2023 WM FEBRUARY-MARCH

• Full Day of Live Online Seminars and Q&A Panels

• Access to Video Recordings of All Sessions

• 3 Learning Tracks: Business/Sales, Winery Operations, and Start-Ups

• Get your Questions Answered Live by Industry Experts

• Interact with Other Small Wineries and Wineries in Planning

• Q&A Sessions with Leading Small Winery Industry Suppliers

26 CRAFT BEER- INFLUENCED WINEMAKING

A trend has emerged from the world of craft beer as some notable brewers have begun releasing wines. What sets these wines apart is an unusual approach of adding adjuncts and other techniques that are common in the world of beer. Learn what they are doing and how you, too, can make wine like a brewer.

by Wes Hagen

32 WORLD - CLASS WEEK IN BORDEAUX

We recap and share photos from a weeklong trip WineMaker readers and Publisher Brad Ring spent visiting wineries and experiencing all that the famed French wine region of Bordeaux has to offer.

34 LET’S START MAKING WINE!

Are you or a friend new to the hobby of winemaking?

Don’t worry — WineMaker’s Technical Editor Bob Peak is here to explain the basics of making wine from grapes, juices, and kits.

by Bob Peak

40 2023 LABEL CONTEST WINNERS

We received hundreds of entries into this year’s WineMaker Label Contest. It is time to reveal the winners.

44 SULFUR DIOXIDE: FACT AND MYTH

Winemakers have a lot of misconceptions about sulfur dioxide and its use in winemaking. Though somewhat controversial, longtime wine educator Clark Smith shares his views that are backed by science.

by Clark Smith

Wine analysis products for artisan winemakers

Set up your own lab and take control of your wine!

Or send us your samples

Lab Services also available

SO2 (Free & Total)

Titratable acidity (TA)

pH

Malic acid (MLF)

Residual sugar (new!)

Dissolved oxygen

YAN

ABV%

Also offering

Ideal for small to medium sized wineries

Family owned and operated for over 10 years! Located in Carlsbad, CA Vinmetrica.com • scan for additional info

departments

8 MAIL

Our digital member online live chats offer readers a chance to get their winemaking questions answered by wine experts. Plus, a reader asks where to look for advice on adjusting dessert wine kits. Turns out, he just needed to wait for the next issue to arrive!

10 CELLAR DWELLERS

When a hobby winemaker gets stuck quarantining in Jamaica during harvest, his wife picks up the torch. Learn the story behind the label it inspired as well as details about the chaptalization process, and get the latest in winemaking news, products, and upcoming events.

14 TIPS FROM THE PROS

Red Bordeaux-style blends are some of the most sought-after and complex wines being made around the world. We asked three expert winemakers on the West Coast for advice on crafting our own interpretations at home.

16 WINE WIZARD

Maintaining wine while it ages in oak is an important task. Make sure you are taking the appropriate steps. Also, a winemaker can’t get their latest wine to start fermentation. The Wine Wizard unravels the mystery behind the unfermentable juice.

19 VARIETAL FOCUS

A grape with a proud following regionally, Norton has roots that remain shrouded in a fog. Learn about its past, how to best tend to it in the vineyard, and bring out its bright qualities in the winery.

55 TECHNIQUES

If you are a winemaker looking to boost your wine’s quality, then tracking pH is a must. Bob Peak introduces the chemistry behind the numbers we obtain and how to use them to our advantage.

57 BACKYARD VINES

The 2023 growing season is just around the corner and it’s time to think about ways to improve your viticultural practices. Here are 10 tips every wine grape grower should be thinking about to get the best berries from their vines.

64 DRY FINISH

WineMaker’s Associate Publisher Kiev Rattee traveled to a friend’s vineyard to help with the most recent harvest. There is something magical about being part of a team helping pick the grapes that will become our treasured vinous beverage.

EDITOR

Dawson Raspuzzi

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Dave Green

DESIGN

Open Look

TECHNICAL EDITOR

Bob Peak

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Dwayne Bershaw, Chik Brenneman, Alison Crowe, Wes Hagen, Maureen Macdonald, Bob Peak, Phil Plummer, Clark Smith

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Charles A. Parker

EDITORIAL REVIEW BOARD

Steve Bader Bader Beer and Wine Supply

Chik Brenneman Baker Family Wines

John Buechsenstein Wine Education & Consultation

Mark Chandler Chandler & Company

Wine Consultancy

Kevin Donato Cultured Solutions

Pat Henderson About Wine Consulting

Ed Kraus EC Kraus

Maureen Macdonald Hawk Ridge Winery

Christina Musto-Quick Musto Wine

Grape Co.

Phil Plummer Montezuma Winery

Gene Spaziani American Wine Society

Jef Stebben Stebben Wine Co.

Gail Tufford Global Vintners Inc.

Anne Whyte Vermont Homebrew Supply

Do you have a most

cherished bottle stored away in your wine cellar/rack?

I have a cherished wine bottle stored away that was purchased at the first winery I visited back in 2014, Bernardus Winery and Vineyard. My husband and I decided to save it for a special occasion. Then we kind of forgot about it. I found we still had it a few years ago and decided that we would pop it when our youngest son left for college. That’s now only a year and a half off!

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Faith Alberti

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Anita Draper

Solving the Sulfite Puzzle

Sulfite is the most effective and widely used preservative and sanitizing agent used in winemaking. Let’s try to demystify sulfite by reviewing some fundamental chemistry as it relates to winemaking. https://winemakermag. com/article/634-solving-the-sulfitepuzzle

MEMBERS ONLY

Modifying Wine Kits

The two changes discussed in this article are alcohol levels and tannin. It’s important to remember that any change you make is completely interconnected to the character of the wine in what can be very subtle ways. https:// winemakermag.com/technique/ modifying-wine-kits

Monitoring & Adjusting pH

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I have a bottle of Domaine Chandon Brandy. It was given to me in 1996 by David Stevens who pioneered the project for them. We lost Dave in 2018, but his jokes and ever-present smile still live on today. At a time in my life when everyone was telling me I could do this or I could do that, he was the first person to ask me what I wanted to do. I believed with all my heart that his genuine and welcoming guidance helped me become the winemaker and person I am today.

I have a 2016 Black Hills Nota Bene that I am saving for something special. If you ever find a bottle from this South Okanagan Valley winery, I highly recommend you pick up a bottle. I think they’re producing some of the finest wines from the region in their desert microclimate.

All contents of WineMaker are Copyright © 2023 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 26, Number 1: February-March 2023.

pH greatly affects the taste of wine as well as microbial stability. It can make the difference between drinking the wine or pouring it down the drain. Make sure you know when it should be analyzed and make the necessary adjustments. https:// winemakermag.com/technique/1650monitoring-adjusting-ph

MEMBERS ONLY

Site Planning & Prep

For anyone who plans on creating a small-to-moderate-sized backyard vineyard, this column should be mandatory reading. Because the best advice one can receive is to spend a lot of extra time in the planning stage, which will save an exponential amount of time later. https://winemakermag.com/technique/ site-planning-and-prep-designing-amodern-backyard-vineyard

MEMBERS ONLY

* 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

LOVE THE LIVE CHATS

I have been a subscriber for years, but I just became a digital member a few months ago and really appreciate the live video Q&A sessions with winemaking experts. They offer another layer of value besides the printed issues of WineMaker magazine. Please keep continuing to host them.

Ian Hillman

• via email

Thanks for the feedback, Ian! We really enjoy these live video chats with authors as well. For those who may not be familiar, we host a monthly hour-long Q&A on Crowdcast that is a free benefit of being a digital member. Readers can submit any winemaking questions for the featured guest to answer. Check our homepage (www.winemakermag.com) and our social media feeds for updates as we tend to announce each guest a week or two prior to the events. We look forward to continuing these fun sessions that really allow participants to get their specific questions answered and have a better feel for our authors than they may be able to get from simply reading their stories in the magazine.

ADVICE ON ADJUSTING KIT WINES

Back in the early ‘90s I made wine in Ohio where I lived at the time. A year ago I started again and what a different landscape it is now for home winemakers in terms of supplies, kits, measurement tools, etc. I enjoy making wines from kits. How about more articles on manipulating kits to make different types of wine? Wine additions, flavorings, etc. would be great. How about getting those kit winners to share their recipes and secrets for others in your pages? I look at kits as a blank canvas. Having people who know more than I do about changing that blank canvas would make other people’s lives easier and tastier!

Mark Klinefelter • via email

We got some serious Nostradamus vibes here as this email came in a couple of days before the December 2022-January 2023 issue came out. But, for anybody else thinking the same thing — that it would be beneficial to hear advice about adjusting kits from award-winning winemakers who do it (particularly dessert kits) — check out the December 2022January 2023 issue! The cover story was exactly that — a roundtable with three home winemakers sharing ways they manipulate dessert kits to create something special and totally unique. We hope this article offered some ideas on how to paint that canvas!

