up. In fact, I’ve calculated that for my fermenters, if I flow 5 L/minute for a count of 1-2-3 I’ll get about 1⁄8-inch of gas on the must. That’s not super accurate of course but it’s a far better estimate than guessing how long to flow gas with a pressure regulator, which is delivering an unknown quantity of gas. Both regulators cost the same so that’s not a consideration.

Tom Shoup • Los Altos, California

“Wine Wizard” columnist Alison Crowe responds: “I always love it when readers send us pictures of their own set-ups. Thanks, Tom, for sharing this photo of your low-flow solution for gently gassing headspaces. Maintaining a topped-up container is really important for wine quality but when you can’t do that, excluding air from your container headspace using a low-turbulence gassing system is the next best thing.”’

RECENT NEWS

News

The Warming Climate Has Improved Wine Quality

A new collaborative study between UC-Davis and the University of Bordeaux has concluded that rising temperatures seen over the past six decades have actually helped improve wine quality in that time span. But the study does come with a caveat: That continued warming could boomerang and begin to be detrimental to a red wine’s color and other polyphenolic character in some locales. Where that tipping point is has yet to be determined. The study looked at Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in both Napa Valley, California and Bordeaux, France, determining that as heat rose past our current norm, sugar content increased while color compounds decreased. While this may not be good news for some wine-growing regions that are already in peripherally hot zones, it may be a boon to cooler zones that have trouble ripening their wine grapes. One researcher noted that adaptation to our shifting climate is underway: https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/increasing-temperatures-led-better-tasting-grapeshow-long

New Products:

2022 RJS Craft Winemaking RQ Series

The folks at RJS Craft Winemaking have announced their 2022 lineup of Restricted Quantity (RQ) releases. This year’s Hispanic theme covers two regions: Spain and the South American wine countries of Argentina and Chile. There are a total of five kits to choose from with the options of three reds, a white, and a rosé. Three kits come from Spanish grapes: A red Monastrell (also known as Mourvédre), a Petit Verdot, and a Grenache rosé. The Argentinian kit is a blend of Malbec, Bonarda, and Syrah while the Chilean kit features Sauvignon Blanc. Each kit is named for a famed dance from the region. For more information about individual kits visit: https://www.rjscraftwinemaking.com

Vivant Wine Chilling System

While not specific to winemakers or the winemaking process, this one raised our eyebrows as a handy tool to have around. For those wine aficionados who prefer to be able to keep a careful eye on their wine’s temperature while serving, the Vivant Wine Chiller offers a temperature-controlled “bucket” to maintain a set level. The system is battery operated and its charge can last up to 2.5 hours or more depending on chilling demands. Set the temperature on the digital controller and bring it with you wherever you would like to go. Learn more about this system at: https://www.vivantwine.com/products/newtech-wine-chilling-system

Winexpert Reserve Montepulciano

A new kit from Winexpert’s premium Reserve series showcases Italy’s second most-planted wine grape: Montepulciano. The wines produced are dry with solid structure and body and a moderate oak level. Aromas are noted to have cherry, boysenberry, dark plum, spice, and fresh acidity. These kits are made to produce 6 gallons (23 L) of finished wine ready to drink in as little as six weeks . . . but more aging would definitely not hurt. Each kit comes with all the necessary ingredients and a set of instructions. To learn more about the new kit, visit: https://winexpert.com/product/ montepulciano-italy/

AWARD-WINNING KITS

Here is a list of medal-winning kits for the Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot categories chosen by a blind-tasting judging panel at the 2021 WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition in West Dover, Vermont:

Cabernet Sauvignon

SILVER

VineCo California Connoisseur

Cabernet Sauvignon

Winexpert Eclipse Cabernet

Sauvignon

Winexpert Selection Cabernet

Sauvignon

BRONZE

RJS Craft Winemaking En Primeur

Australian Cabernet Sauvignon

Winexpert Eclipse Limited Edition

Three Moons Cabernet Sauvignon

Winexpert Private Reserve Lodi

Ranch II Cabernet Sauvignon

Merlot

GOLD

RJS Craft Winemaking Hightail

Niagara Merlot

Winexpert Classic Chilean Merlot

SILVER

Winexpert Limited Edition New

Zealand Merlot

Winexpert Merlot

BRONZE

Cellar Craft Showcase Washington Merlot

RJS Craft Winemaking En Primeur

Chilean Merlot

Winexpert Private Reserve

California Stag’s Leap Merlot

Our Red Star range is evolving. New names, the same tradition. PREMIER

•

9:33 AM

1

This fall we asked our social media followers to post pictures of their 2021 grapes. We received a huge response, covering a wide range of varietals from several locations around the world. Here are a select few pictures we wanted to share with readers.

Anders Norberg Sweden • Bolera

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Kathy Keeler-deHaaf California • Petite Sirah

Alan O’Neal Oregon • Pinot Grigio

Kim Lane Washington • Cayuga

Serena Roberge Gordon California • Siegerrebe

Tyler Wilson California • Pinot Noir

BEGINNER’S BLOCK

BY DAVE GREEN

PUT SOME SPARKLE IN YOUR WINES

hether it’s the rush from the pop of the cork, the anticipation created watching the bubbles seem to explode from the glass, or the flavors that dance on your palate as you sip . . . there is no denying that there is a certain romance to sparkling wines. And creating your own sparkling wine is actually not all that hard to do. For hobby winemakers, we can lump sparkling winemaking into four distinct production techniques: Méthode Champenoise (traditional Champagne), Charmat method (Italian sparkling), méthode ancestrale (pétillant-naturel or pét-nat for short), and country-style. In this piece my goal is not to give you step-by-steps of producing sparkling wines, but rather an introduction to the methods of producing them at home.

SPARKLING BASICS

First things first, there are basically two formats when it comes to the carbonation found in wine: Sparkling and still. Simply put sparkling means the wine is carbonated while still wines are left mostly uncarbonated. There are some times when a still wine will become sparkling due to the production of an unstable wine. This is definitely something all winemakers should avoid and wines can be unstable for several reasons, but is most commonly due to insufficient sulfite levels when bottling (especially wines that have not gone through malolactic fermentation), backsweetening (adding sugars) before bottling, or a combination of both. Also, just because most sparkling wines you see at your favorite wine store are either going to be whites or rosés, that doesn’t mean you should not produce red sparkling wines. In fact red sparkling wines are quite popular as well. But often they are made from lighter, low-tannin, fruitier varieties . . . you’ll want to leave your big, tannic-laden grapes for still wine production. If you plan to bottle sparkling wine it must be placed in thick-walled sparkling wine bottles with proper closures. These bottles are made

to withstand up to 100 psi of pressure. Finally, when carbonation occurs in the bottle, the wines need to remain unsulfited so a degree of instability does exist.

MÉTHODE CHAMPENOISE

While this technique produces what most wine aficionados would consider the highest form of sparkling wine, it comes at a fairly high cost in terms of production effort and time. In this style, the wine is fermented to completion (dry) and then fined and filtered in order to stabilize it. For bottling, a measured dosage of sugar is added to the wine along with some fresh yeast and mixed well. The wine is bottled then capped with bidules and crown caps (think beer cap with a little bowl on the inside of it). The fresh yeast will consume the sugar and produce a sparkling wine.

Often these wines will be allowed to age a year to five years (or more!) in the bottles with the yeast. The next step is the riddling process. This process starts with the bottle being angled so that any sediment starts to slide towards the cap and bidule. Over the course of several weeks the bottles are slowly turned to help aid this settling process. Once the winemaker is happy with the settling process, it’s time to disgorge the yeast from the bottles. This disgorgement process starts with a saturated salt-ice bath, which is used to freeze the necks of the wine bottles. Once frozen, the crown cap is removed and the yeast is expelled from the pressure. The bottles are topped back up and corked. If you’re interested in reading more on this technique, check out the June-July 2019 issue or that article can be found at https://winemakermag.com/article/ methode-champenoise.

CHARMAT METHOD

Homebrewers generally refer to this technique as forced carbonation, but in the wine world it is used extensively in Italy for production of sparkling wines such as Prosecco. The beauty of the Charmat method is in its simplicity . . .

but its downfall is in the equipment needs. Basically you need a kegging system. Cornelius kegs are popular in the homebrew world to force carbonate beer and can be used for carbonating wines too. A carbon dioxide tank and regulator (to control the pressure in the keg) are also needed as well as a faucet to serve the sparkling wine or bottle it. A counter-pressure filling system is required if you want to bottle. For carbonation levels, I recommend starting around 30 psi and you can go up or down from there. For more on this style of sparkling wine, check out the AprilMay 2019 issue or https://winemaker mag.com/technique/italian-techniquesfor-bubbles.

MÉTHODE ANCESTRALE

A third alternative to crafting sparkling wines comes in the form of what is popularly known as pét-nat wines. While méthode Champenoise is time and effort intensive, Charmat method is equipment intensive, méthode ancestrale is neither . . . but a thorough understanding of expected outcomes is required to achieve your desired results in terms of sweetness and carbonation levels. Basically the wine is fermented down to a certain degree Brix (incomplete fermentation), and then packaged in thick-walled sparkling wine bottles with fermentation finishing in the bottle. Some diligence is required while tracking fermentation progress and winemakers need to be ready to bottle at a moment’s notice. For more on this style check out the June-July 2021 issue or https://winemakermag.com/article/ pet-projects.

COUNTRY-STYLE SPARKLING

A cross between the méthode Champenoise and méthode ancestrale approaches is the country-style sparkling wine. The wine is fermented until dry, then during the bottling process a measured dose of sugar is blended into solution. The yeast consumes the added sugar which produces the desired carbonation.

WINE WIZARD

BY ALISON CROWE

UNEVEN RIPENING

Also: Sensing ripeness and killer yeast

QI HAVE AN EXTREMELY SMALL HOBBY VINEYARD OF ABOUT 30 VINES ( MIXED VARIETIES ) AND FIND IT HARD TO GET HELP HERE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM WITH EITHER ADVICE OR SUPPLIES AND I DO RELY HEAVILY ON YOUR MAGAZINE. I ENVY YOU IN THE STATES WHERE YOU SEEM TO HAVE A LOT OF AMATEUR GROWERS AND RESOURCES TO MATCH. THIS YEAR THE WEATHER HAS BEEN VERY UNUSUAL, AND ALL FRUIT GROWTH HAS BEEN POOR. I HAVE SOME GRAPES THAT ARE NOW RIPE AND NEED TO BE HARVESTED BUT OTHERS OF THE SAME VARIETY IN A DIFFERENT PART OF THE VINEYARD ARE WELL BEHIND AND NOT YET READY. CAN I PICK THE RIPE ONES NOW AND FREEZE OR CHILL THEM AND WAIT UNTIL THE OTHERS ARE READY AND CRUSH AND PROCESS THEM ALL TOGETHER, WHICH MAY BE IN THREE - OR FOUR- WEEKS’ TIME? WOULD FREEZING BE BETTER THAN CHILLING?

DAVID LODGE SMALLFIELD, ENGLAND

AMany thanks to you for being a WineMaker magazine reader! We love being a source of helpfulness in the sometimes difficult-to-navigate world that is international small-scale winemaking.

Uneven vineyard ripening is indeed a difficult thing to contend with. If one’s vineyard is large enough, it’s easy enough to divide it into “blocks” that ripen right about the same time and provide a convenient amount for winemaking purposes. When you’re dealing with 30 vines that ripen unevenly, I can see the difficulty; I’m going to guess you’ve probably got too much fruit to put into your freezer at once and too little to be able to ferment separately.

If you think that your grapes will be ready within a 3–4 week window, you can certainly freeze what I would call a “first batch” or the first wave of grapes to be ready, or as many as you can fit into your freezer. Keep in mind that frozen grape skins will already almost be pre-broken down and might be more difficult to press later on. Grapes can

indeed be chilled under refrigeration, just as any fruit at the market. However, I would be wary of chilling down grapes longer than about 5–7 days because I think by that time the quality would deteriorate. Don’t forget, that once a grape is picked, wine starts on its own as the cells start to break down and ambient microbes on the grapes begin to make their way into the fruit. Is it possible to pick and ferment your vineyard in two small lots; one early and one late? That might be a good compromise.

For the future, maybe there are some tricks from your own country you could employ to try to have a more even (and condensed) harvest. I’ve read that in the old walled kitchen gardens of stately homes in England the wily head gardeners would lay woven mats around blackcurrant bushes they wanted to “put off” while vines, bushes, and trees they wanted to “hasten” were planted next to warm south-facing brick walls. In this way, they were able to spread out the harvest and provide the master and mistress of the house with a longer season of choice fruits across many weeks and

Uneven shadowing in a vineyard can lead to uneven ripening of grapes. Luckily there are tricks that can be employed to remedy this situation.

Don’t forget, that once a grape is picked, wine starts on its own, as the cells start to break down and ambient microbes on the grapes begin to make their way into the fruit.

Photo courtesy of Arthur George

months. What you want to achieve is almost the opposite, i.e., get all of your grapes ready at once. You could try to do this by “shading” the earlier part of your vineyard by leaving more leaves or shoots on those vines, thereby retarding their ripening a little bit? Similarly, if you find the latest-ripening part of

the vineyard is still behind, you should be sure to pull some leaves from around the fruiting zone of those vines in order to allow more sunlight in to hasten the ripening there. In this way you might be able to shave a week off of either side and find a more harmonious “middle of the road” harvest.

QI WENT UP TO THE VINEYARD I WILL BE GETTING THIS YEAR’S GRAPES FROM, BUT I FORGOT MY REFRACTOMETER AT HOME AND DIDN’T REALIZE UNTIL I WAS OUT IN THE VINEYARD ( A.K.A. A LONG WAY FROM HOME ). HOW DO I TELL IF MY GRAPES ARE READY TO PICK?

BEN CORRAL FREMONT, CALIFORNIA

AHey, it happens to me too. But fear not, we’re going to impart some information that’ll give you the confidence to pick even if you don’t know the Brix number. Many winemakers like knowing a lot about the batch of grapes they’re going to be picking, from sugar level (Brix) to acidity (pH and total acidity or TA) to even more esoteric color and phenolic ripeness markers. Mind you, the latter are really only available to folks with serious lab budgets (a full panel of grape or juice analysis can cost into the hundreds of dollars) or to commercial winemakers with serious laboratory staff.

What about the rest of us, who don’t have the time and money to spend or those of us that get to the vineyard and realize we forgot our trusty refractometer? Well, obviously one can pack the plastic bags to collect a representative berry sample of the vines they’re going to pick and then squish the berries up and measure them when you get home . . . as long as you didn’t forget the bags too. If you’re going to be getting in a ton or five you could certainly walk your block and collect a good bucket-full of a representative cluster sample, being sure to pick clusters from the inside and outside of the canopy as well as high and low in the vine to ensure an even sampling. Then you destem and squish up the grapes and, if red, let them sit for at least 4–5 hours and taste the juice and measure with your refractometer.

As an aside, these days I make mostly Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc as well as Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon (though I do smaller amounts of a bunch of other varietals). For whites I like to target at least 22 °Brix for Sauvignon Blanc and 23.5 for Chardonnay and 24 for Pinot Noir and 24.5 for Cabernet. This is of course my California world, where I work with vineyards largely in Napa, Sonoma, Monterey, and Santa Barbara counties. Your world (and varieties) may be very different so please take these only as guidelines.

Back to our story: What do you do if you don’t have a refractometer, buckets, or bags? What if you are visiting a surprise vineyard you didn’t expect to get grapes from and have to make a decision then and there? I encourage us all to get away from becoming too reliant on a number and move more towards relying on the ample information available right in front of us, using the most sensitive and accurate analytical equipment you already possess: Your five senses.

Yes, you heard me correctly, five. Indeed, I’m sure our sense

of taste is the obvious one when it comes to assessing the ripeness of a grape but don’t discount the other four: Touch, smell, sight, and yes, even hearing.

• Sight: Before you pop a grape in your mouth the first thing you’ll do is actually see the vineyard. What you see can give you some important clues as to the ripeness of the grapes for making wine. A vineyard with a large, green and lush canopy looking “springtime fresh” may just be that. Also, those grapes might be too shaded to be ripe yet. Vineyards getting their grapes towards ripeness often have a dusky or dusty look to them if the canopies are still green, and often sport a number of yellowing leaves in the fruiting zone and below. As the natural growing season nears its end, the photosynthesis machine that is the grapevine starts to shut down, in a phase also known as grapevine senescence. The vine starts re-allocating its resources as it prepares to shut down for winter dormancy, chlorophyll degrades, and yellow and red pigments become visible. This is triggered in part by shorter seasonal day length and is a sign that the grapevine’s job of ripening the clusters is coming to an end. When you get closer to an individual grapevine and can actually see the clusters, if they’re red grapes, look for dark, even coloring. There shouldn’t be any signs of green berries anywhere. With white grapes, like Chardonnay, you want to look for a golden translucent color. Green, opaque grapes are a sign of being underripe. In some varieties and in some locations (like my Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon) brown seeds are also a sign of ripeness . . . but sometimes they aren’t. Seed color is very dependent upon variety, clone, and location, so it’s the one variable that is difficult to give a universal rule of thumb about. Especially when making early-pick wines like sparkling cuvées, rosés, and low-Brix whites like Sauvignon Blanc, green seeds are just fine.

• Hearing: Hear me out (har har) on this one. As you approach the vineyard, be sure to listen to the sound the leaves are making in the breeze. A vineyard that is a long way from senescence will have plenty of those glossy, green leaves and will rustle like fresh green treetops. Grapes that are approaching ripeness are usually carried on canopies which are drier, more yellow or red and those leaves will make a sound like a pile of dry fall leaves on the ground. Bend some leaves between your fingers and a few of the leaves may sound crispy and may actually break. These are signs of vine senescence and a signal that the growing and ripening season is approaching its end.

WINE WIZARD

• Touch: Touch the leaves, grape clusters, and individual berries themselves as you can get information from all of them. Leaves that are smooth, glossy, and bend easily without breaking are signs of a very healthy canopy that still has a lot of photosynthesis and nutrient and enzyme movement it can perform. Drying, brittle, or yellowing leaves are shutting down and won’t be able to push the clusters much further towards ripeness. Ripe grape clusters are soft and velvety and, even in a tight-berried bunch like Pinot Noir, have a “give” to them. Ripe berries pull off the rachis (stem) easily and, when squished gently between the thumb and forefinger, squirt out the pulp easily. Your fingernail should be able to readily scrape red pigments off the inside of grape skins — this is a sign that the color will release well when the grapes are crushed into must and is another signal of ripeness.