Wes Hagen is a consulting winemaker and wine sales specialist for LXV Wine in Paso Robles, California, and Native9 Wines in Santa Maria, California. Wes has worn a lot of hats in the wine business: Winemaker and Vineyard Manager at Clos Pepe Vineyards for 20 years, Winemaker and Brand Ambassador for Miller Family/Bien Nacido for nearly a decade, AVA Petitioner with 4 AVAs submitted and approved, and writing for WineMaker, Somm Journal, Burgundy Report, LA Times Magazine, and other publications. Wes loves to travel, pour, and teach wine, and also authored the 80-page special issue: The Best of WineMaker: Guide to Growing Grapes (https:// winemakermag.com/product/guide-to-growing-grapes). Follow Wes on social media: Wes Hagen on Facebook, @weshagen on Twitter and @wes_hagen on Instagram. In addition to providing his top 10 tips for grape growers in his “Backyard Vines” column on page 57, Wes shares how craft brewers-turned-winemakers are bringing brewing practices to make unique wines starting on page 26.

Bob Peak is a former partner of The Beverage People Inc. in Santa Rosa, California (www.thebeveragepeople.com).

Before The Beverage People, he was the General Manager at Vinquiry, a company that provides analytical services to the wine industry. Bob has authored the “Techniques” column that runs in every issue since 2013, frequently writes feature stories, and has been the Technical Editor of WineMaker since 2017. He is also a frequent speaker at the annual WineMaker Magazine Conference.

Beginning on page 34, Bob explains for those new to the hobby how to make great wine at home from grapes, juice, and kits.

Clark Smith is one of California’s most widely respected winemakers. In addition to his own WineSmith wines, he has built many successful brands and consults for hundreds of wineries on five continents. His popular course, Fun-damentals of Winemaking Made Easy, has graduated over 4,500 winemakers to rave reviews. Winemaker, inventor, author, musician, and teacher, Smith was named the Innovator of the Year at the 2016 Innovation + Quality conference (presented by Wine Business Monthly), was named among Wine Business Monthly’s 2018 list of the 48 Most Influential People, and is considered among the world’s foremost experts on pairing wine and music. His revolutionary Postmodern Winemaking was Wine and Spirits magazine’s 2013 Book of the Year.

Beginning on page 44, Clark explains the common misconceptions winemakers often have about sulfur dioxide and its use in making wines.

TOP 100 WINE KITS RANKED • DESSERT KIT TWEAKS & TIPS

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RECENT NEWS

Raising a Glass to a Home Winemaking Legend

WineMaker is saddened to announce the passing of Rex Johnston, one of the most recognized home winemakers we know and a friend of the magazine. Following years of declining health, Rex passed away at the age of 83 near his home in Walnut Creek, California. Rex holds the record of being named the WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition’s Winemaker of the Year an astonishing eight times since the first competition held in 2002. Since beginning entering amateur wine competitions in 2002, Rex won more than 150 Best of Show awards and 13 Golden Bears at the California State Fair Home Wine Competition. He was a member of the Sacramento Home Winemakers club where he was a mentor to other home winemakers and quick to share his experiences to further the hobby.

Rex began making wine at home from dandelions and fruits in 1965, but his sweet, dessert wines from grapes and fruits grown on and around his own property are the ones that would go on to garner so much attention. Rex and his wife, Barbara Bentley, were fixtures at the annual WineMaker Conferences for a decade, where Rex’s infectious smile and kindness was as memorable as the numerous walks he and Barbara would make to the winner’s podium each time his name was announced at the awards reception. It is with a heavy heart all of us at WineMaker magazine raise a glass of his Bentley Cellars Elephant Heart Plum Wine in Rex’s honor.

New Products

SmartRef Digital Refractometer

A new digital refractometer from Anton Paar is a portable smart pocket device suitable for a wide range of measurements in winemaking. The device offers more than 15 different measurement units with automatic temperature compensation (ATC). Depending on your need, SmartRef enables you to measure the extract or sugar content in wine or beer, the sweetness of fruit in the vineyard or garden/ orchard, the moisture of honey, the salt content of your aquarium or pool, and more. Measurement range is from 0 to 85 °Brix, is precise down to 0.2 °Brix, readouts occur in just two seconds, and only 0.4 mL of liquid is required. https:// www.anton-paar.com/us-en/products/details/smartref/

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 17, 2023

GaragisteCon Online is a full day of live online seminars and Q&A panels for small-scale wineries and aspiring wineries. All attendees will have access to video recordings of all sessions after the event. There are three learning tracks: Business/Sales, Winery Operations, and Start-Ups as well as Q&A sessions with leading small winery industry suppliers. Get your questions answered live by industry experts. Also, attendees get to interact with other small wineries and wineries-in-planning.

https://winemakermag.com/garagistecon

FRIDAY MARCH 17, 2023

Entry Deadline for the 2023 WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition. Enter your wines, meads, and ciders to 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 skills and get valuable feedback on your wines from the competition’s judging panel. Entries must be received by March 17. Join in the excitement at the awards dinner on Saturday, June 3 at the WineMaker Magazine Conference in Eugene, Oregon. https://winemakermag.com/competition

AWARD-WINNING KITS

Chardonnay

GOLD

Wild Grapes Premium Australian

Chardonnay

Winexpert Reserve Chardonnay

RJS Craft Winemaking Grand Cru

Chardonnay

VineCo Original Series California

Chardonnay

Winexpert Chardonnay

Winexpert Private Reserve Dry Creek Sonoma Chardonnay

BRONZE

Mosti Mondiale Fresco Pinot

Chardonnay

RJS Craft Winemaking Cru

International California

Chardonnay

Winexpert Reserve Australian

Chardonnay

Sauvignon Blanc

GOLD

Winexpert Fumé Blanc

Winexpert Marlborough New

Zealand Sauvignon Blanc

Winexpert Private Reserve

Sauvignon Blanc

Winexpert Sauvignon Blanc

BRONZE

RJS Craft Winemaking Cru Select

Sauvignon Blanc

RJS Craft Winemaking RQ

Sauvignon Blanc

Winexpert Reserve California

Sauvignon Blanc

Here is a list of medal-winning kits for the Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc categories chosen by a blind-tasting judging panel at the 2022 WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition in West Dover, Vermont:

STORY BEHIND THE LABEL

KENT NIENABER • HAM LAKE, MINNESOTA

Our Love Sick Marquette label was born out of a difficult situation that arose during COVID. In early September of 2021, my wife and I traveled to Jamaica. 2021 was unique in the fact that we had to be COVID tested to enter the country as well as for the return to the U.S. We have traveled to Jamaica every year since 2003 and this has become our special time away. As we neared the end of our trip, we looked forward to our plans to harvest our grapes from our small backyard vineyard. We have always enjoyed picking grapes and the camaraderie with friends as we work together bringing in the harvest. This is usually followed by a large meal to share in the celebration of the harvest and being with friends.

Two days before our departure, we

headed to the resort’s nurse station to get our testing done. To our surprise, I tested positive, which meant I was automatically quarantined to a room. My wife tested negative, so she was OK not to quarantine as long as she didn’t stay with me. I would now be quarantined for the next 10 days. It was very difficult for my wife to leave me in Jamaica. As she departed, I waved to her from the new “confines” of my room. Never in my life had I ever experienced a timeout of this proportion.

Upon her return home, she quickly got to picking the grapes and setting up the crusher. At this point, we began long-distance video chatting through all the steps of getting the equipment together, sanitizing, and testing. She did all the work of getting the harvest

PORTUGAL WINERY TOUR WITH WINEMAKER

June 24 – 30, 2023

in and getting the grapes on the road to fermentation. This included all of the testing in my lab, which she had never done before. As difficult as it was to be apart, she found strength to get it all done and we both enjoyed, to some degree, the video chats that brought some form of togetherness.

From the sun-kissed plains of the Alentejo wine region to the terraced hillside vineyards of the Douro River valley to the charm of Porto, what ’s not to love about Portugal? Join WineMaker Magazine for a comprehensive Portugal wine vacation visiting remarkable wineries and port wine lodges with in-depth wine tastings and winery tours geared towards our group of home winemakers. We will visit the Vinho Verde DOC, Douro River valley, and Porto in the north, and the Alentejo wine country further south outside of Lisbon Along the way we’ll visit a cork forest, delight in vineyard picnics, take a local cooking class, enjoy a Rabelo boat ride down the Douro River, explore several historic cities, and stay in luxurious hotels each night. Join us for an immersion in a rich wine experience in Portugal! For more details visit: winemakermag.com/trip

BEGINNER’S BLOCK

BY DAVE GREEN

CHAPTALIZATION: GET THOSE BRIX UP

Chaptalization is the act of adding sugar to juice or must in order to increase alcohol content post-fermentation. It’s a process that is illegal for commercial wineries in many locations, but when making wine with certain types of grapes or country wines, it’s basically required. If you are fortunate enough to live in a place where fully ripened, high-Brix grapes are guaranteed and you have no interest in any other form of wine than wine grapes, then I won’t fault you for moving on to the next article. For everyone else, knowing the why, what, when, and how of chaptalization can be a useful tool.

WHY CHAPTALIZE?

The concept is a rather simple . . . more sugar in the must often means higher alcohol wines (at least until the point where the alcohol becomes toxic to the yeast). That is the reason most winemakers add sugar, but there are other reasons to as well. So let’s start with the three primary reasons you may want to add sugar to your wine.

First off, higher alcohol wines are not preferred just because they get people drunk faster . . . but rather because they are more shelf-stable. The elevated ethyl alcohol concentration is lethal to many of wines’ spoilage organisms so the wine can last longer with diminished fears of contamination. The higher alcohol levels are one reason that wine can be safely stored away for months and even years when properly managed.

Another added benefit that can sometimes be overlooked is the fact that ethyl alcohol can also enhance the mouthfeel of a wine. So a boost may be warranted if your juice or grapes come in with low sugar readings. This is also one reason lower alcohol wines are often backsweetened in order to make up for that loss of character from alcohol.

A final reason winemakers may chaptalize their wine is called amelioration — when a overly acidic juice is watered down then sugar is added back to bring the sugar levels back

up. You will find this commonly with cold-climate hybrid wine grapes that can come in with titratable acid levels well over 10 g/L, a.k.a., very sour.

WHEN TO CHAPTALIZE

It is primarily juice and fresh fruit winemakers who are potentially looking at chaptalization. It is a general rule of thumb that kit wines have already been dialed in to a specific sugar and alcohol level for specific reasons. These decisions have been made for you. But if a kit winemaker insists on chaptalization, be sure to be prudent with additions as the wine can quickly lose balance.

When it comes to preferred sugar levels in the must prior to fermentation, a general threshold for wines that you plan to age for a reasonable amount of time is 22 °Brix. This should lead to a wine with an alcohol level around 12% ABV. A refractometer or hydrometer are two tools winemakers use to read a juice’s sugar level. While there are quite a few examples of commercial wines that fall below to well below this alcohol level (look no further than many of the wines produced in the Mosel region of Germany), enhanced care is needed. In particular, gentler handling and reduced aging capacity are commonly associated with these lower alcohol styles of wine (not to mention the winemaking skills needed to bring overall balance).

Mainly we talk about chaptalizing wine prior to fermentation, but there is no reason that a wine cannot be chaptalized later. In fact, during the Champagne method of producing sparkling wine, it could be said these wines are chaptalized after bottling. A sugar mixture is added (the liqueur de tirage) in order to obtain bubbles in the wine, which also raises the final alcohol level.

GENERAL GUIDELINES

The first guideline has to do with the maximum chaptalization recommended. 25 °Brix is generally what I would

say is the maximum a beginner to intermediate winemaker would want to add sugar until. After that, stuck fermentations become increasingly likely and more advanced techniques are required to prevent unbalanced wines and off-flavors from developing.

Next it is important to talk about how much sugar is needed to get you up to your desired alcohol level. Using the Brix scale is extremely easy since it’s just a measure of % sugar. If you have an accurate level of how many liters of juice or wine you have, then for practical purposes we can say 10 g of sugar per liter will add 1 °Brix. So if you have properly measured your grape juice and find it is 18 °Brix and you want to raise it to 22 °Brix and you have 25 liters, it’s simply the difference in Brix multiplied by 10 g per liter multiplied by the # of liters. In this case you will want to add (4 °Brix x 10 g/L x 25 L = 1000 g, or 1 kg, or 2.2 lbs.) of sugar. While this calculation is a bit simplified, it will get you in the ballpark for our winemaking purposes.

WAYS TO CHAPTALIZE

The most common way winemakers will chaptalize their wine is with common table sugar found at grocery stores. Make sure you spend a little time working out the math of the amount of sugar required as you may be surprised how much sugar is needed to bring the must up to 22 °Brix for that strawberry wine. A little heat applied to the must prior to the yeast addition will often be beneficial to get the sugar dissolved.

Concentrates, grape or otherwise, are another way that a wine or must can be chaptalized. Most of these come in around 68 °Brix, are often fruit-specific or varietal-specific (although not always), and vary widely in volume. One way to calculate how much to add to get to your target Brix is using Pearson’s Square. You can find instructions on using the Pearson’s Square calculation here: https://winemakermag.com/ article/the-pearson-square

BY DAWSON RASPUZZI

RED BORDEAUXSTYLE BLENDS

There are many ways to create red Bordeaux-style blends. Three American winemakers share their approach to making massively complex, high-end wines.

We tend to use cultured yeast for our Bordeaux varieties (at Jonata we grow Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, and a unique Cabernet Franc clone). We often see rather low YAN (yeast assimilable nitrogen) numbers combined with moderate Brix levels (potential alcohols of 13.7–14.9%), so relying on the native flora and fauna can be a bit of a dicey plan. Generally with Bordeaux varieties we use RP15 yeast for most ferments. It gives us consistently dry wines with low volatile acidity (VA) and no issues with reduction. It also allows us to shift gears into malolactic fermentation (MLF) immediately after completion of primary with no issues. We occasionally utilize different yeast on smaller ferments for further complexity in future blending. For example, we have been experimenting with Alchemy IV in Merlot. It is a bit much on its own with loud notes of black licorice and powerful black fruit, but adds incredible dimensions when blended back later in the cellar.

We use a mix of medium and medium-plus toasted French oak with our Bordeaux varieties as we prefer the structural and textural impact from these. I find that many people focus on the wrong part of the relationship between oak and wine: The early aromatic and flavor contributions of oak. While I would never say this is of no consequence, I find so much more lasting contribution to wines in the structural and overall textural contributions of wood.

Most of our blending is done post-fermentation, usually the month before we bottle as we don’t often choose to rack our wines before 20 to 22 months. The primary reason for this is a phenomenon we saw in the

primeval Jonata days where our favorite fermentation lots from our initial vintage review tasted at 3–6 months post-harvest were almost always our least favorite lots at our final tasting prior to bottling at 18–24 months. The showy and flashy lots that shine early often fade and a blend made at 3–6 months (at least with wines from our unique properties) would ultimately be very underwhelming. In my experience, the tighter (often less expressive), better balanced, and more structurally sound wines tend to prevail in the long run and they often take months and years to truly understand in size, shape, and magnitude.

We work very hard to build wine blends to satisfy early with their generous and deep fruit, but primarily we focus on building a wine with structural integrity and overall freshness. For me these wines absolutely require a VERY high quantity of VERY high quality tannins. Without this backbone, the wines will always fall apart. It is also of the utmost importance to realize that structure without supporting fruit weight is also doomed to fail from imbalance.

As a home winemaker, always welcome experimentation as these grapes never cease to surprise. For better oak integration with new barrels, never underestimate the importance of high quality and clean lees. MLF in barrel also aids in this early process of marriage between oak and wine. Ditto on pressing back to barrel with a small amount of fermentable sugar to finish the last degree or so in the wood. To this extent, knocking the head out of a barrel and fermenting directly in the wood is also often a pleasant surprise. The most important thing to always remember is that you can only make fantastic wines from fantastic grapes. That is the key.

For better oak integration with new barrels, never underestimate the importance of high quality and clean lees.

Matt Dees is the Winemaker at Jonata Winery in Lompoc, California. He has a degree in soil science from the University of Vermont and previously worked at wineries in Napa, California, and Hawkes Bay, New Zealand.

R F

ed Bordeaux varieties we grow on DAOU Mountain include Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec (Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc have demonstrated to be the two varieties that reign supreme here). We have also started experimenting in small quantities with Arinarnoa, which has been added to the red Bordeaux list in the last few years. The terroir makes it ideal for growing these varieties here. It’s a combination of European soils (calcareous soils) that are not generally found in California, and a climate that benefits from a maritime influence combined with higher elevation.

We have isolated our own native yeast for these wines that we nicknamed D20, which is now available worldwide to be purchased by other wineries (available from Enartis in large quantities) and has demonstrated that

or Bordeaux varieties, we grow Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec in the Red Mountain AVA, with first plantings of these vines being in 1990. I do multiple picks of the same block to get balance within the varieties naturally. Early picks tend to be lighter and have more acidity, with redder fruit character and later picks tend to be a bit heavier and rounder with a different aroma profile. I utilize all of these picks to create a common theme to the blends each year, but they are never quite the same. I prefer to do blends post-fermentation to really give each block a chance to shine and express itself. This gives me a chance to find the little nuances in all the varieties and blocks to really find layers of flavors.

We have used D254 yeast for years, but I have also liked the results from EC1118, and D21. Most of our production of estate fruit is now biodynamic and we do really like the complexity we get from the native ferments.

We believe wine is a reflection of place and time and embrace vintage variation. Our blending goals revolve around this philosophy. We don’t want to mask what nature gave us by using

it has a better ability to finish fermentations all the way to dryness as well as having better stabilization of color, which leads to a better texture.

Whenever possible, we like to coferment our varieties. We feel that the integration works better in these cases. However, it depends on the year and the block we are working with. We cannot force this process. Generally, the main blending occurs after fermentation and right at spring racking.

We use 100% French oak with all our wines and see complexity develop in the wine as it ages and incorporates beautiful subtle flavors accompanied by notes of vanilla, clove, and cigar box.