• Smell: I suppose it’s a little difficult to “smell” a vineyard. Well, you may smell a distant irrigation pond or the neighboring winery’s compost heap wafting on a long breeze but the smell you need to pay attention to is the retro-nasal sensations you’re getting once you actually put the berries into your mouth. Don’t chew up the seeds yet, just the pulp and skin, and like when tasting wine, try to pass some air gently in through your mouth (without inhaling any skins or seeds!). This will activate your olfactory bulb and is a great way to pick up on any green bell-pepper aromas (“pyrazines”) in Cabernet, Merlot, or Cabernet Franc as well as to assess the general fruitiness of the berry itself. If there isn’t a lot of olfactory retro-nasal sensation or “smell” while tasting your grapes it may be a sign they’re not quite ready yet. A high level of green, grassy, or pyrazine aromas

means the grapes also may not be ready yet and need some more time on the vine.

• Taste: This is the sense we most often think of using when assessing grapes for winemaking. Take a few berries here and there off of many different clusters in many different locations in the vine: Up high in the canopy where it’s more shaded, out on the south-facing edge where the berries will be riper. When you taste them obviously pay attention to the sweetness (“Brix”) and acid (“pH/TA”) balance but also pay attention to the astringency. Especially in red grapes, underripe tannins give a chalky or sometimes gritty sensation in the mouth. If a grape gives you a sensation like biting into a green banana (ouch!) it still has weeks to go. If the sensation is more like a gentle chalkiness, it could be a few days to a week away. Remember, in red grapes we do want and expect some astringency in the tannins; we just want them to be ripe. Overall, is there a “deliciousness” to the overall taste and flavor sensation? Do the flavors “pop,” meaning do they make you go “wow, this would make great wine”? I know it’s subjective, but the taste of your grapes coupled with the above input from all of your five senses can give you the bigger picture you need.

So next harvest don’t just taste your grapes and especially don’t just look at laboratory analyses to try to guess if a block is ready to pick. You have to actually go, be, and do. Fully immerse yourself in a whole vineyard assessment paying attention to all five of your senses. It does take experience, but with enough harvests under your belt using all of the available sensory input, eventually you’ll be able to confidently make the perfect pick call without once glancing at numbers.

Learning the annual arc of a vineyard’s growth, veraison, and senescence phases are clues that a seasoned viticulturalist can read to get a sense of harvest timing. One of these clues is that the vineyard should start to appear tired as harvest approaches . . . no longer the bright, vibrant green leaves.

Photo courtesy of Bokisch Vineyards

QI HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO FERMENT THREE SEPARATE BATCHES ( BARRELS ) OF ZINFANDEL IN THE COMING WEEKS. I PLAN TO CONTRAST AND COMPARE THE EFFECTS OF USING DIFFERENT YEAST STRAINS ON EACH OF THE BATCHES. MY CONCERN IS THAT TWO OF THE STRAINS CHOSEN ARE KILLER FACTOR POSITIVE ( ACTIVE ) AND ONE IS SENSITIVE. DO I NEED TO WORRY ABOUT CROSS - CONTAMINATION VIA PUNCH DOWN TOOL DURING FERMENTATION? IF SO, WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND I DO TO AVOID A STUCK FERMENTATION IN THE KILLER- FACTOR SENSITIVE BATCH. ALL RECOMMENDED REHYDRATION AND NUTRITION PROTOCOLS WILL BE USED. YOUR GUIDANCE IS GREATLY APPRECIATED. CIN CIN!

JOHN DIMEO FOREST HILL, MARYLAND

AI’m glad that you are attuned to your yeast and realize that some strains are “killer factor positive” and one is “sensitive.” I really wish that the yeast industry had come up with a different term than “killer,” it makes it sound like yeast cells are going to, like some monster from a 1960’s B movie, take over the neighborhood and eat everything in its path! What it means in practice is that yeast strains with “killer” factors are more likely than others to dominate and eventually take over a fermentation if present in large enough numbers. There’s a point at which at low enough concentrations, even killer-factor (KF) yeast will be present in a given fermentation but will not be able to dominate if you inoculated with sufficient non-killer yeast at the beginning. It’s clear that you’ve chosen your three yeast strains on

purpose, however, and to make sure you only have those chosen strains impacting its assigned lot of grapes, you should make an effort to clean and sanitize your punchdown tool between punchdowns. This can be as simple as rinsing your punchdown tool with hot water, then spritzing it with a 70% ethyl alcohol solution, with a “One Step” sanitizer solution, peracetic acid solution, or similar. I would start your punchdown round with your “sensitive” yeast strain first, so that there’s less chance of one of your “killer” yeasts getting carried into it from the others. It’s unlikely you’ll get a stuck fermentation with your non-KF yeast based on that fact alone. As long as you inoculated your fermentation at a high enough rate (about 0.25 g/L), aren’t cross-contaminating during your work, and you have a healthy must, I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

Paulliac and Saint-Emilion with special wine tastings at local winery estates and venture into wine caves. We’ll have fun with a few blind tastings and a wine blending session. Finally, we’ll add to our wine knowledge by visiting a world-class interactive wine museum, La Cite du Vin.

For more details visit:

BY CHIK BRENNEMAN

BLAUFRÄNKISCH OR LEMBERGER

International grape of mystery

If someone asked me what I enjoy most about traveling, the wine geek in me jumps to the front of the line. Because my reply would have to be learning about all the varieties of grapes there are on this planet. My “go-to” reference when I first start researching a new varietal is Jancis Robinson’s Wine Grapes, where in just about 1,200 pages, she details 1,368 different varieties. There are undoubtedly thousands more when you look at the species that are not considered “wine grapes” per se, but wine is still made from them. Robinson brings up the obscure and not so obscure while detailing origins, trends, and flavors associated with them.

When I was presented with this issue’s grape varietal, before I started my research I thought for sure this was another one of those obscure varieties. But I was wrong. She dedicated over two pages to Blaufränkisch, which is clearly a lot since the obscure varieties, like Bonamico from Italy, barely get a paragraph. As I read on, I realized I know more about this grape, have tasted the wine, and actually made a little wine from it, than I ever realized. Turns out I knew the variety as Lemberger, a red varietal, now up-and-coming in the European realm of wines.

Since the Middle Ages the word fränkisch has been given to wines of superior quality in the Germanic world of wine. The word blau translates to the word blue. But the word Blaufränkisch did not appear in writings until 1862 and was not officially adopted until 1875. A few years later the names Lemberger and Limberger were adopted based on where the variety was grown in Austria. Meanwhile, across the border in Hungary it was grown under the name Kékfrankos, which is the

Hungarian translation of Blaufränkisch. Its history has been well documented since the advent of DNA profiling. It was long thought to be identical to Gamay Noir or Pinot Noir, but in actuality it is a parent of Gamay grapes and has a parent-offspring relationship of Gouais Blanc of the Pinot pedigree. Given what is know about these relationships, the origins of this varietal are likely in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the area demarcated as Dalmacija (also known as Dalmatia).

From a viticulture point of view, this is a vigorous variety that buds early and ripens late, thus needs to be grown in areas protected from the winds and a generally warmer climate (relative to other Germanic varietals). It can thrive in a wide range of soil types, which makes it an attractive variety to grow. The vineyard area in Germany alone, which was about 500 hectares (ha) or 1,236 acres in 1970, has grown to almost 2,000 ha (5,000 acres) in 2019. Hungary was just over 8,000 ha (20,000 acres) of Kékfrankos, but sometimes you’ll find it under the lesser-known name of Nagyburgundi, to add a little confusion. Notice the “burgundi” in that name, referencing its inferred connection to Pinot. In North America, the varietal is gaining traction in areas outside of California, notably the Finger Lakes region of New York, Washington State, British Columbia, and other more temperate wine regions. More recently it’s starting to gain some traction in Pennsylvania too.

The wines of Blaufränkisch are quite diverse, ranging from light and fruity, to wines that are rich in extract. Technically, the term “extract” refers to everything besides water, sugar, and acidity in wines. Tannins and other polyphenols compose the majority of

It can thrive in a wide range of soil types, which makes it an attractive variety to grow.

BLAUFRÄNKISCH Yield 5 gallons (19 L)

INGREDIENTS

125 pounds (57 kg) fresh Blaufränkisch fruit

Distilled water

10% potassium metabisulfite (KMBS) solution (Weigh 10 grams of KMBS, dissolve into about 50 mL of distilled water. When completely dissolved, make up to 100 mL total with distilled water.)

5 g Assmanhausen or Syrah (EnoFerm) yeast

5 g Diammonium phosphate (DAP)

5 g Go-Ferm

5 g Fermaid K (or equivalent yeast nutrient)

Malolactic fermentation starter culture (CHR Hansen or equivalent)

EQUIPMENT

15-gallon (57-L) food-grade plastic bucket for fermentation

5-gallon (19-L) carboy

1-2 one-gallon (3.8-L) jugs

Racking hoses

Destemmer/crusher

Wine press

Inert gas (nitrogen, argon, or carbon dioxide)

Ability to maintain a primary fermentation temperature of 81–86 °F (27–30 °C)

Thermometer capable of measuring between 40–110 °F (4–43 °C) in one degree increments

Pipettes with the ability to add in increments of 1 mL

STEP BY STEP

1. Crush and destem the grapes. Transfer the must to your fermenter.

2. During the transfer, add 15 milliliters of 10% KMBS solution (this addition is the equivalent of 50 ppm SO2). Mix well.

3. Take a sample to test for Brix, acidity, and pH. Keep the results handy.

4. Layer the headspace with an inert gas and keep covered. Keep in a cool place overnight.

5. The next day sprinkle the Fermaid K directly on the must and mix well.

6. Prepare yeast. Heat about 50 mL distilled water to 108 °F (42 °C). Mix the Go-Ferm into the water to make a suspension. Take the temperature. Pitch the yeast when the suspension is 104 °F (40 °C). Sprinkle the yeast

on the surface and gently mix so that no clumps exist. Let sit for 15 minutes undisturbed. Measure the temperature of the yeast suspension. Measure the temperature of the must. You do not want to add the yeast to your cool juice if the temperature of the yeast and the must temperature difference exceeds 15 °F (8 °C). To avoid temperature shock, you should acclimate your yeast by taking about 10 mL of the must juice and adding it to the yeast suspension. Wait 15 minutes and measure the temperature again. Do this until you are within the specified temperature range. Do not let the yeast sit in the original water suspension for longer than 20 minutes.

7. You should see signs of fermentation within about one to two days. If you use the Assmanhausen strain, be aware the lag phase can take an extra day or so.

8. You need to have on hand the ability to push the grapes back into the juice to promote color and tannin extraction. This is called “punching down” and should be done three times per day. Use a clean utensil or your hand to mix.

9. At about 19 °Brix, sprinkle in the DAP and punch down.

10. Monitor the Brix and temperature twice daily during peak fermentation (10–21 °Brix). Morning and evening is best and more often if the temperature shows any indication of exceeding 86 °F (30 °C). If necessary, cool the must by placing frozen water bottles in to the fermentation or turn on your chiller unit. Do not add dry ice! Do not cool off to less than 81 °F (27 °C). Alternatively, you may need to keep the must warm if you live in a colder climate region.

11. When the Brix reaches 0 (about 5–7 days), transfer the must to your press and press the cake dry. Keep the free run wine separate from the press portion for now. Be sure to label your vessels to keep the press portion separate and identifiable!

12. Transfer the wine to your carboys and one-gallon (3.8-L) jugs. Your press fraction may only be a gallon or two (3.8–7.6 L). Make sure you do not have any headspace in your containers.

Place an airlock on the vessel(s).

13. Inoculate with your malolactic (ML) bacteria. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions on how to prepare and inoculate. Cover the tops with an airlock to allow CO2 to escape.

14. Monitor the malolactic fermentation using a thin layer chromatography assay available from most home winemaking supply stores. Follow the instructions included in the kit.

15. When the ML is complete, add 2 mL of fresh KMBS (10%) solution per gallon (3.8 L) of wine. This is the equivalent to ~40 ppm addition.

16. Place the wine in a cool place to settle, such as a refrigerator.

17. After two weeks, test for SO2, adjust the SO2 as necessary to attain 0.8 ppm molecular SO2. (There is a simple SO2 calculator at www.winemakermag. com/sulfitecalculator). Check the SO2 in another two weeks and adjust. Once the free SO2 is adjusted, maintain at this level. You’ll just need to check every two months or so, and before racking.

18. Consider using oak chips to add some additional flavor and structure to the wine. But don’t just add the chips and leave them in. Taste the wine and when you get what you want, rack the wine away from the chips.

19. Rack the wine clean twice over the next 6–8 months to clarify.

20. Once the wine is cleared, it is time to move it to the bottle. This would be about eight months after the completion of fermentation.

21. Make the project fun by having a blending party to integrate the press fraction back into the free run. You may not need it all, use your judgment and make what you like.

22. Filtration is generally not needed if SO2 levels are maintained and there are no surface films or indications of subsequent fermentations. Consult Winemakermag.com for tips on fining and filtration if problems are evident. If all has gone well to this point, given the quantity made, it can probably be bottled without filtration. That said, maintain sanitary conditions while bottling. Once bottled, you’ll need to periodically check your work by opening a bottle to enjoy with friends.

extract and the term can get a little muddy when you look at the dietary supplement called grape seed extract, which is purified procyanidins and other tannins, like catechin and epicatechin. For winemaking purposes, we’ll refer to extract as compounds derived from the seed, skins, and pulp of the grape. During a grape’s maturation process on the vine, generally there is an increase in extract concentrations leading to a fuller-bodied wine. But how much extract makes it into the wine will also largely depend upon how the wine is made. In Germany and Austria, the wines labeled as Spätlese and Auslese could be assumed to be bigger and bolder in that those terms refer to later harvest grapes when compared to the Kabinett wines of the region. In the U.S., some of the lighter-bodied versions of Blaufränkisch are blended with other reds, Cabernet Franc being one of them, to add structure and flavor depth.

From a winemaking aspect, I have always advocated for the minimalist approach in a home winemaker’s winery. In other words, don’t put anything extra into your wine, especially when you may need to consider having to remove it later in the process. What I am referring to in this case are the tannins and polyphenolic compounds that can lead to bitterness and astringency. This varies amongst varieties and growing conditions, but sometimes these wines just need help to build additional structure. This comes with time and experience of working with the grapes from vintage to vintage. Some producers opt to rack and return the fermenting juice, a process called delestage, to maximize the extraction of these compounds. The way I learned the process was to completely drain the fermenter of free-run juice and return the juice to the tank with the force of a fire hose. The vigorous nature of this process will fracture the skins, and any oxygen that is introduced will aid in polymerizing tannins. So what seems to be counter-intuitive to my minimalist winemaking philosophy, this winemaking technique is actually quite beneficial when working with a red grape like Blaufränkisch.

Another aspect of winemaking

So, while an acidity of greater than 7.0 g/L might be high, after the malolactic fermentation, for some reds it could be perfect for wines with the right balance.

with a long-seasoned grape in cooler climates is acidity. The wines of Blaufränkisch are often referred to as having medium to high acidity. For me, that needs more definition, so I started gleaning the research produced from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in the heart of the Finger Lakes for data. This particular study detailed four harvests of Blaufränkisch (though they refer to it as Lemberger) from the vintages 1997 to 2001. Juice data is as follows:

isch is made into is a sparkling version, called sekt in Germany and it’s no doubt that lower-Brix and higher-acidity grapes will help develop a nice profile for such a rendition. Winemakers may also consider making a sparkling rosé the next time you have the chance. These same characteristics can also work well in a rosé.

I’m a proponent of pairing your wine with food and Blaufränkisch pairs well with a wide variety of meats and

cheeses. Beef, chicken, salmon, pork, and even Korean BBQ have been reported to shine with its wines. Cheesy alfredos or risotto made with aged cheeses also will work. All this talk is making me hungry for dinner and a glass of wine! So an unfamiliar name becomes a familiar face for me in the winemaking world. I am so looking forward to our next trip to where Blaufränkisch is produced. Whether it is near or far, it’s going to be fun!

While the study is older, its data stands to represent the diversity of what a specific block of Blaufränkisch produces from season to season. The resultant wine acidities ranged from 5.5 to 7.3 g/L after the malolactic fermentation, but some further de-acidification might be necessary depending on mouthfeel. To deacidify is something the winemaker needs to evaluate critically, and not rely on the “numbers.” At one point in my career winemaking was always by the numbers because when the boss tells you to do that, that’s what you do. But a craft winemaker should always evaluate the big picture: The big picture being mouthfeel, sweetness, oak aging regime, and the bitterness and astringency parameters. So, while an acidity of greater than 7.0 g/L might be high, after the malolactic fermentation, for some reds it could be perfect for wines with the right balance. For my personal wines I advocate higher acidities to assist in aging and food pairing. I don’t rely on the number; I just want to know what it is.

Another wine style that Blaufränk-

ENTER YOUR BEST HOMEMADE WINES IN THE WORLD’S LARGEST COMPETITION FOR HOBBY WINEMAKERS!

DON’T WAIT — SEND YOUR ENTRIES NOW! ENTRY DEADLINE: MARCH 21, 2022

Enter your wines and compete for gold, silver and bronze medals in 50 categories awarded by a panel of experienced wine judges. You can gain international recognition for your winemaking skills and get valuable feedback on your wines from the competition’s judging panel.

Entry Deadline: March 21, 2022 5515 Main Street • Manchester Center, VT 05255 ph: (802) 362-3981 ext. 106 • fax: (802) 362-2377

email: competition@winemakermag.com

You can also enter online at: www.winemakercompetition.com

will be awarded thanks to our award sponsors:

Gene Spaziani Grand Champion Wine

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Best of Show Red

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LALLEMAND BREWING

Best of Show Mead

Best of Show Country Fruit

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Category Medals (gold, silver, and bronze) will be awarded thanks to our category sponsors:

34. Red Table Wine Blend (Any Grape Varieties)

35. Blush Table Wine Blend (Any Grape Varieties)

36. Grape & Non-Grape Table Wine Blend

37. Apple or Pear Varietals or Blends

38. Hard Cider or Perry

39. Stone Fruit (Peach, Cherry, Blends, etc.)

40. Berry Fruit (Strawberry, Raspberry, Blends, etc.)

41. Other Fruits

42. Traditional Mead

43. Fruit Mead

Moonlight Meadery

44. Herb and Spice Mead

45. Flower or Vegetable

46. Port Style

47. Sherry Style

48. Other Fortified

49. Sparkling Grape, Dry/Semi-Dry or Sweet

50. Sparkling Non-Grape

2. White Native American Blend

3. Red Native American Varietal

4. Red Native American Blend 5. Blush/Rosé Native American 6. Red or White Native American Late Harvest and Ice Wine

Wine Blend (Any Grape Varieties)

RULES & REGULATIONS

1. Entry deadline for wines to arrive is March 21, 2022

Wines are to be delivered to: Battenkill Communications

5515 Main Street Manchester Center, VT 05255 Ph: (802) 362-3981

2. Send ONE (1) BOTTLE per entry. Still wines must be submitted in standard 750 ml wine bottles. Ice wines or late harvest wines can be submitted in 375 ml bottles. Meads and Hard Ciders can be submitted in 12 oz. or 22 oz. beer bottles. Sparkling wines must be in champagne bottles with proper closure and wire. All bottles must be free of wax, decorative labels and capsules. However, an identification label will be required on the bottle as detailed in rule #5.