The goal of all of our blends is defined by tremendous elegance that is never sacrificed by power, which is what I would stress to home winemakers: Trust your palate. Never generate power at the expense of elegance. Let your wine be a work of art backed by science.

additives, so the goal in blending is always to create balance with aromas, textures, and flavors. I taste every lot monthly (we end up with about 100–120 different lots) and each new barrel annually and take notes to really get to know each wine and each barrel and what they are trying to express. These lots and notes end up on a very big spreadsheet and I use what we have done in the past as a starting point in blending and go from there. It takes months to really understand the wines and figure out where each should go.

Harvest timing is the most important factor for creating a balanced wine. Think about the style you are trying to achieve; picking for a style is much easier than trying to adjust a wine after picking. Using blending is the second component you have for stylistic success. If you like the aromas of later picked Cabernet, but it’s a bit flabby, that’s where a Petit Verdot would fit in nicely. It’s amazing what 3% of something can do to really fine-tune a wine.

These three pros had a lot more to say than we have room for on these pages. Check out even more of their advice at: https://winemakermag.com/article/ red-bordeaux-style-blends

Daniel Daou is the Co-Proprietor and Winemaker of DAOU Family Estates in Paso Robles, California, and is known for creating the luxury Cabernet revolution in Paso Robles. Daniel’s highly rated and revered wines have been declared by the world’s foremost wine critics as “rivaling the best wines in the world.”

Sarah Hedges Goedhart grew up immersed in the world of wine after her parents began Hedges Cellars in 1986. She earned degrees and took her first winery job in California before returning to Washington’s Red Mountain area to work at the family business in 2005. She has been the Head Winemaker at Hedges Family Estates since 2015.

WINE WIZARD

BY ALISON CROWE

OAK-AGING ADVICE

Also: Strategies for a chaptalization mistake

QI HAVE A MEDIUM TOAST 20- GALLON (76- L ) AMERICAN OAK BARREL AND I JUST PUT WINE IN IT THREE WEEKS AGO. HOW OFTEN SHOULD I CHECK IT TO TOP OFF, TASTE, AND MEASURE FREE SO 2? ALSO, HOW LONG CAN I EXPECT TO KEEP THE WINE IN THERE ( THIS IS A BRAND NEW BARREL )?

LARRY WHITE AUSTIN, TEXAS

AHi Larry, congrats on your new piece of equipment! I’m sure you’ll find it adds to the kinds of wine you can make. Since you just filled your barrel and it’s brand new, you might want to open the bung and check the wine level now, since it’s been three weeks. Sometimes new barrels are slightly dry and, even if you soaked it with hot water before filling, can sometimes “drink” a little of your wine as they saturate over time. Be sure to completely top up the barrel at this time.

You can certainly check in on the taste as well after three weeks, but it’d maybe be a bit of a waste of wine at this stage, because three weeks isn’t nearly enough to really move the needle on flavor or aroma development.

How long to leave it in the new barrel? Since I don’t know what kind of wine you have or what kind of style you’re shooting for, check out these guidelines, but note that these are for commercialsized 59-gal. (225-L) barrels. Smaller barrels have more oak wood exposure per gallon of wine and therefore will gain flavors faster. This means the smaller the barrel the shorter the time spent on oak. Contact time for wine — the Wiz’s general guidelines:

3–6 months: “Light oak” style white wine like a medium-oaked Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc.

6–8 months: Medium-heavy style white wine like a traditional Chardonnay

or a lighter-bodied red like a Pinot Noir.

8–12 months: This would be good for a medium-bodied red wine like a Paso Robles Cabernet, a Sonoma Merlot, or a Rhône-style red.

14–18 months: This would be considered a heavy approach for something like a big Napa Cabernet or Bordeaux-style red blend.

In the future you might want to consider experimenting with a mix of new and used barrels, because sometimes 100% new oak on a wine can be overwhelming. The first use of any new barrel is always the most extracted and sometimes that can be a little too harsh, especially for those lighter styles.

For whites and rosés be aware that you may pick up some darker color and, again, this might not be a good match with the kind of wine you’re trying to make. If you’ve got a crisp Sauvignon Blanc or a Riesling, for instance, both aromatically and color-wise I’d go with a “neutral” barrel or a stainless steel drum even. A “neutral” barrel means that so many batches of wine have been aged in it and passed through over the years that very little if any oak flavor, aroma, or color is left to be extracted into the wine. A used barrel like this (as long as it’s not leaking) is a serviceable container for aging wine and can be beneficial due to the microoxidation that occurs through the wood. Also, if you leave the wine on the lees during aging in the barrel it can add some additional character but won’t contribute any of the new oak aromas

Maintaining sulfite levels while your wine ages will help it fight off oxidative forces.

In the future you might want to consider experimenting with a mix of new and used barrels, because sometimes 100% new oak on a wine can be overwhelming.

Photo courtesy of Dominick Profaci

and flavors you might expect from a newer barrel.

You probably already know this, though not all readers might: Don’t put white wine into a barrel where you’ve aged red wine . . . unless you want to make rosé! If you’ve got a barrel you’re using to age red wine in, it’s pretty tough to clean the barrel enough to be able to subsequently age rosé or white wine in it without affecting that wine’s color. You’d be amazed how far soaked-in the wine gets. I’ve had some success soaking the barrel for a few days with a very strong sodium percarbonate solution (ProxyClean or Proxycarb are two commercial products), rinsing with water, then soaking in a tartaric acid solution for another day. After this treatment the barrel should be safely decolorized . . . and sadly, also stripped of much of the new oak aromas and flavors. Because of this, it’s always best to designate “white barrels” and “red barrels” from the beginning. You can always turn a white barrel into a red one but it’s always harder to go the other way.

Whatever you do, don’t use chlorine bleach on winery equipment of any kind, which can lead to TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) contamination, more familiarly known as the “corked” wine aroma. The swampy-smelling TCA is generated when certain kinds of molds interact with chlorine molecules in their environment. Most often associated with corks (you’ve probably experienced the infamous restaurant cork sniffing tableside), TCA can also infiltrate cellars via cardboard, barrels, sacks of wood chips, and even drains. Because of this, chlorine-containing products of any kind have no place in a winery or cellar.

Always use carbon-block filtered water for your cleaning, sanitizing, and winemaking needs if your tap water contains any chlorine additive.

Winemakers who make wine batches at scale are able to use the new and neutral barrel mixes to their advantage by varying the percentage of each type. You may have heard the term “30% new oak” or “40% new, 60% used” in wine descriptions. What they mean is that in each case, 30% and 40% of the barrels in the batch were new, respectively. Mixing barrel ages is a great way to really dial in a style, and though I know most home winemakers (“microvintners,” I like to say) will never have batches large enough to properly go there, you can still achieve a certain amount of the same effect by aging your wine in a neutral barrel but introducing new wood into the barreled wine in the form of oak chips, beans, sticks, or spirals. In my Winemaker’s Answer Book (Storey Publishing) I show you how to make an oak chip infusion “sock” by stuffing toasted oak pieces into a nylon stocking, tying it up and leaving it with a string on the outside of the bung. This way you’d still be able to introduce some new oak character into your wine while being able to take advantage of the lees-stirring and aging dynamics of a neutral barrel. Added bonus? Once the wine’s oaky enough you can simply remove the oak sock . . . so no over-oaked wine!

All in all, if well taken care of, your barrel should last you for 10–15 years or so and, if you’re lucky and it’s well-made with no leaks, it could potentially serve you for much longer. I wish you well on your new-barrel journey!

QI STARTED A BATCH OF GRAPE WINE AND THEN ALSO USED A GLUT OF PLUMS TO MAKE PLUM WINE. THE GRAPE WINE IS DOING FINE AND THE PLUM WINE, TREATED IN MUCH THE SAME WAY, JUST ISN’T TAKING OFF. IT’S ALL IN THE BUCKET ( PLUMS, SUGAR, YEAST, AND YEAST NUTRIENTS ) BUT IT HAS NEVER FERMENTED. IT IS NEW YEAST AND THE BUCKET IS IN THE WARMEST PLACE IN THE HOUSE. THIS WAS TWO WEEKS AGO AND STILL NOT A SINGLE BUBBLE IN THE AIRLOCK. IT IS REGULARLY STIRRED. THERE IS A LITTLE FROTH ON TOP OF THE MIXTURE BUT NO VISIBLE FERMENTATION GOING ON.

I THOUGHT THE ROOM WAS TOO COLD ( WE’VE NOT YET PUT THE HEATING ON ) SO I USED A HEATER NEAR THE BUCKET NO LUCK. SO I PUT THE BUCKET IN THE AIRING CUPBOARD STILL NO LUCK. ( INCIDENTALLY THE GRAPE WINE I STARTED IN THE SAME WAY RESPONDED TO EXTRA SUGAR AND YEAST, BUT THIS HASN’T WORKED WITH THE PLUM ).

UNFORTUNATELY, I CAN’T REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT THE STARTING GRAVITY WAS BUT CLOSE TO THAT OF A SWEET WINE. I ADDED MORE YEAST BUT NO LUCK. NO CAMPDEN TABLETS OR SULFITES HAVE BEEN ADDED. THE PLUMS WERE CLEAN AND JUST PICKED, WASHED, AND NO STONES WERE ADDED. SOME HAD PREVIOUSLY BEEN STEWED WITH SUGAR. WHEN I TAKE THE LID OFF THERE’S A STRONG BUT NOT UNPLEASANT SMELL, AND THERE’S FROTH ON TOP, BUT NO FERMENTATION. YEAST WAS ALWAYS PRESTARTED WITH LUKEWARM WATER.

WILL IT BY NOW ALL BE BAD AND SHOULD I JUST CHUCK IT? OR SHOULD I RACK IT INTO DEMIJOHNS AND ADD MORE YEAST? THERE’S ABOUT 6 LBS. (2.7 KG ) OF SUGAR IN THE 2 GALLONS (7.6 L )

CHERYL FELIX LINCOLNSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM

It sounds like you’re doing a lot of things right, especially being that your grape wine has taken off, but your plum wine is just plum tuckered out.

Seems like you’ve got it in a warm enough spot and you’ve added all of the right things — you haven’t over sulfited it and you’d think that since your grape batch was happily fermenting your yeast strain and nutrients were working just fine.

WINE WIZARD

What does stick out to me a bit (and it took a couple of readings of your details plus a little math conversion to work out) is your starting Brix or sugar content. Though you don’t say what the plum’s initial Brix or sugar level was, you do mention that a portion of the plums were cooked with some sugar and that there were 6 lbs. (2.7 kg) of sugar added to 2 gallons (7.6 L). 6 lbs. = 96 oz. = 2.72 kg of sugar. Your volume is 2 gallons = 7.57 L of juice. That works out to be about 31.5–32 °Brix in sugar alone.

Add that on top of the natural sugar present in the plums, which, depending on the variety, could contribute between 10–20 °Brix themselves and you’re looking at a potential °Brix range of around 42–52! If you translate that into potential alcohol, that’d net you somewhere in the region of 24–30% alcohol. I don’t know of any wine yeast strain that can ferment anything higher than 18% alcohol to dryness. K1, BCS103, EC1118 (also known as Prise de Mousse or “PDM”) and a handful of others are good “power yeast” strains and must be used when faced with high Brix situations.

Needless to say, your Brix here is a little on the extreme side. Even if you use some high-Brix, dessert-wine type yeast and inoculation practices (more on that below), at that high of a sugar level you’re frankly going to eventually just encounter too much osmotic pressure from the sugar. The sugar may be too high for the yeast to get much of a foothold and unless you do multiple stepwise inoculations, “feeding” the fermentation with the high-sugar juice as you go, it’s possible the yeast might not even be able to start fermenting in an environment where the sugar content is that high. There’s a reason that jams, jellies, and fruits preserved with sugar manage to keep so well over time.

Yeast cell walls just aren’t built to handle sugar at the level your must appears to be and they’ll become what I call (the super-scientific enological term) “cranky.” When I’ve made dessert wines in the past (I once made Bonny Doon Vineyards’ “Vin de Glaciere” and “Framboise” earlier in my career) I experienced the full gamut of effects that maladjusted yeast can throw at you: Sluggish starts, high volatile acidity (VA), aldehyde production, off-aromas, oxidation, and of course the inevitable stuck fermentation. It takes a lot of winemaking derring-do to avoid these outcomes.

So, what to do in your situation? You have a few choices. First, you could add water (and maybe add a little more acid and yeast nutrient accordingly to make up for the extra volume of water) to dilute the sugar down into a more reasonable level. In my history of making sweet wines, I’ve never attempted a sweet wine (which will have residual sugar) above 32 °Brix. Dilution can affect flavors and aromas, however, and there usually is a point of diminishing returns that is dependent upon the flavor concentration in the fruit concerned.

You could give up on fermentation altogether and just fortify your plum solution with a lot of brandy, rum, or whisky (I’m serious!) to make a sort of alcoholic punch concentrate. You’d want your alcohol level to be at least 20%, so buy some booze and do your algebra accordingly.

This might be lovely spiced up with some cinnamon, orange peel, and nutmeg and bottled as gifts for the holidays. Just dilute with some sparkling water, serve over ice (or mull

with orange and cranberry juice) for festive, delicious cocktails. Since you’ve got 2 gallons (7.6 L) of the stuff it seems like it’s a workable volume for fortifying and then bottling up as thoughtful homemade gifts for loved ones.

Or . . . you could attempt a yeast inoculation and fermentation, in which case you’re going to want to follow all of my high-Brix fermentation tips, below:

-Start with a super-robust yeast strain: BCS103, EC1118 (a.k.a., PDM), or K1 are good choices. Basically, you want to choose something with the highest alcohol tolerance you can find. Low VA production is also a plus.

-Use a higher inoculation rate: Look at what the yeast manufacturer recommends and then increase it by 50%. This helps guard against the normal cell debilitation and death that can occur with high-Brix, as well as high osmotic pressure, fermentations.

-Add more nutrient than you normally would: I would do an increase of 30% over what you would normally use for a regular (22–25 °Brix) grape fermentation. This ensures that everyone has a chance to be fed. The risk is residual nutrient remaining in the wine to potentially feed spoilage organisms later, but this can be fixed by filtration and judicious watching and care of your aging wine later.

-Follow good inoculation protocols: Practice scrupulous sanitation. Use filtered (non-chlorinated) water. Measure temperatures accurately. Use a hydration-water yeast nutrient like Go-Ferm or FermStart in order to help build up the strongest cell walls possible. Follow yeast vendor’s directions for that particular organism.

-Pitch differently: Rather than hydrating dry yeast and tossing it all into the must/juice at once, a very sweet wine requires a very different approach. The first step is indeed the same: Hydrating the yeast (with hydration nutrient) in warm water to make sure it’s viable. Then, as opposed to tossing the yeast slurry into your juice/must, you’ll be gradually “feeding” your juice must into your yeast inoculation. Guidelines will differ based on your total volume and starting Brix, but basically the idea is to always make sure you’re never overwhelming your fermentation with sugar levels that are too high.

In your case, since you’ve got only two gallons (7.6 L) and you’d start with a yeast hydration solution of probably ¼ cup volume or so, I’d dilute maybe 25 mL of your juice/must with 50 mL of water, then add that to the hydrated yeast. Wait for good bubbling and activity to show (should be quick, probably about 30 minutes or so). Then proceed to add 50 mL of your juice/must diluted with 50 mL water to that, make sure you’re seeing good activity again (maybe around an hour or so). Then you should be able to feed direct small volumes of your juice/ must into the solution, monitoring activity by Brix drop.

Yes, this can be a laborious process and I’ve had sleepless nights doing it in the cellar. Eventually the fermentation will slow down and stick . . . and this is the ending point where you have to add SO2, chill it, settle, and eventually filter it before bottling. The hope is that by this point the VA won’t be too high and you’ll end up with something drinkable.

Which option to choose? I leave it up to you. Super-sweet juices and musts are always difficult to deal with and yours seems like no exception!

VARIETAL FOCUS

BY CHIK BRENNEMAN

NOTABLY NORTON

A grape of great character

In this issue we are going to cover some more ground on one of the first varietals I covered for WineMaker magazine. I wrote about Norton early in my tenure at UC-Davis and I was not yet working as the Supporting Winemaker for the Pierce’s Disease grapevine breeding program. At the time I was not really keen on what went into grape breeding. There are many such programs throughout the world that specialize in developing genetically disease-resistant varieties, striving to create better clones of our favorite wine grapes. But back in the 1800s, grape breeders were just looking for a grape that would survive the elements and produce grapes with characteristics similar to Vitis vinifera.

They worked with the several new species of grapes found native to North America. This time period led to a great many discoveries by folks experimenting with grape genetics and cross-breeding in this New World. It was during this time period that a man named Dr. Daniel Norborne Norton came along who discovered a new grape and the variety we know as Norton (or Cynthiana as it is sometimes called). While we will talk about the grape . . . this is better told as a tale of two Nortons!

While grape breeding was being carried out to produce grapes of better quality and disease resistance in the New World, the appearance of Norton seems so accidental. To learn the origins of the variety, we must talk about Dr. Norton of Richmond, Virginia; a medical doctor by training, who was also referred to as a backyard hybridist. Norton is the only commercial variety he gets credit for producing. But that’s just what leads to the mystery surrounding Norton, the doctor; Norton, the grape; and Norton, the wine.

TRACING ITS ORIGINS

Norton, the grape, is likely a cross between Vitis aestivalis and an unknown V. vinifera species. Dr. Norton reported that it was a hybrid of the variety Bland, a V. labrusca x V. vinifera hybrid, and Pinot Meunier. At the time, there was a possibility of some contribution of V. labrusca. An indicator of this connection is that Norton is poorly propagated from cuttings. However, our friends in the DNA lab determined that Norton is a hybrid variety whose ancestry “includes V. aestivalis and V. vinifera,” and excludes the Pinot Meunier theory. What they did come up with is that it could be a seedling of Enfariné Noir, a now almost extinct red variety from France, not known to be in North America. Only about one hectare (2.5 acres) currently exists in the Jura region of France. I scratch my head and wonder, where did that Enfariné Noir come from? Dr. Norton’s story is complicated, but this just added more mystery!