3. Entry fee is $25 U.S. dollars (or $25 Canadian dollars) for each wine entered. Each individual person is allowed up to a total of 15 entries. You may enter in as many categories as you wish. Make checks payable to WineMaker Only U.S. or Canadian funds will be accepted. On your check write the number of entries (no more than 15 total) and the name of the entrant if different from the name on the check. Entry fees are non-refundable.

4. All shipments should be packaged to withstand considerable handling and must be shipped freight pre-paid. Line the inside of the box with a plastic trash bag and use plenty of packaging material, such as bubble wrap, around the bottles. Bottles shipped in preformed styrofoam cartons have proven reliable in the past. Every reasonable effort will be made to contact entrants whose bottles have broken to make arrangements for sending replacement bottles. Please note it is illegal to ship alcoholic beverages via the U.S. Postal Service. FedEx Air and FedEx Ground will destroy all amateur wine shipments so do not use either of these services. Private shipping companies such as UPS with company policies against individuals shipping alcohol may refuse your shipment if they are informed your package contains alcoholic beverages. Entries mailed internationally are often required by customs to provide proper documentation. It is the entrant’s responsibility to follow all applicable laws and regulations. Packages with postage due or C.O.D. charges will be rejected.

5 Each bottle must be labeled with the following information: Your name, category number, wine ingredients, vintage.

Example: K. Jones, 9, 75% Baco Noir, 25% Foch, 2016. If you are using a wine kit for ingredients please list the brand and product name as the wine ingredients. Example: K. Jones, 22, Winexpert Selection International French Cabernet Sauvignon, 2016. A copy of the entry form, listing each of your wines entered, must accompany entry and payment.

6. It is entirely up to you to decide which of the 50 categories you should enter. You should enter each wine in the category in which you feel it will perform best. Wines must contain a minimum of 75% of designated type if entered as a varietal. Varietals of less than 75% must be entered as blends. To make sure all entries are judged fairly, the WineMaker staff may re-classify an entry that is obviously in the wrong category or has over 75% percentage of a specific varietal but is entered as a blend.

7. Wine kits and concentrate-based wines will compete side-by-side with fresh fruit and juice-based wines in all listed cate gories.

8. The origin of many Native American grapes is unknown due to spontaneous cross-breeding. For the purposes of this competition, however, the Native American varietal category will include, but is not limited to, the following grape families: Aestivalis, Labrusca, Riparia and Rotundifolia (muscadine).

9. For sparkling wine categories, dry/semidry is defined as <3% residual sugar and sweet as >3% residual sugar.

10. Contest is open to any amateur home winemaker. Your wine must not have been made by a professional commercial winemaker or at any commercial winery. No employee of WineMaker magazine may enter. Persons under freelance contract with Battenkill Communications are eligible. No person employed by a manufacturer of wine kits may enter. Winemaking supply retail store owners and their employees are eligible. Judges may not judge a category they have entered. Applicable entry fees and limitations shall apply.

11. All wines will be judged according to their relative merits within the category. Gold, silver and bronze medals within each category will be awarded on point totals and will not be restricted to the top three wines only (for example, a number of wines may earn enough points to win gold). The Best of Show awards will be those wines clearly superior within those stated catego-

KEY DATES

Entry deadline for wines to arrive in Vermont: March 21, 2022

Wines judged: April 22-24, 2022

Results first announced at the WineMaker Magazine Conference in San Luis Obispo, California June 4, 2022

(Results posted on winemakermag.com)

ries. The Grand Champion award is given to the top overall wine in the entire competition.

12. The Winemaker of the Year award will be given to the individual whose top 5 scoring wine entries have the highest average judging score among all entrants.

13. The Club of the Year, Retailer of the Year and U-Vint of the Year awards will be based on the following point scale: Gold Medal (or any Best of Show medal): 3 points

Silver Medal: 2 points

Bronze Medal: 1 point

The amateur club that accumulates the most overall points from its members’ wine entries will win Club of the Year. The home winemaking retail store that accumulates the most overall points from its customers’ wine entries will win Retailer of the Year. The U-Vint or On-Premise winemaking facility that accumulates the most overall points from its customer’s wine entries will win U-Vint of the Year.

14. The Best of Show Estate Grown award will be given to the top overall scoring wine made with at least 75% fruit grown by the entrant. Both grape and country fruit wines are eligible.

15. All entrants will receive a copy of the judging notes for their wines. Medalists will be listed by category online.

16. All wine will become the property of WineMaker magazine and will not be released after the competition.

17. All decisions by competition organizers and judges are final.

Deadline: March 21, 2022

Entry Fee: $25 (U.S.) or $25 (Canadian) per wine entered

Number of entries _____ x $25 (US) or $25 (CD) = $________Total (limit of 15 entries per person)

q Enclosed is a check made out to “WineMaker” in the amount of $_________.

Name___________________________________________________________________________

Address_________________________________________________________________________

City________________________State/Prov______Zip/Postal Code____________________

Telephone_______________________________________________________________________

E-Mail____________________________________________________________________________

Winemaking Club:________________________________________________________________

Winemaking Retailer:_____________________________________________________________

U-Vint / On-Premise Store:________________________________________________________

Wine Ingredients and Percentage: Please list fruit varieties and percentages used in each wine. Example: “75% Baco Noir, 25% Foch.” If you are using a wine kit for ingredients, please list the brand and product name as the wine ingredients.

Example: “Winexpert Selection International French Cabernet Sauvignon.”

Wine 1 Entered:

Category Number__________________________________________________________

Category Name____________________________________________________________

Wine Ingredients and Percentage

Vintage ____________________________________________________________________

Are at least 75% of the ingredients grown by you? q yes q no q I feel it necessary to decant this wine_______hours before serving.

Wine 2 Entered:

Category Number___________________________________________________________

Category Name____________________________________________________________

Wine Ingredients and Percentage

Vintage ______________________________________________________

Are at least 75% of the ingredients grown by you? q yes q no q I feel it necessary to decant this wine_______hours before serving.

Wine 3 Entered:

Category Number__________________________________________________________

Category Name____________________________________________________________

Wine Ingredients and Percentage

ENTRY FORM

Please note that you can also enter online at:

winemakercompetition.com

Remember that each winemaker can enter up to 15 wines. If entering more than eight wines, please photocopy this entry form. Entry shipment includes ONE BOTTLE of wine per entry. 750 ml bottle required for still wines. Ice or late harvest wines can ship in 375 ml bottles. Still meads can ship in 12 oz. or 22 oz. beer bottles. Sparkling wines must ship in champagne bottles with proper closure and wire.

Send entry form and wine to:

Battenkill Communications

5515 Main Street

Manchester Center, VT 05255

Ph: 802-362-3981 • Fax: 802-362-2377

E-mail: competition@winemakermag.com

If entered online at winemakercompetition. com, please print a copy of your entry form and send it along with your wine.

Wine 5 Entered:

Category Number_________________________________________________________

Category Name____________________________________________________________

Wine Ingredients and Percentage

Vintage ______________________________________________________

Are at least 75% of the ingredients grown by you? q yes q no q I feel it necessary to decant this wine_______hours before serving.

Wine 6 Entered:

Category Number__________________________________________________________

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Wine Ingredients and Percentage

Vintage ______________________________________________________

Are at least 75% of the ingredients grown by you? q yes q no q I feel it necessary to decant this wine_______hours before serving.

Wine 7 Entered:

Category Number__________________________________________________________

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Vintage ______________________________________________________

Are at least 75% of the ingredients grown by you? q yes q no q I feel it necessary to decant this wine_______hours before serving.

Wine 4 Entered:

Category Number___________________________________________________________

Category Name____________________________________________________________

Wine Ingredients and Percentage

Vintage ______________________________________________________

Are at least 75% of the ingredients grown by you? q yes q no q I feel it necessary to decant this wine_______hours before serving.

Enter online at: winemakercompetition.com

Vintage ______________________________________________________

Are at least 75% of the ingredients grown by you? q yes q no q I feel it necessary to decant this wine_______hours before serving.

Wine 8 Entered:

Category Number__________________________________________________________

Category Name____________________________________________________________

Wine Ingredients and Percentage

Vintage ______________________________________________________

Are at least 75% of the ingredients grown by you? q yes q no q I feel it necessary to decant this wine_______hours before serving.

KEYS TO KIT WINEMAKING SUCCESS

By Dave Green

Photo by Charles A. Parker/Images Plus

ach year WineMaker magazine sends out a survey to readers to elicit feedback on a wide range of topics and demographic information. When it to comes one question in particular: “How do you feel about the mix of stories in WineMaker magazine?” year-in and yearout, we get a large number of the same exact responses that fall into either camp A or camp B; either too little or too much content covering wine kits. What’s more amazing is that it is always about the same percentage in both camps.

Unfortunately, wine kits are sometimes looked at by fresh-grape winemakers as either an inferior type of winemaking or as producing an inferior wine. But the reality is every year, without fail, at our WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition where kits are judged blind side-byside with the fresh-grape wines, the kit wines perform very well.

Many fresh-grape winemakers have recently taken notice of this and have added kits into their winemaking repertoire. Whether you are new to the winemaking hobby, a kit winemaker looking to up your game, or a fresh-grape winemaker curious about

kit wines . . . this roundtable is for you. We tracked down four highly decorated kit winemakers to ask what they’re doing to garner such high praise from judges in a blind tasting.

STARTING OUT

1) What are your favorite types of wines to make from kits?

Clinton Kent: I most enjoy Port-styles, ice wines, or summertime porch-style wine coolers.

Cody Shive: The ones that my friends and family enjoy drinking, regardless of what awards they may (or may not) have won.

Mike Dault: The country fruit kits and the Port-style kits are my favorites.

Larry Janke: I like them all. I prefer red wines, so I tend to gravitate to the big red varietals. Cabernet, Malbec, Shiraz, and Grenache. It is nice to have a good Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc ready for a before-dinner drink. And in the summer, it is not uncommon for me to enjoy a good Riesling or Moscato. I can actually say with the utmost confidence that I have never made a kit wine that I didn’t enjoy.

2) What would be your best piece of advice to someone just getting into the hobby, and going out to purchase their first kit?

Cody Shive: Get a “starter” equipment kit so you aren’t scrambling at the last minute for kit-making components. Purchase a low-cost kit — this is the kit you’ll make your mistakes with and you don’t want to have put a lot of money into it for learning purposes. Start with a white wine kit — they are ready 1–2 months after bottling. You’ll learn more about mistakes you made (or not) starting out with a white wine than you will with a red wine. Use bottled spring water to reconstitute the wine kit — DO NOT use tap or well water. Tap water may have chlorine or fluoride in it. Well water could have a lot of iron or be contaminated with bacteria. Be a fanatic about sanitation: If you think it’s clean, wash it again. Then follow the kit’s directions exactly.

Clinton Kent: Pick what type of wine you like to drink. Buy the most expensive kit you can afford and follow the directions exactly.

Mike Dault: I would recommend begin-

AWARD-WINNING KIT ROUNDTABLE PARTICIPANTS

Mike Dault started winemaking in 2011 was named the Winemaker of the Year in the 2021 WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition, where he also won Best of Show Kit. This year he joined the Cincinnati Vintner Club and his backyard Cabernet Franc vineyard of 14 vines should provide some additional red grapes.

Clinton Kent leads business development for a division of an aerospace repair company and lives in Lexington, Kentucky with his wine-loving girlfriend and two dogs. He started making wines in 2012 and loves big, tannic, dry wines. He won the Best of Show Dessert wine in the 2021 WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition.

Cody Shive is a Retail Transformation Consultant who has been an amateur winemaker since 2013. Since that time he has won numerous medals for his kit wines. He lives with his wife, Laura, and their dog, Siri, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Larry Janke has been making wines in Minnesota for years and has taught classes for amateur winemakers. He is also a wine judge and won Best of Show Kit in the 2019 WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition, in addition to top honors at other competitions.

ning with something like an Orchard Breezin’ (RJS) or Island Mist (Winexpert) kit as they are ready to drink in about two to three months after bottling. This gives the beginner a feel of winemaking procedures and you don’t need to wait a long time to enjoy it. Also, see the various articles about sanitation at winemakermag.com.

3) Is there any equipment that you wish you had when you started that you would recommend to a new winemaker?

Larry Janke: The bottle tree, a bottle rinser, wine degasser tool, and a good corker. None of those items came with the starter equipment package.

Mike Dault: Auto-siphon with the white colored, spring-activated wine filler. I learned that it always works best to keep the plastic tube on the end of the hose to provide some added weight so the hose doesn’t pop out of the bucket.

Cody Shive: A whip to drive the CO2 out of the wine.

Clinton Kent: When I first started with barrels, I wish someone had told me about Platypus PlatyPreserve Wine Bags. For $10, they are reusable and are great for topping up barrels or carboys. You can then squeeze the bag to eliminate the headspace before putting the cap back on.

4) What resource (other than a subscription to WineMaker magazine of course) would you say is the best for new kit winemakers?

Clinton Kent: I love morewinemaking. com’s free online “MoreManuals” at the bottom of their homepage.

Cody Shive: There are several good books, but Daniel Pambianchi’s Kit Winemaking: The Illustrated Beginner’s Guide to Making Wines from Concentrate is the one I go back to repeatedly.

Mike Dault: Winemakermag.com articles. In 2016, I branched out and made a blueberry wine. I used a “Tips from

the Pros” article as a guide and after a bit of tweaking, got the Best of Show Country Fruit in 2019 on a blend of raspberry, blueberry, and blackberry.

Larry Janke: First Steps in Winemaking by Cyril Berry does a good job with explaining the basics in understanding the process, but Techniques in Home Winemaking by Daniel Pambianchi is my go-to reference for everything wine-related.

PLANNING AHEAD

5) What guides your decisions when planning which wine kits you’ll be purchasing for the next few batches?

Mike Dault: Since my job requires travel, I try to start a lot of wines around the holidays, and that works out perfect for the summer wines and Port-style kits that I use as Christmas gifts the following year.

Clinton Kent: I am a sucker for limited edition wine kits.

Cody Shive: I like to do white wine kits in the spring so they are ready for the summer. I like to get red wine kits started in the summer, because the fermentation temperatures are easier to manage in the summer than they are in the winter for me.

Larry Janke: Actually, it depends on the cellar and what we are consuming. The red wines need to age longer, so we have to plan ahead about six months. If the white wine is dwindling, we can have that ready sooner.

6) Each kit comes with a recommended aging cycle. Do you find yourself mostly adhering to those timelines or do you adjust it often based on other factors?

Larry Janke: I tend to age the wines a little longer than recommended. The white wines are drinkable almost right away, but really improve after just a few months. The red wines I like to age about a year. Kit wines really should be consumed within 18 – 24 months. They really aren’t designed for longterm cellaring.

Mike Dault: I follow the kit recommendations for the most part and don’t get too excited if extending a week or so beyond what the kit says, especially after initial transfer as I use argon gas to fill up the carboy to reduce headspace.

Clinton Kent: I have never followed the aging timelines for red wines. They are far too short. Some red kits are magical, but only after aging a year.

KIT ADJUSTMENTS

7) Are there any easy adjustments to a wine kit that you feel would be a good jumping off point for those looking to start making tweaks on their own?

Clinton Kent: I always fortify Portstyle kits with brandy, cognac, or rum. They are too sweet for me otherwise . . . and I have a sweet tooth.

Cody Shive: Any change you make to a kit wine can have a major effect. I come from a QC/QA background, so I like to “baseline” my wines before I mess with them. I’ll typically make a wine exactly as the directions suggest. Then, with an identical kit, I’ll make one change (like, I’ll add extra oak — or if the kit didn’t come with oak, I’ll add it). I keep meticulous notes so I can compare the wines down the line to see which one turned out better. So, if you want to make changes, buy two identical kits. Make one exactly as the instructions suggest. Make the other one with only one change so you can know for certain the influence that change had.

Mike Dault: I stir in about 4 lbs. (1.8 kg) of granulated sugar in the beginning to raise the specific gravity (SG) to about 1.085 on the Orchard Breezin’/Island Mist kits.

Larry Janke: The kits have come a long way in the past few years to be acid balanced and stable. If an adjustment is made, it is to the individual’s taste. One could add sugar syrup to sweeten a white wine, or add a little oak or tannin to a red wine in secondary to add some body.

8) For more advanced kit winemakers, any advice on the types of adjustments you feel have the potential to really elevate certain kits?

Mike Dault: On the white wines I use 71B or QA23 yeast. I use only spring water and fill to 5.5 gallons (21 L). I do a final transfer to a 5-gallon (19-L) carboy. The remaining liquid I bottle, usually 3 bottles or so. Then I leave the bulk wine in the carboy for another month or so. This results in a very clear 5 gallons (19 L) of wine without having to filter.

Cody Shive: Changes to oak concentrations can have a desirable effect, but go gently. The thing to keep in mind with kits is the kit makers have gone through multiple trials to make sure the wines come out consistently with little fuss.

Larry Janke: Once you are comfortable with the process, you can experiment with using different yeast strains to accentuate the fruit flavors, and different tannin and oak additions can really pop the flavors on a big red wine like a Cabernet or Nebbiolo.

Clinton Kent: A small barrel from Vadai Barrels does wonders for red or Port-style kits. Barrels will also fully degas the wine while you wait.

ADVANCED STRATEGIES

9) Are there any advanced strategies or techniques that have benefitted your wines?

Clinton Kent: I love doing bench trials before bottling — particularly with acidity, tannin additions, or blending different batches of wine together. Experiments are also fun to see the impact of different yeasts and winemaking techniques.

Larry Janke: Adding the right amount of metabisulfite before bottling has been a great benefit to me for stabilizing red kit wines so that they will age gracefully and last longer in the cellar. Advanced SO2 and pH testing equipment is necessary for this step.

Mike Dault: On the Port-style wines I usually add about 5% brandy to help with overall taste and ABV.

Cody Shive: Filtering my red wines has given me better long-term outcomes than with my non-filtered wines, which was very surprising to me.

10) While you can buy kits that are already grape blends, is blending different kits a strategy that you recommend?