The investigations into this variety’s origins are all from secondhand accounts of Dr. Norton’s work. The story as presented by John McGrew, retired from the United States Department of Agriculture, goes somewhat like this: Sometime around 1820, Dr. Norton cultivated a seed that produced the vine that bears his name. Then by the 1830s it was commercially available. What is so intriguing is that Dr. Norton kept no records and the origins of the seed can only be surmised. Oh my, Enfariné Noir? He did not produce any other commercial varieties other than Norton. And the best account is that Dr. Norton didn’t even intentionally crossbreed two varieties, rather that he collected seeds, cultivated them and found a suitable variety for making wine. Or possibly, he was visited by the native fauna around

What they did come up with, is that it could be a seedling of Enfariné Noir, a now almost extinct red variety from France, not known to be in North America.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

NORTON Yield 5 gallons (19 L)

INGREDIENTS

125 pounds (57 kg) fresh Norton 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 Lalvin ICV D80 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 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. Clean and sanitize all your winemaking tools, supplies, and equipment.

2. Crush and de-stem the grapes. Transfer the must to your fermenter. During the transfer, add 15 milliliters of 10% KMBS solution (This addition is the equivalent of 50 ppm SO2). Mix well.

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

4. The next day sprinkle the Fermaid K directly onto the must and mix well.

5. 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. When the yeast is ready, add it to the fermenter and mix.

6. You should see signs of fermentation within about one to two days. This will appear as some foaming on the must surface and it will appear that the berries are rising out of the medium. This is referred to as the cap rise.

7. 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 this should be done three times per day. Use a clean utensil or your hand to mix.

8. 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), in which case add frozen water bottles to the fermenter. Mix the must. Wait 15 minutes, mix and check the temperature again. Do this as often as it takes to keep the temperature between 81–86 °F (27–30 °C). Do not cool off to less than 81 °F (27 °C). Alternatively, you may need to keep the must warm if you are in a colder climate.

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

10. 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.

11. Transfer the wine to your carboys or 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. Place an airlock on the vessel(s). Label the vessels.

12. Inoculate with your malolactic (ML) bacteria. Check the manufacturer’s instruction on how to prepare and inoculate. Cover each vessel with an airlock to allow CO2 to escape.

13. Monitor the ML fermentation using a paper chromatography assay available from most home winemaking supply stores. Follow the instructions included in the kit.

14. When the ML is complete, add 2 mL of fresh KMBS (10%) solution per gallon of wine (0.5 mL per L of wine). This is the equivalent to ~40 ppm addition. Place the wine in a cool place to settle.

15. 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.winemaker mag.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.

16. Rack the wine clean twice over a 6–8 month time frame to clarify.

17. 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.

18. 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. Fining with egg whites may be necessary to tame the tannins.

19. Filtration is generally not needed if SO2 levels are maintained and there are no surface films or indications of subsequent fermentations. Consult www.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. Have fun!

Richmond. Rather a bird or other animal consumed a grape in his garden and deposited the seed somewhere else in his garden where it sprouted and was discovered. Dr. Norton cultivated this “accidental” vine and after a few years, he realized that it had the desirable vigor characters, pest and disease resistance, and fruit quality to be a commercial variety.

It is not known how Norton, the vine, acquired its name from Norton, the person. The custom of the day was to name horticultural varieties after someone the discoverer held in high regard or another object of admiration. In the case of Norton, the wine, presumably Dr. Norton, the person, was a good winemaker, thus there was considerable demand for Dr. Norton’s claret.

With his discovery the good doctor likely had to find a way to produce the vines since the normal method of propagation was not successful. This could be the reason that it took many years for the vine to become available commercially. The normal methods of propagation of grapes were achieved by placing cuttings with exposed buds in a nutrient-rich soil, and allowing the buds to push, and then the roots follow. He likely experimented with different techniques and, having the green thumb he presumably had, he realized that the vines could produce roots by burying cuttings, which would sprout roots and then a shoot. Once the leaves are formed, he would dig up the now sprouting cane, isolate the new root and shoot growth, and presto, he had a vine genetically identical to the cutting he buried. This process came to be known as layering.

But this story as told is not without a controversy in itself. In 1861 an article was published in the Horticulturist by a writer who claimed that Norton, the grape, was discovered in 1835 by his father, Dr. F.A. Lemosy. The writer reports that it was found on a riverbank in the Richmond area and that Dr. Norton secured the variety from him. This controversy has been disproved based on a chronology of writings about Norton, the grape, at the time. It did seem to erase all the efforts that Dr. Norton had undertaken for the previous 40 years to promote the variety. Regardless of the origins, the popularity of the vine increased with plantings expanding to Missouri and other areas of the East and South because of the plant’s hardiness and propensity for making good wine. With the onset of Prohibition, many vineyards were replaced and the popularity waned, only to find new resurgence in recent decades. Norton is now heralded in cult-like settings in the wine regions of Missouri, Virginia, and Arkansas. Norton accounts for almost 18% of Missouri’s red grape production and is esteemed as the state’s grape.

NORTON VITICULTURALLY

This variety has small- to medium-sized compact bunches, with small, thick-skinned berries. It is vigorous and best grown on well-drained sandy or gravel soils. It is moderately suscep-

tible to Downey mildew, but resistant to many other fungal diseases. It is moderately cold-hardy, reported to survive to -10 to -15 °F (-23 to -26 °C).

The wines resulting from quality Norton grapes grown in the Midwest are in general characterized by high to very high acidity. The shorter growing seasons in the Midwest and East tend to force the grower’s hand in this arena, but in the finished wine often you’ll find it balances with the red and black fruit characters. One reference I found also described coffee, and bittersweet chocolate as flavor descriptors. The distinctive “foxy” character present in other North American grape varieties is not as prominent in Norton, which was one of the reasons that it held great favor as commercially viable wine among its critics. The wines are of medium-weight color and tend to have more anthocyanin color than other North American native reds. It is also reported to have twice as much resveratrol as Cabernet Sauvignon. Resveratrol is one of the antioxidants in red wines that is correlated with a decrease in the incidence of coronary heart disease. The commercially available wines are either off-dry or made into a Port-style. In Arkansas, it is referred to as the “Cabernet of the Ozarks.”

NORTON IN THE WINERY

From a winemaking point of view, Norton presents little trouble but needs some attention when it comes to the fermentation stage. While sugars at harvest are generally in the 22–24 °Brix range, if any particular season was short with an early fall, then chaptalization is often utilized. Being from California, where chaptalization is illegal for commercial wines, I only utilized this technique for research wines that we knew would have low sugars. A calculator found on the Winebusiness.com website is helpful for this process: https://www.winebusiness.com/calculator/winemaking/. The finished wine should have a final alcohol of somewhere in the 13% range for proper balance.

Norton can also tend to have high malic acid levels. Adjusting acidity at this stage is tough without getting an accurate malic acid level from a commercial wine laboratory. Your pH and titratable acidity (TA) measurements are key to whether or not to add acid at the must stage. I focus more on the TA than the pH at this stage. Therefore, I would not add any acid if your TA measurement was greater than 7.0 g/L. Rather I would wait until the completion of the malolactic fermentation, remeasure the TA, and adjust based on bench trials. There is no set rule on acidity adjustment, it just comes with time and familiarity with that particular grape.

So ultimately I have not solved the Norton origins mystery, but I like this story because it gets one’s mind working in the complexity of the genetics of the various Vitis species in all its wonderful forms. Seems that every time I bring up grapes and their origins, it is not always cut and dry.

The distinctive ‘foxy’ character present in other North American grape varieties is not as prominent in Norton . . .

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

LAST CHANCE — SEND YOUR ENTRIES NOW! ENTRY DEADLINE: MARCH 17, 2023

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 17, 2023

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

email: competition@winemakermag.com

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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

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

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41. Other Fruits

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42. Traditional Mead

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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

1. White Native American Varietal

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

7. White French-American Hybrid Varietal

White French-American Hybrid Blend

Hybrid Varietal

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Sauvignon Blanc

18. Other White Vinifera Varietals

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RULES & REGULATIONS

1. Entry deadline for wines to arrive is March 17, 2023

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 or crown cap. 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 $30 U.S. dollars (or $30 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, 2020. 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, 2021. 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 categories.

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 17, 2023

Wines judged: April 21-23, 2023

Results first announced at the WineMaker Magazine Conference in Eugene, Oregon: June 3, 2023

(Results posted June 4, 2023 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.

LAST CHANCE — ENTER NOW!

Deadline: March 17, 2023

Entry Fee: $30 (U.S.) or $30 (Canadian) per wine entered

Number of entries _____ x $30 (US) or $30 (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 or crown cap.

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__________________________________________________________

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 7 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 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.

Photo by Charles A. Parker/Images Plus

CRAFT BEER-INFLUENCED

WINEMAKING

How brewers-turned-winemakers are redefining wine

by Wes Hagen

Wine trends come and go, and then they come around cyclically again like they never happened. High-alcohol Zinfandels were a huge trend in the 1970s, but by the late ‘80s, big ripe wines were considered a style that was just emerging. Orange wine (macerated white wine) has wavered and waxed in popularity for more than two thousand years.

But the wine industry has never seen, in almost 10,000 years of human history, a revolution of style, craft, and ingredients that we are seeing and have seen in the last few decades of American craft brewing. Many brewers credit President Jimmy Carter for craft brewing really taking off in the early 1980s. In 1978, Carter signed H.R. Bill 1337 that legalized homebrewing in the U.S. for personal consumption or gifts.

At the time there was but a drop of craft beer in an ocean of macro-produced U.S. lager. Between 1985 and 1997, craft beer production in the U.S. expanded 20% on average per year, driven by some pioneering brands like Sierra Nevada (1980), Samuel Adams (1984), Dogfish Head (1995), Stone Brewing Co. (1996), and Russian River (1997).

For a story about the intersection of beer and winemaking, Russian River Brewing Founder/Brewmaster Vinnie Cilurzo is a great place to start. In a 2017 interview with Brewer Magazine, this legend of brewing discussed his roots in wine, having grown up in a winemaking family and worked in the wine cellar for many years. Cilurzo began homebrewing while attending college in San Diego, California, partly because he was drawn to the idea of being able to create a beverage that was complete in less than two months, versus wine that would take a year or more. Ironically, he’s largely known now for his sour beers aged in barrels that take just as long as wine to mature. As is the story with many craft brewing pioneers, his hobby got out of control and resulted in the opening of a brewery. Though, a love of wine was there first.

The craft beer craze really exploded after the turn of the century, with the number of breweries in the U.S. exceeding 9,000 in 2021, compared to about 1,500 in 2000, according to the American Brewers Association. As the number of craft breweries across America skyrocketed, so did the creativity. From redefining the IPA beer style over and over again, adding new adjuncts and flavorings never previously imagined, incorporating wine and spirit barrels to age beer, and on and on.

More recently, a new trend has begun to emerge. Some of these established brewers are beginning to try their hand at making wine. And it isn’t just the smallest breweries you haven’t heard of, but some of the revered names and most sought after producers in the craft beer landscape have started wine labels. Odell Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado; Foam Brewers in Burlington, Vermont; Wicked Weed and Burial Brewing, both of Asheville, North Carolina; among them. Patrick Rue, who founded The Bruery in Placentia, California, left the brewing world a decade later after achieving tremendous success to start a new venture. In 2019 he opened his own winery in Napa Valley, Erosion, which has since added small batch beer production to its lineup as well.

While commercial wine production was new to Rue and many other brewers who have taken this route, the creative spirit that craft beer is known for and techniques learned in a brewery never really left. This philosophy brought over from the brewing world is putting a new spin on wine. Wine traditionalists may scoff at the notion; however, the success of these ventures is worth taking a closer look at, especially by home winemakers who are not beholden to the bottom line if something goes awry nor limited in their creativity by market demand.

“When a brewer becomes a winemaker (particularly if its their own winery/brand), the agricultural part is a bit foreign, and there’s less of a sense of tradition or ‘that’s the way it’s always been done.’ For me, the most common area where I can impact flavor is by incorporating ingredients that fall outside of typical wine ingredients,” says Rue.

Let’s start with the first part of that quote before we get to the crazy additions that brewers are bringing to wine. More than any other factor, the quality of a wine is dependent on the quality of the fruit crushed. Fresh, ripe, cold winegrapes prevent feral ferments and the production of volatile acidity, which is the first step toward the wine becoming vinegar. On the other hand, making beer is precise, recipe- and process-focused, and egalitarian: Most ingredients are available to all brewers for a level playing field. Winemakers are limited by the quality of the vineyards and grapes they use — wine is generally about preservation of ingredient quality through fermentation. This point isn’t lost on Rue.

“Brewers have a lot of control when it comes to making beer ranging from raw material selection to process decisions. As a result, brewers tend to think of how to express certain flavors in the beers they make. Winemakers, on the other hand, tend to have less control. The grapes they have are of a certain varietal, from a certain area, and the weather is going to do what it’s going to do,” Rue says. “Much of the decisions in the grape

growing process are responding to the conditions in order to achieve the best outcome. Brix and acid levels are the primary decisions that will impact flavor, where most of the other decisions are related to the health of the vines and keeping the fruit in the best shape as possible. Wines are often produced to achieve a style the brand is known for, as that’s what customers have come to expect, leaving little room for experimentation. Plus, wine is made only one season a year, where beer is continually produced, so reducing risk is more crucial for winemakers than it is for brewers.”

Of course, this is the traditional way of thinking. What if we take a page from the brewer’s playbook, particularly if the quality of grapes aren’t pristine?

LET’S GET CRAZY

So, what are some of these ingredients that brewers-turned-winemakers are incorporating into their wines? The list Rue has executed at Erosion is already long enough to make the winemaking traditionalist a little queasy, and it likely is just the beginning for the winery that has been in business for just a few years.

“A few examples that are top of mind are dry hopping a white wine, adding sour cherries to a Chardonnay to make it a ‘rosé’ of sorts, adding cacao and vanilla beans to a Merlot, aging late-harvest Sauvignon Blanc in spirit barrels. I’ve enjoyed the results, they’ve all contributed something unique while preserving the flavor of the base wine.”

Again, these are non-traditional, but if you allow yourself an open mind, you can imagine the complementing flavors and aromas for each of these examples. This isn’t just throwing random things in wine, but instead approaching wine in a way craft brewers approach beer. It may be easier to imagine if you are already a craft beer lover who is used to these types of additions to beers, which Rue himself acknowledges.

“It takes some effort to have a traditional wine drinker come to terms with what we’re doing, but craft beer drinkers understand the concept

without much further explanation,” he says.

A traditional winemaker himself at SeaSmoke Cellars in the Santa Rita Hills of California, Don Schroeder is also a craft beer aficionado. From the outside, he appreciates some of these new techniques winemakers are experimenting with. “One brewing technique being used in winemaking that I am really enjoying is dry hopping dry white wines. If done right it can add some lovely complexity to an affordable white.”

For those unfamiliar with the term, “dry hopping” is the addition of hops after fermentation is complete. And hops, like grapes, vary dramatically from variety-to-variety. Aromatic descriptors are available from suppliers to help winemakers decide what aromas may complement and add to the complexity of a white wine, but a good starting point would be those varieties described as “vinous.” A few of the most notable examples include Nelson SauvinTM hops

from New Zealand, Hallertau Blanc hops from Germany, and AstraTM hops from Australia; however, other hop descriptors such as peach, pineapple, melon, lemon, and lime may also be good complements to a Sauvignon Blanc or other crisp white wine. Small hop additions in a “hop sock” or mesh bag for a few days is all that is needed, but some trial and error to dial in the right amount for your taste is to be expected.

Whether it is an addition of hops, cocoa nibs, vanilla beans, spiritsoaked oak chips, or any other new brewer-inspired addition; this is a great time to split that batch of wine you are making into smaller 1-gallon (4-L) trials. Wait until fermentation is complete and then divide the wine into smaller increments with varying amounts or times of the additions and then taste the differences.

Want to get even crazier? How about Brettanomyces? As a winemaker, you know the harm introducing the “spoilage” yeast into your winemak-

ing space can have as it can not only ruin the batch you are making with off-aromas and flavors such as the classic barnyard description, but also ruin future batches as it is extremely difficult to eradicate after it has gained a foothold. Yet, many breweries intentionally inoculate their beer with Brett (it is worth mentioning, that most of these either intentionally sour all of their beers or have separate brewing spaces for these Brett beers so as not to infect their clean styles). And these Brett beers are some of the most costly, complex, and soughtafter beers being produced at breweries from Belgium to Russian River and everywhere in-between.

Wicked Weed Brewing started an offshoot wine label named Vidl in 2019 that is run by the head blender of the brewery’s sour beer program. Some of the beers Wicked Weed produces are wild fermentations, not inoculated by traditional brewers yeasts. As such, it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that all of Vidl’s wines are also spon-

Hops (shown here with examples of both fresh and dried cones after harvesting as well as pellets, the more common form to buy hops) can add interesting and complementary aromas and flavors to not just beer, but also white wines.

taneously fermented. None of their wines receive sulfite, fining agents, or anything else. Natural wine, if you will. Sourcing grapes from the same region as their hops — Washington State’s Yakima Valley, the wines are intended to express the terroir of the region. And, yes, this includes Brett in some examples.

Again, Brett should not live in the same space as your traditionally crafted wines, but it is an option if you have a separate dedicated space and enjoy the flavor and aroma. Just be careful about cross-pollinating!

TECHNIQUES FROM THE BREWING WORLD

Outside of experimentation, is there more to be learned from the world of brewing? Rue says there is, and I couldn’t agree more.

“The most striking thing to me is that sanitation of most breweries is on a much higher level than most wineries. While wine is much more durable than beer when it comes to

sanitation and oxidation, there’s some best practices that would be well suited to both industries,” he says.