Larry Janke: I’ve created some nice Bordeaux- and Tuscan-style blends. Once the individual kits have finished fermenting, I do bench trials to taste test what percentage of each wine works the best. The trial that wins then is tested for pH and SO2 balance before it is bottled. Blending can throw off the balance of the finished wine.

Cody Shive: Yes! Making two kits and then blending them before bottling can yield a wonderful benefit. So, consider making a Pinot Noir kit and a Shiraz kit. Then, at the end, blend them before bottling. That will produce something unique, and because you’ve followed the directions on each of the kits, your new 50/50 resulting wine will be oneof-a-kind.

Clinton Kent: Absolutely! Let your taste buds guide you. It’s also fun combining grapes from different parts of the world.

Mike Dault: That is where the creativity kicks in and makes it fun. I have blended my raspberry wine made from fresh fruit with the peach kit wine and that came out awesome.

11) Are there any advanced pieces of equipment you recommend to other winemakers that are comfortable in kit winemaking?

Mike Dault: I like the FastRack as opposed to a bottle tree for drying bottles, as it is more sanitary. Using a floor corker is so much easier and worth the investment. Also, having a small bottle of argon gas helps with topping up carboys for a week or so.

Clinton Kent: I’d recommend a different method for degassing kit wines. I have never had much luck with simply stirring. Barrels work well. A vacuum pump works. I use a less common technique with an air compressor and a small plastic venturi ejector.

Larry Janke: A good pH meter was the first item I purchased. Next would be a Mini Jet filter and an Enolmatic bottle filler. I also have a wine capsule heat shrinker.

Cody Shive: A small pad filter, like Buon Vino Mini Jet or similar. Also, I use a Clean Bottle Express to clean the inside of my carboys. It’s a drill-mounted wand with cleaning pads that scrub the inside. A good bottle cleaner (same company as above makes one). Also, a bottle rinser that goes on the kitchen faucet and a floor-corker.

BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER

12) What do you believe sets awardwinning quality wines made from kits apart from others?

Cody Shive: Sanitation, for sure. Following the directions. Attention to detail during production. Storing wines in a temperature-constant area. Some people think the high-end kits will get you awards. Not necessarily so. I’ve received awards for $50 kits as well as $180 kits. It’s a combination of kit and what you do when you make the kit.

Mike Dault: Quality of the kits and experimenting to see what works or doesn’t work. I still remember from my first winemaking class it was said to always make a wine that you will like and don’t expect perfect wines every time. I believe it was 10% will be non-drinkable, 20% might be awesome, and the rest just OK.

Clinton Kent: I have read that judges see a lot of defects from cleanliness and sanitation issues. In my own experience, make the wine that you love to drink. Even if it does not score well, you will still love drinking it! My own palate does not always match up with medals/scores, and I still prefer some of my lower scoring wines.

This past July, experienced judges evaluated a total of 499 wine kit entries as part of the overall 2021 WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition that had a grand total of 1,893 entries. The 499 wine kit entries were entered into over 30 di erent categories and represented a broad selection of varietals and blends from all major kit manufacturers. This large collection of kit entries was sent into the competition from across North America.

Over the course of three days, wine judging panels examined all entries, both kit and non-kit, using the University of California-Davis 20-point wine scale giving their scores on appearance, aroma, taste, aftertaste, and overall impression. All judging

was done blind meaning those evaluating each entry were given a prepoured glass of wine with absolutely no identification attached except a tracking number. The judges had no idea whether the entry was made from a kit or fresh fruit. All the judges knew about each entry was the category entered. Entries were awarded gold, silver, bronze, and Best of Show medals based on the average score given by the judging panel. A full rundown of the 2021 medalists can be found at: https://winemakermag. com/competition/21compresults

We’ve found many WineMaker readers looking to purchase a wine kit would refer back to each year’s competition results as a third-party list of specific wine kits that scored well in the blind judging and thus are capable of producing an award-winning wine.

Fourteen years ago we decided to go one step further and put the spotlight on the top 100 scoring kits from the competition. What follows is the 2021 ranking based on the average scores given by judges of the top performing kit entries this year. By extending all the judging scores out to the furthest decimal point we were able to compile this ranked list of those kit entries that had the highest average scores in the 2021 competition from among the 499 kit entries.

This kit list represents the top 100 scoring kit entries with the highest average scores from 2021 that have shown the potential in a blind judging format to make excellent wines. We organized these top kits not only in numerical order, but also broken out into general wine style categories for easy reference. Cheers!

Top 100 Wine Kits By Varietal/Wine Style

Note: Top 100 rank listed in parentheses

CABERNET SAUVIGNON

Winexpert Select Cabernet Sauvignon (47)

Winexpert Eclipse Cabernet Sauvignon (65)

VineCo California Connoisseur Cabernet Sauvignon (73)

Mosti Mondiale California Cabernet Sauvignon (74)

Winexpert Eclipse Limited Edition Three Moons Cabernet Sauvignon (93)

MERLOT

Winexpert Classic Chilean Merlot (26)

RJS Craft Winemaking Hightail Niagara Merlot (36)

Winexpert Selection Merlot (58)

Winexpert Limited Edition New Zealand Merlot (80)

NEBBIOLO

RJS Craft Winemaking Cru Select Barolo (7)

Winexpert Selection Nebbiolo (14)

RJS Craft Winemaking Cru International Italian Nebbiolo (42)

PINOT NOIR

Winexpert Private Reserve Marlborough New Zealand Pinot Noir (88)

RJS Craft Winemaking En Primeur Australian Pinot Noir (95)

SYRAH/SHIRAZ

Master Vintner Winemaker’s Reserve Shiraz (33)

RJS Craft Winemaking RQ Shiraz Viognier (38)

Winexpert World Vineyard Australian Shiraz (84)

TEMPRANILLO

RJS Craft Winemaking RQ Spanish Tempranillo (15)

Winexpert Classic Tempranillo (64)

ZINFANDEL

RJS Craft Winemaking Winery Series Zinfandel (32)

Cellar Craft Showcase California Zinfandel (34)

RJS Craft Winemaking En Primeur Italian Zinfandel (49)

Winexpert Selection California Zinfandel (54)

Winexpert Limited Edition Eclipse Lodi Old Vine Zinfandel (85)

VineCo Signature Series Zinfandel (92)

OTHER RED VARIETALS

Winexpert Reserve Argentina Malbec (21)

RJS Craft Winemaking RQ Spanish Monastrell (62)

VineCo Atmosphere Sangiovese (96)

RED BLENDS

Winexpert Classic Italian Valroza (17)

Winexpert Eclipse Cabernet Sauvignon Old Vine Zinfandel (19)

Winexpert Limited Edition Pacific Red Quartet (27)

RJS Craft Winemaking RQ Argentina Bonarda Syrah (29)

Winexpert Diablo Rojo (31)

RJS Craft Winemaking Heritage Estates Vieux Château du Roi (37)

RJS Craft Winemaking Chilean Merlot Syrah (41)

Winexpert Limited Edition Lodi Black Cab (44)

Winexpert Reserve Australian Boomerang Red (46)

Winexpert Limited Edition Double Noir (48)

Winexpert Limited Edition Cape Blend (70)

RJS Craft Winemaking En Primeur Super Tuscan (72)

Winexpert Australian Grenache Cabernet Sauvignon (75)

RJS Craft Winemaking Okanagan Meritage (77)

VineCo Passport Union Red (89)

RJS Craft Winemaking Grand Cru Vieux Château du Roi (98)

AMARONE-STYLE BLENDS

RJS Craft Winemaking En Primeur Italian Amarone (16)

Winexpert Eclipse Amarone (79)

RJS Craft Winemaking En Primeur Amarone Classico (81)

Wine Lovers Amarone (99)

CHARDONNAY

RJS Craft Winemaking Australian Chardonnay (24)

Winexpert Private Reserve Dry Creek Valley Sonoma Chardonnay (63)

VineCo Atmosphere Chardonnay (71)

Winexpert Selection Chardonnay (87)

GEWÜRZTRAMINER

Winexpert Reserve Gewürztraminer (52)

Winexpert Eclipse Mosel Valley Gewürztraminer (82)

PINOT GRIGIO/GRIS

Winexpert Vintners Reserve Italian Pinot Grigio (60)

VineCo Original Pinot Grigio (69)

SAUVIGNON BLANC

Winexpert Private Reserve Sauvignon Blanc (28)

Mosti Mondiale AllJuice Sauvignon Blanc (56)

Winexpert Limited Edition Fume Blanc (61)

OTHER WHITE VARIETALS

Winexpert Selection Müller-Thurgau (97)

Cellar Craft Showcase Washington Viognier (100)

WHITE BLENDS

Winexpert Limited Edition Yolo White (50)

Winexpert Limited Edition Pecorino Pinot Grigio (51)

Winexpert Limited Edition Symphony Gewürztraminer (66)

Winexpert Limited Edition Pacifica White (68)

BLUSH/ROSÉ

RJS Craft Winemaking Cru International French Rosé (78)

Winexpert Reserve Australian Grenache Rosé (90)

LATE HARVEST & ICE WINE STYLE

Winexpert Après Late Harvest Riesling Ice Wine (8)

Winexpert Après Peach Ice Wine (22)

PORT STYLE

RJS Craft Winemaking Cru Specialty Port (9)

Winexpert Selection Speciale Port (59)

DESSERT STYLE

RJS Craft Winemaking Cru Specialty Vanilla Fig Dessert Wine (3)

Winexpert Après Dessert Wine (4)

Winexpert Après Chocolate Raspberry Dessert Wine (6)

RJS Craft Winemaking Cru Specialty Black Forest Dessert Wine (10)

RJS Craft Winemaking Cru Specialty Raspberry Mocha Dessert Wine (12)

RJS Craft Winemaking Cru Specialty Toasted Caramel (13)

RJS Craft Winemaking Cru Specialty Crème Brûlée Dessert Wine (18)

Winexpert Après Chocolate Salted Caramel Dessert Wine (23)

GRAPE & NON-GRAPE BLENDS

Winexpert Island Mist Raspberry Dragon Fruit Shiraz (5)

Winexpert Island Mist Peach Apricot Chardonnay (11)

RJS Craft Winemaking Orchard Breezin’ Blackberry Blast Merlot (20)

Winexpert Island Mist Peach Bellini (25)

Winexpert Island Mist Blackberry Cabernet (35)

RJS Craft Winemaking Orchard Breezin’ Rockin’ Raspberry Rosé (39)

Winexpert Island Mist Coconut Yuzu Pinot Gris (40)

Master Vintner Tropical Bliss Merlot Raspberry (45)

Winexpert Island Mist Cucumber Melon Sauvignon Blanc (53)

Winexpert Island Mist Black Cherry Pinot Noir (55)

Winexpert Island Mist Raspberry Peach Sangria (57)

Winexpert Island Mist White Cranberry Pinot Gris (76)

Winexpert Island Mist Blood Orange Sangria (86)

RJS Craft Winemaking Orchard Breezin’ Blush Crush (91)

Winexpert Island Mist Exotic Fruits White Zinfandel (94)

NON-GRAPE COUNTRY WINES

Vintner’s Best Hemp CBD Wine Base (1)

RJS Craft Winemaking Orchard Breezin’ Peach Perfection (2)

Vintner’s Best Blackberry (30)

Vintner’s Best Strawberry (43)

Vintner’s Best Hazy Lemon (67)

Winexpert Island Mist Limited Release Chocolate Orange (83)

PRESERVED IN

Reviving ancient methods to create orange wines

by Phil Plummer

White winemaking as most of us understand it is infant technology. The fresh, lean whites that have come to populate store shelves and restaurant wine lists are made possible by the Atomic Era innovations of inert gas, sterile filtration, and easily-dosed sulfite preparations, to name a few. Seventy-plus years of tradition may seem substantial, but, when you measure it against the unabridged history of winemaking, it doesn’t amount to much.

Fact is, most white wines available today are fragile; absent modern technology, they’d be sitting ducks for a multitude of spoilage mechanisms. The quick-to-bottle, fruit-forward style that has come to dominate white winemaking requires that phenolic extraction be limited; in young wines, an abundance of tannin can sometimes lead to aromatic obscuration and rough texture — characteristics that are typically resolved via bulk aging. However, the absence of wine’s natural bu ers against oxidative and microbial spoilage means that significant winemaker oversight and input are required to prevent disaster.

So were the white wines that preceded our era just plain faulty? Not exactly, but there’s an argument that many of them wouldn’t be considered white by today’s standards. They would, however, fit neatly within the newest category to grace bottle lists worldwide: Orange or amber wines.

SO WHAT IS ORANGE WINE, ANYWAY?

In the simplest sense, orange wines are defined by one key fermentation parameter: Skin contact. Any winemaker can tell you that skin contact, also called maceration, is the identifying step in red and rosé wine production. But, if this step is applied to white grapes, the result is a wine with a deep amber or orange hue.

Orange wines are likely as old as winemaking itself, with the earliest evidence of their production in the Republic of Georgia. For millennia, Georgian winemakers have been macerating white grapes like Rkatsiteli, fermenting and aging in buried terracotta amphorae — traditional vessels known in Georgia as kvevri. This local style was nearly lost under Soviet occupation, as the desire for low-cost

wines behind the Iron Curtain re-oriented the country’s wine industry toward high volume bulk products. A few intrepid Georgian winemakers managed to keep their ancestral tradition alive, and were able to revive it following the collapse of the USSR.

Georgia may be the ancestral home of orange wine, but winemakers along the Italian-Slovenian border are most responsible for the style’s renaissance. Though their region is more commonly associated with fresh, modern Pinot Grigio, the traditional Ramato interpretation of this and a range of other aromatic varieties has been fully embraced by some of the area’s most forward-thinking and celebrated vintners. Drawing inspiration from their success, wineries the world over have begun to incorporate orange wines into their portfolios.

WHY MAKE ORANGE WINE?

Most winemakers have plenty of experience making conventional white wines, but fermenting white grapes on their skins remains an uncharted territory for many. Though the fermentation techniques involved are identical to those employed when

Photo by Charles A. Parker/Images Plus

producing red wine, there are some wrinkles when using grapes not usually processed this way. Is it really worth it? If you’ve made it this far, you may have guessed that the short answer is “yes” — any difficulties encountered while making orange wines are offset by their enhanced aromatic intensity, texture, and ageability.

While modern white wines are often highly aromatic, the olfactory potential of their skin-fermented counterparts is unrivaled. Terpenes, the potent organic compounds responsible for spicy and floral aromas, are typically in their highest concentrations in the tissues nearest a grape’s skins. In conventional white wine production, cold soaking is sometimes employed as a means of amplifying terpene content; carrying this skin contact through fermentation increases terpene extraction. Orange wines made from floral varieties can have some of the most complex noses of any wine you might encounter.

One of the more obvious organoleptic differences between orange and white wines is texture. Skin-fermentation in white grapes brings with it the same grip, weight, and richness expected in red wines. In white grape varieties where textural balance is difficult to achieve, extended maceration often goes a long way toward harmonizing overall mouthfeel.

What orange wines sometimes lack in early drinkability they make up in ageability. The phenolic compounds extracted via skin fermentation can take time to soften, but they’re also natural buffers against oxygen — one of the key ingredients in several wine spoilage mechanisms. A wine’s relationship to oxygen is complicated, to say the very least. Early in the winemaking process, dissolved oxygen is critical for fermentation health, color stability, and graceful tannin polymerization. As aging drags on, however, excess oxygen can damage aromatic compounds, flatten texture, and provide essential conditions for the proliferation of aerobic spoilage yeasts and bacteria. The naturally antioxidant phenolics extracted during extended maceration provide some protec-

tion against these common sources of spoilage, thereby extending the wine’s shelf life.

BRINGING IT HOME: PRODUCING ORANGE WINES IN THE HOME WINERY

Now that some of the unique and attractive attributes of orange wines have been enumerated, it’s time to talk about how they’re made, and, more specifically, how to make texturally-rich, aromatically-vibrant, age-worthy examples in the home winery. Home winemakers who have experience making red wines from whole fruit will recognize this process, but scaling it to grape varieties that aren’t traditionally used for this purpose presents some novel challenges. With careful attention to fruit sourcing, fermentation management, and aging strategy, the winemaker can deftly navigate said challenges to produce soulful wines with excellent cellaring potential.

Fruit Sourcing

The defining characteristic of orange wines is that they’re fermented on skins — this necessitates that they be made from whole fruit. Unfortunately, this is not a production style that is compatible with juice buckets or wine kits. Dealing with whole fruit brings its own challenges, but close consideration of a few key parameters can help the winemaker to maximize the potential of the grapes, making those challenges entirely worthwhile. Starting with suitable varieties and working with ripe, clean fruit are the foundation of any great orange wine, and winemakers who prioritize these factors will be set up for success at every step of the process.

Just about any white or pink grape variety may be used to make an orange wine, but some varieties are tailor-made for this style. Traditionally, vinifera varieties like Rkatsiteli, Pinot Grigio, and Friulano have been the favored grapes grown in orange wine’s ancestral hotbeds. However, as this tradition has spread from Georgia and Friuli, winemakers around the world have applied this production strategy to the white grapes present

in their respective regions, often with tremendous results.

For winemakers looking to try orange wine production, Chardonnay is an excellent starting point. Even in white wine, Chardonnay is subjected to many classic red winemaking techniques like malolactic fermentation and oak aging; producing skin-fermented Chardonnay just adds another layer of complexity and allows a winemaker to ease into the orange wine category.

Floral varieties like Gewürztraminer and Viognier also have enormous potential as orange wines. Extended skin contact makes for more effective extraction of floral terpenes, which in turn makes for aromatical-

This Pinot Grigio orange wine had six days of skin contact. It was made by Movia in one of the hotbeds of orange wine production, the Goriška Brda region along the Italy-Slovenia border. In fact the border runs right through Movia’s vineyards pictured in the background of this photo.

ly intense wines, bursting with complexity. Additionally, the increased phenolic extraction gained from this technique may help to address some of the off-balance phenolic issues commonly seen in aromatic varieties that are traditionally subjected to cold soaking.

While vinifera varieties have been used to deliberately produce orange wine for centuries, this category is one where hybrid grape varieties really shine. Aromatic hybrids like Traminette, Valvin Muscat, and LaCrescent are all capable of producing layered, complex orange wines. Even labrusca varieties like Catawba gain compelling levels of dimension when fermented on skins. One added ben-

efit of using hybrids for orange wine production is their unique phenolic chemistry; tannins are often found in lower concentration in hybrid wines, allowing for less bulk aging prior to packaging.

Skin fermentation of white grapes requires slightly different ripeness parameters than conventional white wine production. In modern white winemaking, phenolic extraction is relatively limited, so the winemaker may make harvest decisions that prioritize bright acidity over full phenolic ripeness. If underripe grapes are used for orange winemaking, however, the coarse, undeveloped tannins may have a negative impact on both flavor and texture. One of

the simplest ways to evaluate phenolic ripeness in grapes is to look at and chew the seeds: When ripe, the seeds will be brown, crispy, and easy to separate from the grape pulp; if the grapes aren’t ripe, their seeds will be yellow-green, hard to chew, and will often be contained in a pectin sac, independent of the rest of the grape flesh.

Fruit cleanliness is of paramount importance when producing orange wines. Vineyard infections like sour rot and Botrytis can negatively affect the finished wine. The oxidation and volatile acidity produced by these spoilage vectors are unpleasant from both aromatic and flavor standpoints. Additionally, Botrytis can oxidize and

degrade polyphenols, damaging the texture and ageability of wines produced from infected fruit. In conventional white winemaking, the impact of these rots may be mitigated via careful press fractioning and juice fining, but skin fermentations do not afford the winemaker these options. Starting with clean must is, well, a must.

Fermentation Management

Once grapes have been selected and harvested, the focus of the orange winemaking process shifts to its characteristic skin fermentation. Skin fermentations require a high level of winemaker input, but elements of that input may be adjusted to suit the stylistic goals of the finished product. An orange wine’s style can be shaped by yeast strain selection, cap management, maceration length, and press fractioning.

Though orange wines are a staple of the natural wine community, more consistent, manageable fermentations can be had through the use of commercial yeasts. Commercial yeast strains have unique enzymatic activities that may be leveraged in order to reach the stylistic targets of the winemaker. A variety of commercial strains like Lalvin’s W15, ICV-GRE, ICV-D254, 71B-1122, and Anchor’s Exotics Mosaic are equally as effective in both white and red wine fermentations, so they’re natural fits for orange wine production. 71B-1122 and Exotics Mosaic (which isn’t available in increments below 250 g, unless you can find a shop that breaks it up) have the added benefit of malic acid metabolism; the acid profiles of orange wines are sometimes difficult to balance, and removing some malic acid via primary or malolactic fermentation goes a long way toward harmonizing the flavor and texture of the finished wine. Using commercial yeast also allows the winemaker to tailor fermentation parameters around the ideal temperature range and nutrient demand of the selected strain, thereby ensuring fermentation health and limiting reductive off-odors.

Once fermenting, the grape skins

Winemakers along the Italian-Slovenian border are most responsible for the orange wine renaissance.

will float to the top of the fermenting vessel and form a cap, as in red wine production. Left unattended the cap will dry out, limiting extraction and presenting an excellent breeding ground for spoilage vectors like fruit flies. Regularly submerging the cap optimizes extraction and minimizes opportunities for contamination. This can be achieved in a home winery setting via regular punchdowns or stirring, breaking up, and wetting the skins. In some cases a rack and return — where the juice is removed from under the cap to a second vessel before being poured back onto the skins to resuspend them — may be employed to increase oxygen saturation and promote tannin polymerization. The frequency of cap management actions has a direct impact on the composition of the wine, but a standard protocol of twice per day will help to limit the possibility of spoilage while increasing this frequency will improve extraction.

The amount of time that an orange wine spends on its skins has a direct effect on its flavor, aroma, and texture. Longer skin contact makes for greater extraction of flavor and aromatic compounds, but extending maceration also extends the scope of winemaker intervention and can also have implications for the amount of aging the wine will need to see before it’s ready to package and drink. A cap may continue to form on the top of the fermentation and will need to be managed for as long as it persists. If the winemaker is looking to produce a leaner, lighter, quicker-drinking wine, macerations may be limited to a week or less; if looking to produce a richer, more age-worthy wine, macerations may extend for several weeks or months.

Eventually, all orange wines need to be separated from their skins via pressing. The amount of pressure that is applied to achieve this has a profound influence on the texture of the wine. Wine extracted at low pressure generally exhibits fresher acidity and softer tannins than the richer, coarser wine extracted at higher pressures. The winemaker can employ press fractioning — limiting pressure

or separating low and high pressure juice — and then blending press fractions as a way to shape textural balance prior to bulk aging.

Aging Strategy

Immediately post-pressing, orange wines are often texturally coarse and aromatically reductive, requiring bulk aging to soften and wake up prior to packaging. The stylistic goals of the winemaker will determine what length and type of aging is required to bring the wine into balance ahead of bottling. Additionally, the winemaker may decide to employ or avoid fining and/or filtration in pursuit of the desired style.

Bulk aging as it pertains to orange wine production is all about refining both texture and aroma; this is accomplished by managing the wine’s relationship to oxygen, which catalyzes tannin polymerization and reacts with reductive sulfur compounds to make them less apparent. The aging vessel type and time are both factors that can affect oxygen transfer. Aging in glass carboys, if they’re topped up appropriately, has the effect of excluding oxygen — perfect for fresher, quicker-to-drink wines, but also great for wines that will be kept in bulk for several months or years. Oak barrels or plastic polymer vessels like FlexTank will allow some oxygen transfer, helping to soften more tannic wines over time. Oak vessels may also contribute tannins that can flesh out mouthfeel and fill gaps in the wine, if necessary. The amount of time needed for aging really comes down to personal preference — the winemaker should taste the aging wine at regular intervals to evaluate its organoleptic properties, moving toward packaging when the aromatic, flavor, and textural balances are judged to be in harmony.

Fining and filtration may also be used to affect the aging process and shape the profile of an orange wine. Proteinaceous fining agents like gelatin or egg white may be used to refine tannin structure quickly, and may have the added benefit of clarification. Filtration is also an effective means of achieving visual clar-

ity and textural fine-tuning in these wines. However, fining and filtration may also have detrimental effects on mouthfeel and complexity, robbing wines of their natural structure and removing an opportunity to pick up additional weight from lees contact. As texture is one of the defining features that distinguishes orange wines from their white counterparts, there is a strong argument to be made for avoiding these steps entirely. There is a strong commercial precedent for unfined, unfiltered orange wines that exhibit some haze in the bottle; the necessity of clarification is purely a matter of winemaker preference.

CONCLUSIONS

As is often the case in the wine world, the renaissance of orange wines reminds us that pre-modern winemakers don’t always get the credit they deserve. In the absence of the technologies that many of us take for granted, they managed to produce complex, soulful, age-worthy wines from unexpected grape varieties. Guided simply by intuition and tradition, they understood their white grapes in a way that modern winemakers are just now rediscovering.

With today’s orange wines gaining commercial success and critical acclaim, it’s only natural that home winemakers should want to try their hand at skin fermenting white grapes. Any home winery that is set up to crush and press whole fruit already has all of the necessary tools to explore this alluring and ancient winemaking technique. With proper attention to fruit selection, fermentation, and aging, experienced home winemakers can produce layered wines that will last and develop for many years.

So if you’re looking to try something new that isn’t really new, give orange wine a try. It’ll fill you with a renewed appreciation for the winemakers of the past and a new perspective on the white grape varieties you already know. You don’t need a fancy amphora to start; just white grapes, some elbow grease, attention to a few key details, and a willingness to let your senses be your guide.

VALPOLICELLA

D rawing i nspiration from a ncient i talian w inemaking t echniques

by Gian Pietro Carrozza

inemaking traditions have been passed down for as long as wine has been made, yet there are still a lot of regional traditions, techniques, and styles that have largely been overlooked worldwide. Traditional winemaking practices from the Old World can still be looked at as a source of inspiration for contemporary oenology worldwide, including home winemaking. One such example is the wines from Italy’s Valpolicella wine region.

Four different wines are often derived from a single vineyard in this region. The technique of drying the grapes and making passito wines (or straw wines) and the technique of ripasso will be described in more depth in this article. Obviously, the particular conditions that favor the development of these wines cannot be easily reproduced in many regions globally, but even if not fully adopted, these techniques could give useful hints to winemakers and contribute to understanding successful oenological products.

THE VALPOLICELLA WINE ZONE

The mildly curved hills in the wine zone Valpolicella, in the northwestern Veneto region, host a landscape of vineyards mixed with cherries and olive trees. This wine zone stretches between the Garda Lake and the province of Vicenza, just north of the city of Verona.

Two internationally famous and prestigious red wines are grown here: the dry red wine Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG and the sweet red dessert wine Recioto della Valpolicella DOCG. DOCG means “controlled and guaranteed designation of origin”; it is usually the higher quality designation of origin of a wine by the Italian law.

Other red wines produced in this zone are Valpolicella Ripasso DOC and Valpolicella DOC, both being more affordable and easy-to-drink. DOC means “controlled designation of origin”; it is less stringent than DOCG, and usually implies a lower quality at a more affordable price.

The Valpolicella vineyards are

protected northward by the Lessini Mountains and are mostly exposed southward. The climate is mild, a near-Mediterranean one, also for the proximity to Garda Lake, which mitigates both the lower temperatures in winter and the heat spikes in summer.

Vineyard elevation is limited, not higher than 1,650 feet (500 m). The rainfall fluctuates from 33–39 inches (850–1,000 mm) annually.

The territory in Valpolicella is formed by a fan of valleys departing from Verona, with varied geological origin. Three different kinds of soils are primarily found:

• Loam or clay limestone low soils at the bottom of valleys.

• Calcareous sandstone high soils on the ridges.

• Sloping marly soils mostly terraced. Soil of volcanic origin can be found as well.

Three sub-zones can be distinguished in this region:

• To the west, the Classico sub-zone, which is the most regarded and traditional. Wines grown in this territory, where quality is considered to be the best, will often mention Classico on the label and usually have higher price points.

• Centrally, the sub-zone of Valpantena, a narrow valley of alluvial origin, connects Verona to the Lessini mountains. Wines from grapes grown in this region often mention Valpantena on the label.

• To the east is a recently added area, in part overlapping the Soave wine zone, towards the city of Vicenza. The higher quality of the Classico sub-zone is thought to depend on the altitude (up to 2,000 feet/600 m), the better aspect of the vineyards, and the closeness to the lake. The sandy and extremely calcareous soils in the Classico sub-zone play a crucial role as well, because they allow for better water drainage, which is a noteworthy factor in the quality of the grapes. In addition to the sub-zone sometimes included on labels, another descriptor sometimes seen is Superiore, which indicates the wine has a higher alcohol content and has been aged for at least one year.

The four wines from Valpolicella share the same territory, the same varieties, and in most cases the same vineyards. Usually the bunches are selected during the harvest: The best grapes are picked for the more regarded wines (Amarone and Recioto), while the standard ones are used for Valpolicella or Valpolicella Ripasso.

Wine in Valpolicella is mostly produced by small family-run farms, where vintners grow and transform their grapes; frequently they also provide accommodation for tourists.

THE WINE GRAPE VARIETIES IN VALPOLICELLA

The grape varieties used to produce these wines are: Corvina, the dominant grape (45–95% by law), Corvinone (or great Corvina), similar to Corvina, which can substitute the bunches of Corvina (up to 50%), and Rondinella (up to 30%).

Other red varieties can be involved, according to the law, at maximum usage of 15%; among these, an important role is played by the Bordeaux varieties, with which some

Wines from the Classico sub-zone in the west of the Valpolicella wine region are often of the highest quality.

Photo by Shutterstock.com

vintners enrich their blend.

Corvina and Corvinone confer primarily a basic tannic structure, while Rondinella especially contributes to color. Corvina is medium-late maturing, perfectly in balance with the cool climate of the zone. It is mostly cultivated with the traditional pergola, a high-vines trellising system, which benefits from a better exposure to the sun and an increasing airflow through the foliage. At maturation, the Corvina grapes give the blend spicy notes (cinnamon, cloves) and aromas of red fruit (cherry and black cherry).

AMARONE DELLA VALPOLICELLA DOCG

Amarone is a dry red passito wine. It was before the Second World War that the technique used for Recioto was modified in order to obtain Amarone: A dry wine, more alcoholic than Recioto and as complex as it can be due

to the changes involved in the drying of the berries and the maturation in barrels.

Some important points qualify the procedures to make this highly regarded and expensive wine:

• The yield must be less than 4.9 tons per acre (12 tons per hectare).

• The hand-picked bunches are selected in the vineyard.

• The grapes are dried for as long as 120 days; by law the fermentation cannot take place before December 1.

• The fermentation lasts very long, because the yeasts and the malolactic bacteria must overcome difficult conditions such as the high sugar content and the low temperatures (the months of December and January are the coldest of the year). For this reason, selected microbial cultures are usually necessary.

• The resulting wine, deep and bold, must be aged for at least two years in

wood (four years in the case of Riserva); large oak barrels or French barriques are used.

The selection at harvest, usually during the first half of October, aims at collecting only the best bunches that have the berries not too close to each other, in order to favor air circulation. The drying period lasts from 60 to 120 days. The traditional method is very simple: The bunches are layered on straw beds in airy rooms, where mild temperatures in the range of 59–68 °F (15–20 °C) and low humidity are required. The use of special conditioning systems is permitted by the wine law.

The drying period modifies the characteristics of the grapes, in which water decreases (up to 50%), the sugar content increases, and the malic acid content decreases. Additionally, proteins undergo a partial hydrolysis and anaerobic chemical reactions produce new substances. These changes increase the complexity of the wine, improve structure, and produce new aromas and amino acids. The complete fermentation results in a wine of 14–16% ABV.

Amarone is a great wine for aging, but its fruity aromas, particularly cherry and black currant, and its supple tannins, guarantee great results in the first years of storage as well.

RECIOTO DELLA

VALPOLICELLA

DOCG

Recioto is a sweet red passito wine, boasting ancient tradition in this wine zone.

As to the process of winemaking, it follows the same course as Amarone: It uses the same varieties, same vineyards, as well as the same picking and drying method. The big difference is that the fermentation is stopped prior to the yeast consuming all of the sugars; resulting in a wine that is mildly sweet.

VALPOLICELLA RIPASSO DOC

This dry red wine falls somewhere between Amarone and Valpolicella wine, through a technique used to create it is very unique. It is a Valpolicella wine, made from the secondary grapes that are not selected for

Grapes dried to make Amarone or Recioto wines are carefully spread out to maximize airflow. A final sorting out of damaged grapes is done as well.

drying, but it benefits from the residual dried grapes coming from the maceration of Amarone or Recioto. To produce this wine, during winter, fermented pomace from batches of Amarone or Recioto is added to a standard Valpolicella wine for some days (ripasso means “using again”). This second fermentation adds phenolic substances and aromas that had been originated from the drying process. The Valpolicella Ripasso DOC is more concentrated and complex than the Valpolicella DOC.

Sales of this younger brother of Amarone have increased a lot in recent years, perhaps due to its compromise between high quality and affordable price.

VALPOLICELLA DOC

This is a light, freshly acidic red wine for everyday consumption, to be drunk young. It is often compared to French Beaujolais, showing aromas of blueberry and sour cherry.

MAKE PASSITO WINE AT HOME

Let’s run through the steps home winemakers can take to make wines similar to Amarone or Recioto at home. From selecting grapes and drying them all the way through fermentation and wine maturation.

Varieties in North America that Might be Dried

Red varieties available in North America are suitable for drying if they are not susceptible to sour rot and are not tight clustered. For instance, Pinot Noir is susceptible to sour rot, however Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Zinfandel are all suited to the withering process.

Sour rot is a pre-harvest decay of the berries that tend to turn brown, soften, and eventually break down. It is of major concern for fruit and wine quality. The causes of sour rot are splits in the berry skin, often not visible, in the late period of ripening. Above all, any excess of rain prior to harvest causes berries to swell from the entrance of water. Then, the skin cracks under the pressure, especially in the case of varieties with tightly packed bunches. Insects like fruit flies, as well as various spoilage microorganisms like bacteria, yeasts, and fungi, penetrate the wounds. Ethanol produced by yeast is converted into acetic acid; the odor of vinegar is a diagnostic key to identifying the sour rot disease. Other berries are also affected because the juice can exit the berries and spread over the bunch. In the meantime, the odor of vinegar and the presence of sugars attract

other insects. During bunch selection for drying it is crucial to sort out rotten bunches that smell of vinegar.

Selecting the Grapes

If you grow your own grapes then you can prune your vineyard for the purpose of making passito wines. In order to lower the productivity and improve quality, thinning of the bunches is advisable prior to harvest. At harvest, only the best bunches that will be dried should be selected and handpicked in order to make passito wines. Any bunches that have damaged and rotten grapes, and those with apparent fungal attacks, should be left out. The remaining bunches that are not selected are destined to more ordinary red wine, better suited for early consumption.

The bunches destined to drying should be sound and loosely packed. As they are sorted and spread in a single layer to improve air flow, a check and removal of the rotten bunches should be repeated also at this stage. The berries should be perfectly ripe, with mature tannins, capable of the transformations that are expected during the dehydration.

Drying the Grapes

The skin of the grapes is made of an

Low humidity and temperatures from 59–68 °F (15–20 °C) in controlled environments allow for a long, slow dehydration process.

A CASE STUDY ON THE WINEMAKING OF AMARONE

In order to better specify the procedure for making a dry passito wine, an example from a case study on Amarone della Valpolicella is detailed as follows:

1. Harvest happens in the second half of September. At this point the sugar content of the grapes is from 17–18 °Brix and the acidity is 6.3–6.9 g/L.

2. Sound bunches, without wounds or fungal attacks, were picked, carefully combed through, and then placed in the withering facilities for the dehydration.

3. In winter, when water loss reached about 30%, the grapes were layered on sorting tables in order to leave rotten berries out. Then they were destemmed and crushed.

4. Sulfur dioxide was added at a rate of 5 g/hL (0.05 g/L).

5. Commercial yeasts (carefully

external epidermis plus six to ten layers of cells. The epidermis is covered with the cuticle, a non-living layer; an outer layer of wax protects against fungal pathogens and mechanical injuries. During the drying period, water is partially lost through the berries’ skin due to an increase of heat while the sugar content increases due to the loss of water.

The terms withering, dehydration, raisining, and drying are used to name similar processes. The water loss is the common trait of a series of methods, which can have different purposes: The production of raisins for table consumption, the winemaking of dessert passito wines or dry passito wines, or the second fermentation of a wine with withered grapes.

There are actually a few drying methods that can be used by home winemakers. The first option is to allow the drying to be done on-vine (late-harvest). If you go this route, the picking is postponed after ripening in order to let the bunches with-

selected for difficult fermentation conditions) were added and fermentation started in stainless steel containers. The must temperature was controlled between 77–86 °F (25–30 °C) throughout fermentation.

6. Malolactic bacteria were also added after the first day of fermentation. Two daily punchdowns of the cap improved the maceration.

7. The fermentation was stopped at a residual sugar level between 3.5 and 7.0 g/L (dry wine).

8. The pomace was pressed, and the pressed wine was added to the free run wine.

9. After a second addition of sulfites (2–4 g/hL SO2, or 0.02–0.04 g/L), the wine was moved to glass containers and left at low temperatures for tartaric stabilization.

10. After filtering, the wine was bottled in mid-January.

er during fall. When the desired water loss is reached, the bunches are picked and pressed.

A second, off-vine method, involves grapes being harvested at maturation and then drying the bunches in the sun prior to destemming and pressing. This traditional off-vine drying method, typical of warm or hot climates is still widely adopted in Mediterranean countries — in particular Greece, Italy, and Spain. The berries or the bunches are laid on sheets in a thin layer over the ground and directly exposed to sunlight. It is a rapid way of drying, suitable for the production of raisins. Temperature rises greatly, and water loss is fast. The color of the berries can be partially deteriorated due to the sun exposure. When this method is used to make passito sweet wines, the varietal aromatic compounds can be easily oxidized and lost. Only the aromas of honey, dried figs, and dried apricots are usually perceived in the resulting dessert wine.

The most suitable method for making quality passito wine is shade drying — the method adopted in Valpolicella. It is a natural off-vine method under controlled conditions, in which the ambient air is the main source of the required heat. The amount of heat is limited, so the process is slow (2–3 months), and the color of the berries is conserved. The bunches are dried in ventilated closed facilities, where they are thin-layered horizontally on plastic boxes, wooden or wire shelves, or canes.

This method requires particular environmental conditions: Low humidity and temperatures from 59–68 °F (15 and 20 °C). Rainy and cold climates during fall do not lend themselves to this method. These conditions allow a long dehydration process in which water loss is accompanied by the berry senescence stress. The low temperatures are crucial to obtain this stress: The death of the berry cells is delayed, and some metabolic changes take place. In particular,

anaerobic fermentation and amino acids catabolism occur. The evolution of the tannins is often reached, improving the flavor of the wine. New aromas are formed, and the varietal aromatic substances, such as the terpenes, are preserved. The wine quality is enhanced due to the increase of its complexity.

During the dehydration, attention must be paid to avoid the onset of sour rot. Any bunches that are damaged should be removed.

When the water loss has reached 20–30% of the initial mass, the grapes are destemmed and crushed.

Fermentation

After crushing, the must is fermented. The added yeast cultures should be suitable for fermentation in difficult conditions because the sugar level is high, usually more than 27%. The yeasts should also produce low levels of acetic acid and ferment to a high alcohol content (at least 18%). The ability to ferment at low temperatures could be important as well. A couple of recommendations available to home winemakers are Lalvin EC1118 and Red Star Premier Blanc.

The fermentation lasts 1–2 months. To make a sweet passito wine the yeast activity should be stopped early, so as to keep an adequate level of residual sugar. If the fermentation is prolonged, the wine will end up dry, requiring the winemaker to change the type of wine they make or resort to backsweetening.

Wine Maturation

The passito wine can be consumed early, or can be aged in wooden containers that improve the sensory profile. The maturation of Amarone wine is generally carried out in big oak barrels in order to limit the contribution of wood-to-wine aroma.

During aging, wine aroma is modified by various chemical reactions depending on wine composition and on environmental conditions. Tasting reports of young wines of Amarone often describe cherry and spicy aromas, while balsamic and tobacco notes are commonly associated with the aged wines.

THE RIPASSO TECHNIQUE

The leftover fermented pomace from the dried grapes can be added to another wine, for instance the ordinary wine that has been made from the bunches that were not selected in the passito wine production. This addition causes a second fermentation, due to the yeasts still present in the pomace. The skins release tannins and aromas.

The ripasso method gives the wine softer acidity and greater complexity and structure. It also makes the wine suitable for aging in barrels for some months.

Bringing this all home for amateur winemakers — there are a lot of unique winemaking techniques used by winemakers in Valpolicella that we can learn from. Whether looking for new flavor and aroma combinations from the grapes in your backyard vineyard or just looking to try something new next harvest, there is merit to these Old World techniques that are still used today.

REFERENCES:

• Barata A., Malfeito-Ferreira M., Louriero V., 2012. Changes in sour rotten grape berry microbiota during ripening and wine fermentation. Int. Journal of Food Microbiology, vol. 154.

• Barata A., Malfeito-Ferreira M., Louriero V., 2012. The microbial ecology of wine grape berries. Int. Journal of Food Microbiology, vol. 153.

• Bellincontro A. et al., 2016. Management of post-harvest grape withering

to optimize the aroma of the final wine: A case study on Amarone. Food Chemistry, vol. 213.

• D’Onofrio C., Bellincontro A., Accordini D., Mencarelli F., 2019. Malic Acid as a Potential Marker for the Aroma Compounds of Amarone Winegrape Varieties in Withering, American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, vol. 70.

• Dall’Asta C., Cirlini M., Morini E., Galaverna G., 2011. Brand-dependent volatile fingerprint of Italian wines from Valpolicella. Journal of Chromatography 1218:7557-7565.

• Mencarelli F., Bellincontro A., 2020. Recent advances in post-harvest technology of the wine grape to improve the wine aroma. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, vol. 100.

• Paronetto L., Dellaglio F., 2011.

Chapter 9 - Amarone: A Modern Wine Coming from an Ancient Production Technology. Advances in Food and Nutrition Research, Vol. 63.

• Pérez-Coello M.S., Diaz-Maroto M.C., 2009. Volatile compounds and wine aging. Wine chemistry and biochemistry a cura di M.V. Moreno-Arribas e M.C. Polo. Springer, pp.295-311.

• Slaghenaufi D., Peruch E., De Cosmi M., Nouvelet L., Ugliano M., 2021. Volatile and phenolic composition of monovarietal red wines of Valpolicella appellations. OENO One vol. 55, n.1.

• Wang J. et al., 2016. Grape drying: current status and future trends (ch. 7). Grape and Wine Biotechnology, ed. by A. Morata and I. Loira.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.com

When 20–30 percent of the water content has been lost from the drying grapes they are then destemmed and crushed. By Italian law, this cannot happen prior to December 1.

TECHNIQUES

BY BOB PEAK

VERSATILE VINO Using

wine in other hobbies

Mostly, we make wine at home to enjoy drinking it. We share it with friends and family, make pairings with special foods, and maybe even take it along to a potluck party to let new friends try a taste. Beyond the delightful consumption of our wonderful adult beverages, we may also enter them in competitions, perhaps winning medals or ribbons while gaining valuable feedback on our work. But is one hobby ever enough? Today we will visit other DIY things to do with some of your homemade wine.

VINEGAR

Homemade vinegar is an obvious starting point. Making wine vinegar is one of the simplest hobby extensions out there. Buy yourself a wide-mouth gallon (3.8-L) jar and an eight-ounce (237-mL) bottle of vinegar starter or “mother.” The mother is simply a stable live culture of Acetobacter bacteria, the aerobic microorganisms that turn ethanol into acetic acid. Pour the mother into the gallon (3.8-L) jar and, using the bottle the mother came in, add two measures of homemade wine plus one of chlorine-free water. Adding the water lowers the alcohol level to make it easier for the bacteria to get started. Cover the gallon (3.8-L) fermenter with clean muslin to keep dust out but allow air in. Set in a warm place (not your winemaking space!) and allow to sit for a month or two. When it smells like vinegar, it’s vinegar. You can take out some and replace it for a new batch with diluted wine, or go ahead and build up to a full gallon (3.8 L) by adding 2 quarts (1.9 L) of wine and 1 quart (0.95 L) of water. In another month

or two, you will have vinegar again, suitable for bottling and using or sharing with winemaking friends to help them make vinegar, too. Mothers are typically available in white wine and red wine, with color being the only distinction. Use a red-wine mother to make red wine vinegar or a white-wine mother for white wine, Champagne, cider, or malt (beer) vinegars. A final thing to note is that it is advisable to use separate equipment for vinegar instead of your usual winemaker funnels, bungs, or the like.

APERITIFS

A beverage extension you can add to your winemaking is to turn some of those wines into aperitifs. Served alone at cocktail hour or blended into cocktails with other ingredients, such liqueurs offer a wide range of fruity and spicy aromas and flavors. The basic method I use is to infuse selected spices and fruits in enough high-proof alcohol to provide the fortification of my dry wine up to typical aperitif level of around 16 to 20% alcohol by volume (ABV). After a week or so of soaking, I run the extract through a coffee filter and add it to my wine. The ratio of wine to infused spirits is calculated using the Pearson’s Square formula. For details on that, and suggestions on making sweet vermouth and an entirely original cranberry beverage, check out my article at https:// winemakermag.com/article/aperitifs. After you make either a classic or original aperitif, exercise your creativity further by mixing up some cocktails. Family and friends will be happy to help you evaluate them.

DISTILLATION

If you are fortunate enough to live

Use a red-wine mother to make red wine vinegar or a whitewine mother for white wine, Champagne, cider, or malt (beer) vinegars.

Columnist and Renaissance man Bob Peak and his wife, Marty White, sporting their tie-dyed shirts made from a Zinfandel/Petite Sirah blend.

Photos courtesy of Bob Peak

in a place that allows home distilling, brandy provides another beverage option to extend from your winemaking. In the U.S. or Canada, you need a license or permit from the government, but there are locations where home distilling is a popular hobby. If you get a still, be sure to follow the manufacturer’s instructions when using it. Those instructions will generally include discarding the first and last portions of distillate, which will respectively be higher in methanol and fusel alchohols than the rest of the product. If you are distilling homemade wine that is about 12% ABV, each 750-mL bottle holds the potential to yield about 90 mL (3 oz.) of pure alcohol. At the lowest boiling point for a solution of water and alcohol—like wine—the ethanol in the distillate is about 96%. You can check the actual results from your still with a proof and tralle hydrometer, which works like the sugar hydrometer you already use for fermentation. For barrel aging, the raw alcohol from the still is often diluted or “cut” with pure water to about 70% or 140 proof. The “brandy” is clear and colorless from the still and acquires its brown color and oaky, vanilla flavors from aging in a charred oak barrel. With all that in mind, if you want to fill a 5-gallon (19-L) charred oak barrel with 140 proof brandy for aging, you will need to distill about 149 bottles or 121⁄2 cases of wine. Yes, that’s a lot of wine, but if you then cut the aged brandy to 86 proof (43% ABV) with pure water for pleasant consumption, your little barrel of high proof will yield about 8.2 gallons (31 L) or 41 750mL bottles of finished brandy. Alternatively, charred oak alternatives can be used if a barrel is not available.

COOKING WITH WINE

Moving beyond beverage applications, there is a whole world of marinating and cooking possibilities for your homemade wine. There are long-time classic dishes that even include wine in the name, like beef bourguignon and coq au vin. Instead of Burgundy in the former, I use my own estate-grown Pinot Noir. And when my wife, Marty White, makes coq au vin, she likes to use a white wine instead of red, especially if I have a homemade Viognier or Sauvignon Blanc in the cellar. Whenever I make a stew with beef, lamb, or veal I add a half-cup to a cup (118-237 mL) of red wine to it. When Marty makes red meat sauce for spaghetti or lasagna, she does the same. My chicken piccata sauce always includes a little bit of white wine along with butter and lemon juice. I also like to use white wine to deglaze the roasting pan for chicken or turkey gravy. Because I have a rosemary bush growing just a few feet from my gas grill,

I like to tie some sprigs to the handle of a wooden spoon with kitchen twine to make a rosemary “brush.” Then I use that to apply a mixture of red wine and butter to lamb chops as they grill. For that one, I look for the heaviest homemade red wine in my cellar, currently a 2015 field blend of Zinfandel and Petite Sirah.

CHEESEMAKING

I also like to use a deeply colored red when I make a homemade cheese with wine. This category of cheeses is sometimes called “drunken cheese” to indicate that it has spent time in a bath of wine or other alcohol. Cabra al Vino is a mild, semi-hard pressed cheese made from goat’s milk and aged in red wine. Since Marty doesn’t like goat’s-milk cheese, I developed a similar recipe I call Queijo de Vinho using cow’s milk. The tangy, wine-soaked outer surface contrasts beautifully with the firm white curd when you cut into it and the wonderful pairing of wine and cheese is right there in one dish. Both recipes can be found at the website of the fermentation store where I used to be part owner, www.thebeveragepeople.com. To find them, click on Menu, then How-to & Recipes, then Cheesemaking, and finally Cheesemaking Recipes. Elsewhere, you can find home cheesemaking recipes for versions that soak the curds in red wine first, then press them into a beautifully marbled wheel. If you really want to get adventurous, you might try a home version of Italy’s Occelli al Barolo. That cheese is aged for several months, then for two more months after coating with pressed Barolo grape must. As a home winemaker, you may have an opportunity to make this truly unique food product since you have leftover grape must and most of your friends and neighbors do not.

HOMEMADE SAUSAGE

Another of my favorite hobbies that includes some homemade wine is making sausage. I covered my basic techniques and included a couple of recipes in the AugustSeptember 2021 issue of WineMaker. Not all of the sausages I make include wine, but many do. Most sausage recipes include a small amount of added liquid. In the magazine article, that was red wine for both Italian sausage and Portuguese sausage (linguiça). If I am not adding wine, there’s a good chance I will be adding homemade beer or vinegar instead. To make link sausages at home, you will need a grinder and a stuffer, or a combination unit that does both. Most recipes are similar. You cube, season, and grind meat and then stuff it into casings. From there, sausages may be

This category of cheeses is sometimes called ‘drunken cheese’ to indicate that it has spent time in a bath of wine or other alcohol.

smoked, dried, or just cooked from fresh or frozen. If this hobby intrigues you, check out that previous article https:// winemakermag.com/article/making-sausage-at-home.

FASHION?

As I was making a list of the hobbies that I use wine in, Marty suggested a new one: Wine tie-dye! Sure enough, it’s

a thing. We found a guide for using red wine to make your own customized tie-dye T-shirt on the website of a familiar winery. When we attended the 2019 WineMaker Magazine Conference in Traverse City, Michigan, we made a point of visiting some local wineries to do some tasting. One of those was Chateau Grand Traverse, a few miles north on the Old Mission Peninsula from Traverse City. We had a lovely tasting experience, enjoying the views of their vineyards and grounds. So when we went looking for a guide to wine tie dying, we were delighted to find this link: https:// cgtwines.com/diy-tie-dye-wine-chateau-grand-traverse/. We started with a couple of new 100% cotton T-shirts and used rubber bands to make patterns on the shirts. I went to the wine cellar to find a nice, dark wine and decided on the Zinfandel/Petite Sirah field blend previously mentioned. Although Chateau Grand Traverse notes that you can use some leftover wine, we wanted to make sure we got enough depth to submerge both shirts. I poured four bottles totaling three liters into a 4-quart stainless steel pot. We boiled the wine, turned off the heat, and sank the shirts. After six hours of soaking, we took them out to dry. Over the next few days, we followed the rest of the steps of ironing, rinsing, and hand-washing in Woolite. We are very happy with the results and you can see us modeling them in our vineyard in the photo included on page 46. That’s all the wine-using hobbies for now, but I’m sure more will come up in the future. I’ll keep you posted.

Not many people think of adding wine to sausage, but the flavors it can add as well as the acidity it provides can lend a lot of character to your homemade sausage links.

EVALUATING WINE

Being mindful of the sensory experience

What’s the best part about making wine? Perhaps the answer is obvious: Tasting it! We spend lots of time educating ourselves about winemaking, maybe about winegrowing or regional differences and so on, but I feel tasting itself is often ignored, and is rarely intentionally studied or practiced in any systematic or focused way. Here we will go over the most critical aspects of tasting: Taste vs. smell, our taste/smell receptors, how tastes affect each other, where tastes/aromas come from, and the trajectories of their intensities over time in a wine, as well as some tips and tricks for how to best do it. All of this is important to have a complete understanding of what is going on in a wine.

THE MOUTH

To start off, a note about the word “taste.” Most of what we commonly refer to as taste (or flavor) is actually not taste at all, but aroma. Taste specifically refers to the five flavors that we actually have tastebuds for perceiving: Sweet, salt, sour (acid), bitter, and umami. Tastebuds are distributed around our tongue (and even around the mouth and upper esophagus). Thus, while a wine can taste acidic or bitter, it cannot taste “floral” or “fruity” or like “cherries,” as those are smells. Now, I regularly use the word taste incorrectly when referring to wine — I’m not suggesting we revise our use of it, and will use it in this loose sense in this article somewhat — but it is an important distinction to make in your mind when understanding what you’re experiencing.

Fruity wines are also often thought of as being sweet and may trick our brains into perceiving a wine as sweet. It’s common for people to refer to (or ask for) sweeter wines, when in fact they are thinking of dry, fruity wines. Any-

thing that is a smell is something we pick up with our nose — whether we are smelling it in a glass, while the wine is in our mouth, or as finish (retro-nasally, as the aromas creep back up our esophagus and back to our olfactory bulb in the sinuses).

As there are only five tastes, taste may appear cut and dry, but it is not; each taste changes how we perceive the others. Sweetness reduces the intensity of our perception of both salinity and acidity. Salinity boosts sweetness, but lowers the intensity of acidity. Acidity boosts both sweet and salinity. A simple way to experience this (and train your tongue at the same time) is to make a few solutions of water with different amounts of sugar, salt, and acid (use tartaric or citric if you have some on hand). Go light, you want the tastes to be subtle, not glaringly obvious or intense. You can make differing strengths and blends of different intensities of different tastes. What you’ll notice is that, for example, if you use the same amount of salt in two solutions, but one has a little sweetness/sugar in it, the solution with the sugar in it will seem less salty than the solution without sugar. Similarly, if you have two solutions with the same amount of salt, but differing levels of acid, the solution with more acid will also seem saltier. This gives you a sense of how flavors interact when you’re tasting wine as well as with pairing wine with food.

Flavors, or tastes, come from a variety of different sources. Sweetness in wine can come from actual sugar (such as the most abundant sugars in grapes — glucose and fructose), but alcohol and glycerol can also lead to sweetness. This is why higher alcohol wines often come off as sweet even when they’re technically dry from a sugar-perspective. Even in lower alcohol wines, alcohol excites the sweetness receptors some, adding to balance and the overall experience.

BY ALEX RUSSAN

As there are only five tastes, taste may appear cut and dry, but it is not; each taste changes how we perceive the others.

Photo by Charles A. Parker/Images Plus

Many of the nuances we often say we “taste” in wine are actually arriving to our brains through nasal sensors.

Acids come from a wide variety of organic acids most of us are familiar with in grapes. Salts, though less often talked about, can be an important taste in wine, particularly with grapes grown on the coast and in dry Sherries. Tannins, especially early on in a wine’s life, can create bitterness. Monomeric and perhaps short tannin polymers can be sensed by our bitter taste buds while they remain tiny, but as they polymerize further and grow, they affect us as astringency — a drying touch sensation — rather than as bitter taste. The “feeling” we get from astringency or other aspects of mouthfeel are primarily touch-sensation, rather than taste.

THE NOSE

Smells are a whole different ballgame. While there are only five tastes, there are nearly endless types of smells: Fruity, floral, earthy, medicinal when thinking generally, or in more specific terms, cherries, jasmine, lychee, asphalt after rain starts, petrol, etc., etc., etc. — one could go on forever. For me personally (and many feel different), aromas are the most interesting, elusive, and revealing aspect of wine. They are the most varied, fleeting, and impacting parts of the experience for me.

For smelling wines, I recommend, of course, giving your wine a good swirl to get air into it, volatilize and concentrate aromas, and then getting your nose deep into the glass. But, also, I suggest sniffing it in soft, short sniffs, rather than long inhalations. Think of how dogs (far superior smellers to humans) sniff . . . though it might be a bit taxing to do so in as rapid a succession as they do!

Smells are the reason spitting is so important when you are tasting lots of wines. As you mix many different wines in your stomach, you have a greater diversity, and intensity, of retro-nasal aromas coming back up your esophagus and hitting your smell receptors. In combination with all the wines you are smelling, this melange of aromas serves to saturate and temporarily deaden the precision with which you can smell — your receptors get overwhelmed. The less you swallow, the longer you will be able to taste (or better said, smell) effectively. The importance of spitting really comes into play when on a long day of wine tasting or judging; you can probably skip spitting with three bottles at the dinner table (your family will thank you!).

Developing a sense of what aromas come from the grape versus the barrel is important, but we can go beyond this: What comes from the grape, what’s created or altered by the fermentation, what comes from defects, and what comes from aging and the aging vessel? Further, how did the vineyard, growing practices, and level of ripeness affect aromas? Esters, for example, the often fruity, fun aromas — think freshly fermented wine, Beaujolais Nouveau or young rosé — are basically fermentation byproducts (they are not really indicative of grape or vineyard), and they break down over the first 12–18 months of a wine’s life. The petrol aroma in aged Riesling, “TDN” or 1,1,6-trimethyl-1,2-dihydronaphthalene, is a norisoprenoid (an especially interesting group of aromas in wine), that comes from the grape and is increased by more light exposure on fruit. Where esters are basically gone by a year and a half, TDN may not show itself for a few years, and continues

to gain intensity as the wine ages (as carotenoids break down). Though these are only two examples, being able to identify different aromas on this level may inform your grape growing practices, winemaking, or how you age wines. If you like fruity esters, there are steps you can take to encourage that in a wine (such as fermenting cold and using certain yeast strains), and you also know to drink those wines young. If you like petrol-y Riesling, there are things you can do in the vineyard to encourage higher concentrations (such as planting on a more exposed site and removing more leaves in the fruiting zone), and you know you may have to wait a few years for it to show its face.

Another class of aromas to explore is thiols (think Sauvignon Blanc). One especially interesting thing about thiols is that, although these come from the grapes themselves, different yeast strains may alter their molecular structure during fermentation and change how they smell. There is also the immense variety of compounds called isoprenoids, (often incorrectly referred to as terpenes) that include monoterpenes (think Muscat), norisoprenoids (the group I’m the most fascinated by, which includes TDN), and sesquiterpenes (like rotundone, the black pepper aroma in Syrah). All of these have a different story to tell, come from or are encouraged by different factors, and an understanding of which will impact our interpretation of what we’re tasting and may have an impact on how we work with a wine. Similar to how tastes impact each other, some aroma compounds may boost or diminish the intensity of other aroma compounds, and one compound may even change how another smells! Aromas are beyond complex, and we are far — very far — from a complete understanding of them.

Similarly, it’s crucial to become familiar with defects (volatile acidity, Brettanomyces, oxidation, mousiness, and so on), which usually show as aromas. These can be difficult to learn to identify, as wineries don’t actively advertise their wines as having issues, but reading about these defects can give a better idea of their traits. Also, with natural wines being as popular as they are today, it is easier to find defective wine in the market than in the past couple decades. Some “defects” may actually make wines better (below sensory threshold levels of volatile acidity, in particular) — it’s a very subjective matter — but as winemakers it is important to be able to identify defects, if only to stop them early if and when they arise in our own wines.

EVALUATION PRACTICE

While it is a hassle to evaluate wine on judging sheets — where many aspects of a wine are considered in isolation from one another for evaluation — this can be a helpful exercise in becoming a better taster. This practice is similar to distinguishing what’s a smell from what’s a taste — and, with practice, leads to a more precise “vision” of what you’re tasting as a whole.

Wine scoring sheets usually consider factors like tannins, acid, balance, mouthfeel, finish, and so on. Whether you choose to do this with a formal tasting sheet or on your own in your head is up to you. While I dread using tasting sheets (particularly totaling up scores), I am always a better

taster after I have been using them and find I’m able to take in and understand the experience of what I’m tasting much faster and more accurately afterward. This heightened ability usually lasts for a few weeks. There is something about considering each aspect of a wine separately and systematically and repeatedly — like distinguishing between smell and taste — that seems to lead to a clearer picture of a wine as a whole for a while.

Although I think learning to distinguish each aspect of a wine’s taste is helpful in becoming a great taster, one thing that I believe often stunts taster development is getting hung up on tasting notes and naming aromas. While there is something exciting about seeing somebody smell a glass and rattle off each aroma they smell, honing the skill of naming aromas is really only necessary for communication with others, and I believe it often gets in the way of experiencing a wine. In particular, I’ve seen less experienced tasters with the misconception that naming aromas is what tasting is all about, or even fundamental to tasting — and understandably, this is what we see and hear other people doing. However, in focusing in on individual aromas to try to name them, one is distracted from experiencing the wine. Though this seems like contradictory advice after suggesting using a scoring sheet and considering individual parts of a wine, I feel the difference is in experiencing individual traits of the wine (passively focusing on one part of the whole experience) versus focusing on an individual part of the experience and

then actively trying to name it. The former is still just sensory experience with some magnification; the latter is this plus the distraction of aroma identification.

I recommend people taste wine, especially early on, like they listen to music: Passively taking in the experience and letting the wine affect your senses and emotions however it does. In a song, it may be a fun exercise to decipher if the saxophone is a tenor or an alto (“is this cherry or plum?”), but in doing so, you are taking yourself out of “sensing” mode and miss what’s being played. I feel naming flavors is a good skill to work on after you feel you’ve mastered experiencing tasting and are confident you can perceive all of what is happening when tasting a wine. To continue the music metaphor, the more music you actively listen to, the easier it becomes to distinguish between the different instruments and to be able to comprehend both the individual parts and the song as a whole. I think for both music and tasting, it’s like a muscle: The more frequently you do it, the easier it becomes to do.

So you can see that there is much more to tasting than simply sniffing and swallowing, although from the outside, the process always looks that simple. Regardless of whether someone is an expert or a novice with wine, at the end of the day one either enjoys a wine or doesn’t, and in that sense not much needs to be said about tasting — however, the more we know and understand what we’re tasting, the richer the experience is and the more information we can both process and learn.

AGING

Achieving Cold Stable Wines: “Wine Wizard” Aug-Sep ‘21

Scaling Up: Aging and Packaging: “Techniques” ... Jun-Jul ‘21

Topping Wines Off: “Wine Wizard” Aug-Sep ‘21

BARRELS AND OAKING

Lifespan of a Wine Barrel Apr-May ‘21

Preserving Your Oak Barrel: “Wine Wizard”....... Oct-Nov ‘21

BLENDING

Better Together: Creating Red Blends Apr-May ‘21

Blending Italian Red Wines: “Tips From the Pros” ........ Apr-May ‘21

COUNTRY WINEMAKING

7 Country Wine Recipes Jun-Jul ‘21

Backsweetening Fruit Wines: “Tips From the Pros” Jun-Jul ‘21

EQUIPMENT

DIY Bird Net Applicator ....... Aug-Sep ‘21

Finding the Right Closure... Apr-May ‘21

Go Big At Home ...................... Feb-Mar ‘21

One-Stall Garage Winery Feb-Mar ‘21

FERMENTATION

The ABC’s of MLF: “Beginner’s Block” Jun-Jul ‘21

The Alcohols ............................ Aug-Sep ‘21

Measuring Wine Cap Temperature: “Wine Wizard” ........................ Jun-Jul ‘21

MLF After Cold Stabilizing: “Wine Wizard” Feb-Mar ‘21

FRESH GRAPE WINEMAKING

Forgotten Refractometer: “Wine Wizard” ............... Dec ’21-Jan ‘22

Scaling Up: Crushing, Pressing, and Fermenting “Techniques” Apr-May ‘21

Scaling Up: Grapes “Techniques” Feb-Mar ‘21

GOING PRO

Going Pro: “Dry Finish” ........ Oct-Nov ‘21

So, You Want to Go Pro? ..... Oct-Nov ‘21

GRAPE GROWING

Best Practice: “Backyard Vines” Feb-Mar ‘21

Dear Wes: “Backyard Vines” Jun-Jul ‘21

Uneven Ripening:

“Wine Wizard” Dec ’21-Jan ‘22

Vineyard Fixes for Underwhelming Grapes: “Backyard Vines” Oct-Nov ‘21

HOME WINEMAKING STORIES

The Cozzarelli Legacy: “Dry Finish” Feb-Mar ‘21

Making Rosehip Wine: “Dry Finish” Jun-Jul ‘21

Master of Technology: “Dry Finish” Apr-May ‘21

Spit or Swallow: “Dry Finish” Dec ’21-Jan ‘22

Save the Wine!: “Dry Finish” Aug-Sep ‘21

KIT WINEMAKING

Top 100 Wine Kits of 2021 Dec ‘21-Jan ‘22

Turning Kits to Gold Dec ’21-Jan ‘22

MEADMAKING

A Harmony of Fruit and Honey Feb-Mar ‘21

Honey-Based Wine: “Beginner’s Block” ............. Oct-Nov ‘21

Traditional Meadmaking “Tips From the Pros” Feb-Mar ‘21

MISCELLANEOUS

2021 Label Contest Winners Feb-Mar ‘21

2021 WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition Oct-Nov 21

Cooking With Wine: “Tips From the Pros” Aug-Sep ‘21

Distillation 101....................... Oct-Nov ‘21

Making Sausage at Home Aug-Sep ‘21

Using Wine in Other Hobbies: “Techniques” Dec ’21-Jan ‘22

TECHNIQUES

Adding Sorbate After MLF: “Wine Wizard” Feb-Mar ‘21

Basics of Racking Wine: “Beginner’s Block” Feb-Mar ‘21

Carbonating a Dessert Wine: “Wine Wizard” Jun-Jul ‘21

Crafting a Buttery-Style Chardonnay:

“Wine Wizard” Apr-May ‘21

Crafting Age-Worthy Wines: “Techniques” Oct-Nov ‘21

Drawing Inspiration From Valpolicella Dec ’21-Jan ‘22

Expressing Your White Wines: “Techniques” Aug-Sep ‘21

Making Mulled Wines ........... Oct-Nov ‘21

Pét Projects Jun-Jul ‘21

Putting Sparkle In Your Wines:

“Beginner’s Block” Dec ’21-Jan ‘22

Rules of Fining: “Wine Wizard” Aug-Sep ‘21

Sur Lie Aging Jun-Jul ‘21

TROUBLESHOOTING

Cures to Oversulfiting: “Wine Wizard” Oct-Nov ‘21

Maturation Intervention Jun-Jul ‘21

Oxygen Ingression: “Wine Wizard” Feb-Mar ‘21

Properly Adding Copper: “Wine Wizard” Jun-Jul ‘21

Volatile Acidity Fixes: “Wine Wizard” Feb-Mar ‘21

Weird Grape Juice Numbers: “Wine Wizard” Apr-May ‘21

VARIETALS – WINE STYLES

Blaufränkisch: “Varietal Focus” Dec ’21-Jan ‘22

Brianna: “Varietal Focus”........ Jun-Jul ‘21

Carménère: “Varietal Focus” Feb-Mar ‘21

Chardonnay: “Varietal Focus” ................. Aug-Sep ‘21

Frontenac: “Varietal Focus” Oct-Nov ‘21

Melon De Bourgogne: “Varietal Focus” ................. Apr-May ‘21

Preserved in Amber: Reviving Ancient Methods to Create Orange Wines Dec ’21-Jan ‘22

WINE SCIENCE

Evaluating Wine: “Advanced Winemaking” Dec ’21-Jan ‘22

Maceration Enzymes: “Advanced Winemaking” Aug-Sep ‘21

The Role of Nitrogen in Winemaking: “Beginners Block”.............. Apr-May ‘21

The Role of Varietal Thiols in White Wines Apr-May ‘21

WINEMAKING TIPS

Advice for a Beginner: “Wine Wizard” Oct-Nov ‘21

Killer-Factor Yeast: “Wine Wizard” ............... Dec ’21-Jan ‘22

Maceration

Considerations Aug-Sep ‘21

Protecting Wine During Racking: “Wine Wizard” ...... Jun-Jul ‘21

Using Pectic Enzymes in Reds: “Wine Wizard” Apr-May ‘21

White Wine Aromatics: “Advanced Winemaking” Apr-May ‘21

Winemaking from Down Under Oct-Nov ‘21

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1768 Churn Creek Rd. Redding 96002 (530) 243-BEER (2337) or (530)-221-WINE (9463) www.norcalbrewingsolutions.com

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COLORADO

THE BREW HUT

15120 East Hampden Ave. Aurora 80014 (303) 680-8898

www.thebrewhut.com

Complete Winexpert line! Fresh fruit, equipment & chemicals! We Rent Equipment Too!

LIL’ OLE’ WINEMAKER 516 Main Street Grand Junction 81501 (970) 242-3754

Serving Colorado & Utah winemakers since 1978

CONNECTICUT

BREW & WINE HOBBY

Featuring Winexpert & RJ Spagnols Kits. Area’s widest selection of wine kits, beer making supplies & equipment

12 Cedar St. East Hartford 06108 (860) 528-0592 or Out of State: 1-800-352-4238

www.brew-wine.com

Specializing in European juices (not concentrate) And world-wide juice varietals.

MUSTO WINE GRAPE CO., LLC

101 Reserve Road Hartford 06114 1-877-812-1137

sales@juicegrape.com

www.juicegrape.com

www.winemakinginstructions.com

MWG services home winemakers, wineries, breweries, cideries, distilleries, and homebrew shops. We provide access to the best grapes, juices, equipment, supplies, and knowledge available. Let us help you make your next wine your favorite wine.

NORTHEAST WINEMAKING

10 Robert Jackson Way Plainville 06062 (860) 793-2700

www.northeastwinemaking.com

New Year-Round Showroom Open in Plainville with 2nd full service location in Hartford, CT and satellite location in Chelsea, MA. Your one stop shop for fresh grapes, juice, equipment and accessories!

FLORIDA

PARDO WINE GRAPES

3314 N. Perry Ave. Tampa 33603 (813) 340-3052

vince@pardowinegrapes.com

www.pardowinegrapes.com

Distributors of quality California (fall) and Chilean (spring) wine grapes and fresh juice to Florida winemakers for over 70 years.

ILLINOIS

CHICAGOLAND WINEMAKERS INC.

689 West North Ave. Elmhurst (630) 834-0507

info@chicagolandwinemakers.com www.chicagolandwinemakers.com

Complete line of home winemaking and brewing supplies & equipment since 1971.

INDIANA

GREAT FERMENTATIONS

INDIANAPOLIS

5127 East 65th St. Indianapolis 46220 (317) 257-WINE (9463) or toll-free 1-888-463-2739 info@greatfermentations.com www.greatfermentations.com

GREAT FERMENTATIONS WEST

7900 E US 36, Suite D Avon 46123 (317) 268-6776 info@greatfermentations.com www.greatfermentations.com

QUALITY WINE AND ALE SUPPLY/ HOMEBREWIT.COM

5127 E. 65th St. Indianapolis 46220 Phone: (574) 295-9975 customerservice@homebrewit.com Online: www.Homebrewit.com

Quality wine making supplies for beginners AND experts. Bottles, Corks, Shrinks, Chemicals, and Professional Equipment. Largest selection of Winexpert Kits. Fast Shipping. Expert Advice.

IOWA

BLUFF STREET BREW HAUS 372 Bluff Street Dubuque (563) 582-5420

e-mail: jerry@bluffbrewhaus.com www.bluffbrewhaus.com

Complete line of wine & beermaking supplies. In operation since 2006.

KANSAS

BACCHUS & BARLEYCORN, LTD. 6633 Nieman Road

Shawnee 66203

(913) 962-2501

www.bacchus-barleycorn.com

Your one stop supply shop for home wine, cider, mead, beer and cheese makers for over 30 years.

HOMEBREW PRO SHOPPE, INC.

2061 E. Santa Fe Olathe 66062

(913) 768-1090 or 1-866-296-2739 (BYO-BREW)

Secure ordering on line: www.homebrewproshoppe.com

Complete line of wine & beer making supplies & equipment.

KENTUCKY

WINEMAKERS & BEERMAKERS SUPPLY

9475 Westport Rd. Louisville 40241

(502) 425-1692

www.winebeersupply.com

Impeccable line of wine & beer making supplies. Superior grade of juice from Winexpert. Quality malt from Briess & Muntons. Family owned store since 1972.

MARYLAND

THE FLYING BARREL

1781 North Market St. Frederick

(301) 663-4491

fax: (301) 663-6195

www.flyingbarrel.com

Maryland’s 1st Wine-On-Premise & large selection of homewine supplies! Wine judge on staff!

MARYLAND HOMEBREW

6770 Oak Hall Lane, #108 Columbia 21045

1-888-BREWNOW

www.mdhb.com

We carry the VinoSuperiore frozen Italian must along with Winexpert Kits. Everything you need to make your own wine & cheese. Visit us in-person or online. We ship everywhere

MASSACHUSETTS

BEER AND WINE HOBBY, INC.

85 Andover St.

Danvers 01923

1-800-523-5423

e-mail: bwhinfo@beer-wine.com

website: www.beer-wine.com

Brew on YOUR Premise™

For the most discriminating wine & beer hobbyist.

THE WITCHES BREW INC.

12 Maple Ave.

Foxborough 02035

(508) 543-0433

steve@thewitchesbrew.com

www.thewitchesbrew.com

You’ve Got the Notion, We’ve Got the Potion

WINEMAKER DIRECTORY

ASHEVILLE BREWERS SUPPLY

MICHIGAN

ADVENTURES IN HOMEBREWING

6071 Jackson Rd.

Ann Arbor 48103

(313) 277-BREW

fax: (313) 583-3294

e-mail: wine@homebrewing.org

Visit us at www.AdventuresinHome brewing.com

Premium Wine Kits, Fruit, Honey, Fruit Presses, Apple Crushers, and Fermentors. Everything for the beginner and the seasoned winemaker.

ADVENTURES IN HOMEBREWING

23847 Van Born Rd. Taylor 48180 (313) 277-BREW

fax: (313) 583-3294

e-mail: wine@homebrewing.org

Visit us at www.AdventuresinHome brewing.com

Premium Wine Kits, Fruit, Honey, Fruit Presses, Apple Crushers, and Fermentors. Everything for the beginner and the seasoned winemaker.

MACOMB VINTNER SUPPLY

44443 Phoenix Dr. Sterling Heights (248) 495-0801

www.macombvintnersupply.com

Purveyor of grapes and grape juices for the winemaker. L’uva Bella, Mosto Bella & Chilean Bello Brands, and Extra-Virgin Olive Oil.

MID-MICHIGAN VINTNER SUPPLY

Grand Rapids & South Lyon (517) 898-3203

www.Mid-Michiganvintnersupply.com

info@Mid-Michiganvintnersupply.com

Purveyor of fresh grape juices for the winemaker. L’uva Bella, Mosto Bella & Chilean Bello Brands.

MORGAN VINEYARD

15775 40th Avenue

Coopersville 49404 (616) 648-3025

morgangrapes@gmail.com

MorganVineyard.com

Supplier of high quality wine grapes conveniently located in West Michigan.

SICILIANO’S MARKET

2840 Lake Michigan Dr. N.W. Grand Rapids 49504 (616) 453-9674

fax: (616) 453-9687

e-mail: sici1@sbcglobal.net

www.sicilianosmkt.com

Largest Wine Making inventory in West Michigan. Now selling beer and winemaking supplies on-line.

TAYLOR RIDGE VINEYARDS

3843 105th Ave.

Allegan 49010 (269) 521-4047

bctaylor@btc-bci.com

www.taylorridgevineyard.com

18 Varieties of Wine Grapes and Juices. Vinifera, New York State, Minnesota and French hybrids. Providing wine grapes and juices for over 30 years.

MISSOURI

HOME BREWERY

1967 West Boat St.

Ozark

1-800-321-BREW (2739) brewery@homebrewery.com

www.homebrewery.com

Since 1984, providing excellent Service, Equipment and Ingredients. Beer, Wine, Mead, Soda and Cheese.

NEW YORK

DOC’S HOMEBREW SUPPLIES

451 Court Street Binghamton 13904 (607) 722-2476

www.docsbrew.com

Full-service beer & wine making shop serving NY’s Southern Tier & PA’s Northern Tier since 1991. Extensive line of Winexpert kits, supplies and equipment.

FULKERSON WINERY & JUICE PLANT

5576 State Route 14 Dundee 14837 (607) 243-7883

fax: (607) 243-8337

www.fulkersonw inery.com

Fresh Finger Lakes grape juice available during harvest. Large selection of home winemaking supplies. Visit our website to browse and order supplies. Open year round 10-5, extended seasonal hours. Find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @fulkersonwinery.

MAIN STREET WINES & SUPPLIES

249 Main St. Arcade 14009 (585) 492-2739 fax: (585) 492-2777

mainstwines@yahoo.com

Plenty of wine kits available to make your own wine. Full line of winemaking supplies and accessories for your convenience. Tue-Fri 10-6; Sat 10-3 or by appt. Like us on Facebook.

NIAGARA TRADITION

HOMEBREWING SUPPLIES

1296 Sheridan Drive Buffalo 14217 (800) 283-4418 or (716) 877-8767

www.nthomebrew.com

We feature a complete line of supplies for making wine, beer, mead, cider and cheese.

PANTANO’S WINE GRAPES & HOMEBREW

249 Rte 32 S. New Paltz 12561 (845) 255-5201 or (845) 706-5152 (cell) pantanowineandbeer@yahoo.com

www.pantanosbeerwine.com

Find Us On Facebook. Your source for wine & beer making supplies and equipment. Grapes and Juice from California, Italy & Chile in season, wine kits and all juice pails (6 gal) year round. Classes available. We now carry Distilling Products and Stills.

PROSPERO EQUIPMENT CORP.

123 Castleton St. Pleasantville 10570 (914) 769-6252

fax: (914) 769-6786

info@prosperocorp.biz

www.prosperocorp.biz

The source to all your winemaking equipment.

SARATOGA ZYMURGIST

112 Excelsior Ave. Saratoga Springs 12866 (518) 580-9785

email: szymurgist@gmail.com

www.SaratogaZ.com

Let us be your guide into the world of Zymurgy. Reaching the Adirondack Park, Capital District, Southern Vermont and beyond! Great online store.

TEN THOUSAND VINES WINERY

8 South Buffalo St. Hamburg 14075 (716) 646-9979

mike@TenThousandVines.com

www.TenThousandVines.com

Wine supplies, juice and advice.

WALKER’S WINE JUICE

2860 N.Y. Route 39 – Since 1955 Forestville (716) 679-1292

www.walkerswinejuice.com

Over 50 varieties of “Hot-Pack”

Grape, Fruit and Berry Juice, Requiring No Refrigeration, shipped by UPS all year. Supplying over 300 wineries in 37 states!

NORTH CAROLINA

ALTERNATIVE BEVERAGE (BELMONT)

1500 River D., Suite 104

Belmont 28012

Advice Line: (704) 825-8400

Order Line: 1-800-365-2739

www.ebrew.com

44 years serving all home winemakers & brewers’ needs! Come visit for a real Homebrew Super Store experience!

ALTERNATIVE BEVERAGE (CHARLOTTE)

3911 South Blvd. Charlotte 28209

Advice Line: (704) 825-8400

Order Line: 1-800-365-2739

www.ebrew.com

44 years serving all home winemakers & brewers’ needs! Visit our stores to learn how we can help you make the best wine you can make.

ALTERNATIVE BEVERAGE (CORNELIUS)

19725 Oak St.

Cornelius 28031

Voice Line: (704) 527-2337

Fax Line: (704) 522-6427

www.ebrew.com

44 years serving all home winemakers & brewers’ needs! Visit our stores to learn how we can help you make the best wine you can make.

AMERICAN BREWMASTER

3021-5 Stony Brook Dr. Raleigh 27604 (919) 850-0095

www.americanbrewmaster.com

Supplying wine makers with the finest wine kits, ingredients and supplies since 1983. Winemaking is fun with American Brewmaster!

712-B Merrimon Ave. Asheville 28804 (828) 358-3536

www.ashevillebrewers.com

Value. Quality. Service. Since 1994.

CAROLINA WINE SUPPLY 329 W. Maple St. Yadkinville 27055 (336) 677-6831

fax: (336) 677-1048

www.carolinawinesupply.com

Home Winemaking Supplies & Support.

OHIO

THE GRAPE AND GRANARY 915 Home Ave. Akron 44310 (330) 633-7223

www.grapeandgranary.com

Concentrates, Fresh juice, Wine on Premise.

LABEL PEELERS BEER & WINE MAKING SUPPLIES, INC. 211 Cherry St. Kent 44240 (330) 678-6400

info@labelpeelers.com

www.labelpeelers.com

Specializing in winemaking/ homebrew supplies & equipment. Free monthly classes.

Hours: Mon-Sun 10am-7pm

OKLAHOMA

HIGH GRAVITY 6808 S. Memorial Drive Tulsa 74133 (918) 461-2605

e-mail: store@highgravitybrew.com

www.highgravitybrew.com

Join our Frequent Fermenters Club!

OREGON

F.H. STEINBART CO. 234 SE 12th Ave. Portland 97214 (503) 232-8793

fax: (503) 238-1649

e-mail: info@fhsteinbart.com

www.fhsteinbart.com

Brewing and Wine making supplies since 1918!

HOME FERMENTER

123 Monroe Street Eugene 97402 (541) 485-6238

www.homefermenter.com

Providing equipment, supplies and advice to winemakers and homebrewers for over 40 years.

PENNSYLVANIA

BOOTLEGGERS BREW SHOP, LLC 917 Pleasant Valley Blvd. Altoona 16602 (814) 931-9962

http://bootleggersbrewshop.com

bootleggersbrewshop@gmail.com

Find us on Facebook! Central PA’s LARGEST homebrew supplies store! We carry seasonal cold pressed wine juices from around the world. Special orders welcome!

WINEMAKER DIRECTORY

NITTANY VALLEY TRUE VALUE

1169 Nittany Valley Drive

Bellefonte

(814) 383-2809 fax: (814) 383-4884

Supplies - Equipment - Classes. Fresh grapes & juice in season.

PRESQUE ISLE WINE CELLARS

9440 W. Main Rd. (US Rte. 20) North East 16428

(800) 488-7492

www.piwine.com

Your one stop shop! Complete service since 1964, helping you make great wines. We specialize in small winery and amateur wine supplies and equipment. Check out our website www.piwine.com or stop by and see us. Fresh grapes and juice at harvest.

SCOTZIN BROTHERS

65 N. Fifth St.

Lemoyne 17043 (717) 737-0483 or 800-791-1464

www.scotzinbros.com

email: shop@scotzinbros.com WINE and Beer MAKERS PARADISE!

TEXAS

AUSTIN HOMEBREW SUPPLY

15112 N. Interstate Hwy 35 Austin 78728 (512) 300-BREW

email: hops@austinhomebrew.com

Visit us at www.AustinHomebrew.com

Premium Wine Kits, Fruit, Honey, Fruit Presses, Apple Crushers, and Fermentors. Everything for the beginner and the seasoned winemaker.

HOMEBREW HEADQUARTERS

300 N. Coit Rd., Suite 134

Richardson

Toll free: 1-800-966-4144 or (972) 234-4411

fax: (972) 234-5005

www.homebrewhq.com

Proudly serving the Dallas area for 30+ years!

WASHINGTON

BADER BEER & WINE SUPPLY

711 Grand Blvd.

Vancouver, WA 98661

1-800-596-3610

Sign up for our free e-newsletter @ Baderbrewing.com

THE BEER ESSENTIALS

2624 South 112th St. #E-1 Lakewood 98499 (253) 581-4288

www.thebeeressentials.com

Mail order and secure on-line ordering available.

BREHM VINEYARDS®

www.brehmvineyards.com grapes@brehmvineyards.com

Phone: (510) 527.3675

Fresh grape pick-up in Underwood, WA

Frozen grapes in Portland, OR

Ultra-premium grapes for home winemakers for over 40 years! Sold at harvest or shipped frozen across N. America year-round. Over 30 varieties from Carneros, Napa, Sonoma, Washington and Oregon.

JON’S HOMEBREW AND WINE SUPPLY

1430 E. Main Ave., #1430C Puyallup 98372 (253) 286-7607

jon@jonshomebrew.com jonshomebrew.com

Puyallup’s home for Home Beer and Winemaking supplies!

WISCONSIN

THE CELLAR BREW SHOP

465 N. Washburn St. Oshkosh 54904 (920) 517-1601 www.thecellarhomebrew.com cellarbrewshop@outlook.com

Beer & Wine ingredients and equipment. Extensive inventory at Competitive prices, bulk discounts. Great service and free advice from experienced staff.

HOUSE OF HOMEBREW

410 Dousman St. Green Bay (920) 435-1007 staff@houseofhomebrew.com www.houseofhomebrew.com

Beer, Wine, Cider, Mead, Soda, Coffee, Tea, Cheese Making.

WINE & HOP SHOP

1919 Monroe St. Madison 53711 (608) 257-0099

www.wineandhop.com

wineandhop@gmail.com

Madison, WI’s locally owned homebrewing and winemaking headquarters for over 40 years. Fast, affordable shipping to anywhere. Use promo code WineMaker at checkout for discounts. Free expert advice too!

READER SERVICE

CANADA ALBERTA

BREW FOR LESS

10774 - 95th Street

Edmonton T5H 2C9 (708) 422-0488

brewforless.com

info@brewforless.com

Edmonton’s Largest Wine & Beer

Making Supply Store

GRAPES TO GLASS

5308 -17th Ave. SW

Calgary T3E 6S6 (403) 243-5907

www.grapestoglass.com

Calgary’s largest selection of brewing, winemaking & distilling supplies. On-line shopping available with delivery via Canada Post.

BRITISH COLUMBIA

BOSAGRAPE WINERY & BREW SUPPLIES

6908 Palm Ave.

Burnaby V5J 4M3 (604) 473-WINE

fax: (604) 433-2810

info@bosagrape.com

www.bosagrape.com

Ingredients, equipment, labware & supplies for brew & winemaking. Still Spirits, Hanna, Stavin Oak, Brehm Vineyards, Mosti juices, Brewcraft, Marchisio, Accuvin, Chemetrics, Vintner’s Harvest, Lalvin, Buon Vino, Vintage Shop.

FOR DIRECT LINKS TO ALL OF OUR ADVERTISERS’ WEBSITES, GO TO WWW.WINEMAKERMAG.COM/RESOURCE/READER

BEST OF WINEMAKER

25 CLASSIC WINE STYLES ............. 48 802-362-3981 ext. 106 www.winemakermag.com/shop

BSG HANDCRAFT .................. Cover 2 1-800-374-2739 www.bsgcraft.com www.rjscraftwinemaking.com

BUON VINO MANUFACTURING, INC. .................. 48 1-855-522-1166 www.buonvino.com orders@buonvino.com

FERMENTIS BY LESAFFRE 11 www.fermentis.com

FERRARI GROUP ................................. 7 +39 0521 687125 www.ferrarigroup.com info@ferrarigroup.com

FINER WINE KITS 7 www.labelpeelers.com

GARAGISTECON Cover 3 www.winemakermag.com

LALLEMAND INC. 1 www.lallemandbrewing.com/wine homebrewing@lallemand.com

MOREWINE! 3 1-800-823-0010 www.morewine.com info@morewinemaking.com

MUST ................................................... 9 707-963-4966 / 707-967-0553 www.mustfabricate.com orders@mustfabricate.com

NAPA FERMENTATION SUPPLIES ......................................... 12 707-255-6372 www.napafermentation.com napafermentation@aol.com

NOONTIME LABELS 51 561-699-0413 www.noontimelabels.com customerservice@ noontimelabels.com

SPEIDEL TANK 5 www.speidel-stainless-steeltanks.com

VINMETRICA 5 760-494-0597 www.vinmetrica.com info@vinmetrica.com

THE VINTAGE SHOP ........................ 21 604-590-1911 www.thevintageshop.ca info@thevintageshop.ca

VINTNER’S BEST® 11 1-800-321-0315 www.ldcarlson.com

WALKER’S WINE JUICE 12 716-679-1292 www.walkerswinejuice.com

WATERLOO CONTAINER COMPANY ........................................... 1 1-888-539-3922 www.waterloocontainer.com

WINEMAKER BORDEAUX TRIP 17 www.winemakermag.com/trip wm@winemakermag.com

WINEMAKER INTERNATIONAL AMATEUR WINE COMPETITION 22-25 802-362-3981 ext. 106 www.winemakermag.com/ competition competition@winemakermag.com

WINEXPERT Cover 4 www.winexpert.com info@winexpert.com

WYEAST LABORATORIES, INC. 20 Fermentation Cultures: Beer, Wine, Cider www.wyeastlab.com customerservice@wyeastlab.com

XPRESSFILL 51 805-541-0100 www.xpressfill.com

DRY FINISH

BY DR. JESSE M c CLAIN

SPIT OR SWALLOW?

Health benefits from spitting wine

For decades it has been understood that moderate wine consumption decreases a person’s cardiovascular risk factors. In 1992, the “French Paradox” was described in which they discovered that the French had a lower incidence of coronary heart disease. This was a peculiar finding because the French had nearly one of the highest life expectancies despite primarily eating foods high in cholesterol such as cheese, breads, and pastries.

A number of studies were conducted to find the reason behind this French Paradox. When studies looked at minimal or heavy wine consumption, these investigations uncovered the same coronary heart disease and life expectancies as those who chose not to imbibe. However, moderate wine consumers demonstrated significantly less coronary heart disease.

Once this was discovered, the focus turned to why. Studies went on to discover that it was moderate red wine consumption that was beneficial and not white wine consumption. What does red wine have that white wine typically does not have? The answer to that was simple: The red wine maceration period in which the juice has extended contact with the skins and seeds.

This then created the question, what is red wine exposed to during this maceration period that white wine is not? Well, it turns out that is fairly simple: Resveratrol. So what exactly is resveratrol? It’s a polyphenolic compound, more technically a stillbenoid, produced by some plants, most commonly found in the skins of grapes, blueberries, raspberries, and peanuts.

A number of studies looked at how resveratrol worked and how our bodies react to it. One study in particular looked at resveratrol’s absorption. Interestingly, it found that we as humans tend to absorb most of the resveratrol sublingually, or under the tongue, as

compared to in our stomach or intestinal tract. In fact, researchers found 15 times more resveratrol in the blood stream when absorbed sublingually compared to the gastrointenstinal tract. Therefore, resveratrol was more bioavailable when delivered via a person’s oral mucosa than when swallowed.

As cultures change, what we know and think are healthy has also changed. Is it really considered healthy to be consuming alcohol daily?

Nowadays, wine tasting is becoming quite common. More individuals are taking wine study courses. More individuals are travelling and visiting wineries. With the risk of being too intoxicated, it is becoming more common practice to swish the wine in your mouth during tasting and spit the wine out into a spittoon prior to describing what you noticed on your palate. There have been games invented based on documentaries that encourage blind wine tasting parties. But, how does one consume numerous glasses if not bottles of wine in a single sitting without causing them to fall into the “heavy” alcohol consumption category? That is easy: The spittoon.

This then poses the question, if we are constantly swishing and spitting, are we getting the health benefits that regular, moderate, wine consumers are getting? Given the above information, it is clear that the health benefits of resveratrol seem to be in the sublingual administration rather than via your gastrointestinal tract. While this is an unproven fact, one can infer that swishing your wine and spitting it out may actually be healthier than swishing and swallowing it. Which leads me to another question, is there any value in resveratrol pills (grape seed extract) if they are bypassing your oral mucosa?

So tonight when you have your glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, should you only swish and spit it out for the health benefits? I will not be doing that; down the hatch it goes!

If we are constantly swishing and spitting, are we getting the health benefits that regular, moderate wine consumers are getting?

Photo courtesy of Dr. Jesse McClain

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