I’ve seen this firsthand. In 2001, my wife and I enjoyed having two winemaking interns from the TUM Weihenstephan in Freising (Bavaria), Germany. The cleanliness of the stainless tanks we used and care they took to clean the crusher/de-stemmer and press every night were likely factors that made our 2001 vintage wines extraordinary — the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay produced are still drinking beautifully more than 20 years later.

Another area winemakers may be able to take a tip from the brewer’s playbook, says Schroeder, comes in the form of intervention, a term winemakers often proudly state they like to minimalize. Whereas winemakers often follow the same recipe and technique year after year and “let the grapes’ expression shine,” brewers are more apt to continuously adjust a recipe until it hits all of the

Master The Classics!

marks the brewer is shooting for — and then continue to make adjustments as one-off brews!

“Many brewers focus on refining a recipe by tweaking techniques and elements in their brew; one thing many winemakers can learn from. Small refinements can go a long way,” Schroeder says.

These refinements may come in the form of the type of oak used, additives and enzymes, aging durations, yeast strains, and so much more. Instead of sticking to one way to do things, the brewer-turned-winemaker would recommend branching out. In fact, that’s exactly what Rue told me.

“I’d also encourage winemakers to step outside of their comfort zone and experiment a little bit,” he advises.

After talking to some experts and learning more about this wacky world of brewer-influenced winemaking, here are my takeaways:

• Sanitation. Brewers generally have better sanitation habits and pro-

tocol. This can keep the wines clean, topped, and healthy. Making beer with winery levels of sanitation would commonly lead to spoiled batches of beer. The take-home message: Be sanitary, keep your wines and your winery clean; maintaining brewerylevel cleanliness is not required to make great wine (still, it can’t hurt).

• Additions. The main focus of those I spoke with for this article is that the number one trend coming from brewing is non-traditional additions. Dry hopping an aromatic white wine is a common trend among the brewer-turned-winemaker, as is putting herbs, spices, fruit, and cocoa nibs in bags for immersion in the wine. The pros of these techniques, as brewers will explain, are complexity is achieved non-traditionally, and may lead to better and better additions and fun new beverages. The traditional winemaker may harp on the cons: Additions of this sort take a wine away from the place where it was grown. My thought is that this is a better technique for improving wines made from marginal quality grapes.

• Brewing is a bit more recipe based/methodical in production, while winemaking is a bit more artistic and traditional. Brewers will be more likely to jump into a new technology and won’t be disturbed by taking chances and using new techniques. Ultra-premium winemakers try to preserve the quality of great vineyards, making singular wines of place and character. Winemaking is about finding the grapes no one else can. Brewers all have access to the same ingredients, so there is more of a reliance on process and science, and less on trying to persuade vineyard owners to get just one ton of that perfect Pinot Noir. Maybe we can meet somewhere in the middle on a home winemaking approach?

• More and more in recent years we are seeing brewing, winemaking, and even distilling in the same facility. As more adult beverages are made in close proximity, an exchange of process and additions move both ways through the craft. Small-production home winemaking and homebrewing follows a similar path. We are able to

craft both wine and beer legally in our homes, and application of knowledge from one beverage to another gives us insight into both.

• Amateur brewers and winemakers have a distinct advantage in using non-traditional production methods — if a 5-gallon (19-L) experiment goes wrong, it’s less painful to make vinegar or dump it than if it were a 10,000-gallon (38,000-L) lot at a commercial winery or brewery. Have fun, make some mistakes, and you may end up creating something new, exciting, and popular.

In a staunchly conservative craft like winemaking, is it genius, profane, or somewhere in the middle to

add cocoa nibs to an aging Cabernet, or to dry hop a Sauvignon Blanc? At the end of the day, the answer is up to you.

REFERENCES:

• Bernstein, Joshua. “For Many Craft Breweries, Winemaking is the Next Frontier.” SevenFifty Daily, October 12, 2021. https://daily.sevenfifty.com/ for-many-craft-breweries-winemaking-is-the-next-frontier

• Montgomery, Tyler. “Russian River Brewery: Interview with Owner Vinnie Cilurzo.” Brewer Magazine. July 26, 2013. https://thebrewermagazine. com/russian-river-brewery-inter view-with-owner-vinnie-cilurzo

Descriptors of your favorite wines will often include numerous fruits, herbs, spices, and flowers, like those illustrated here. Beyond contributions of the grapes, yeast, and barrels, who says you can’t further influence these desired characters by directly adding the aromas and flavors so widely sought? Brewers have been using adjuncts in beer for ages, and nothing is stopping winemakers from following suit.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.com

WORLD-CLASS WEEK IN BORDEAUX WineMakerReaders Experience a Bordeaux Harvest

WineMaker readers including Publisher Brad Ring recently spent a week exploring one of the world’s great wine regions: Bordeaux, France. The group experienced the height of harvest during visits to legendary wine areas such as Médoc, Saint-Émilion, Graves, and Sauternes during WineMaker’s Bordeaux Wine & Food Tour in September, 2022. We visited an amazingly broad spectrum of wineries from the large and wellknown like Château Lynch-Bages to a small family-run winery with just one employee at Château Boutillon. All along the way we had the chance to walk vineyard rows and meet with local winemakers happy to answer questions from American home winemakers while we enjoyed sampling their wines.

We also made sure to leave time for some incredible Bordelais meals in wine cellars, cheese caves, and steaks cooked over an open hearth of flaming grape vines.

We visited in mid-September during the excitement of harvest and were lucky enough to watch justpicked grapes roll down sorting belts and emptied into fermenters with winery operations in full gear. From Left Bank to Right Bank, it was a special chance to enjoy world-class wines right at the source with the smell of fermentation in the air.

It was a treat to pick and taste Botrytis noble rot-shriveled grapes in Sauternes, walk through the architectural wonder of Château Haut-Bailly’s ultra-modern winery dug into a hill packed with multi-story concrete

egg fermenters, compete in a blending contest at Château Lauduc, learn from interactive displays at the La Cité du Vin wine museum, and try rare Merlot-based blends at Château BeauSéjour Bécot just down the hill from Saint-Émilion. And it was a trip made all the more special by sharing it with fellow home winemakers passionate about wine and winemaking while exploring villages, stunning countryside, the cobblestone city side streets of Bordeaux, and culture of one of the world’s most famous wine regions.

Our next WineMaker trip with space available will be in Portugal and take place from June 24–30, 2023. Details on this Portugal trip can be found at winemakermag.com/trip. We hope you can join us on a future WineMaker adventure. Santé!

Let’s start

An introduction to making wine from grapes and kits

by Bob Peak

uy a kit or plant a vineyard? Those are a couple of extreme examples of decisions you will make when you set out to become a home winemaker. The scope is broad, but many steps along the way overlap or echo one another. Going from the most basic and simple start-up through growing your own fruit, we will look at the major activities of home winemaking and how you can take baby steps — or a giant leap — into fermenting your own delicious wine.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.com

CHOOSING & SOURCING INGREDIENTS

First you need juice or grapes. Other fruit can be used to make very tasty wines, but the wine grape is uniquely suited to the purpose with an appealing aroma, fresh flavor, crisp acid balance, and enough sugar to produce a product that is shelf-stable due to its alcohol content. Within the scope of grape winemaking, there is an early process distinction between white (or rosé) wine and red wine. To make white wine from grapes, the fundamental sequence is crush, press, ferment. For red wine, the order is instead crush, ferment, press. A home winemaker can employ common equipment in both branches and most supplies are similar, too. The main reason for the difference comes down to grape skins. Red wine gets its color from natural organic dyes called anthocyanins that are leached out of the dark grape skins while the wine is fermenting for a week or two. Tannins are also extracted, contributing pleasant levels of bitterness and astringency. As those characteristics are less valued in most white wines, the skins are removed early, the juice is fermented, and neither color nor tannin is extracted.

If you buy a kit, you will receive juice or a juice concentrate to which you will add water. For white wine, you will proceed just as with raw grapes beginning after pressing — you are fermenting juice. For red wine kits, the producer needs to be a bit more clever and get some color and tannin extracted into the juice before packaging it for your kit. Red wine kits may use a process called vacuum maceration to burst skin cells or enzyme maceration to achieve the same result, without fermentation. Either way, the object is to release the red pigment into the juice. After that, grapes are pressed just as for white wine juice. Juice in kits may be vacuum concentrated to reduce shipping weight and bulk. It may also be pasteurized, autoclaved, or frozen for stability. Wine kits are generally packaged to make 6 gallons (23 L) of wine (smaller for dessert-styles) and include yeast and any other ma-

terials needed. Sourcing a wine kit is as easy as an Internet search or visit to your local home winemaking supply store (which you will want to become familiar with in any case). Find a reputable vendor that sells a lot of kits or observe the dates on the kit as freshness is important, especially in regards to yeast health.

If you want to make wine from grapes or fresh juice, it is easiest if you live in or near a winegrowing region. Since every state now has at least one bonded winery, that may not be as difficult as it sounds. Look for grapes grown in your area and make your variety selection from those. Some growers pack wine grapes in 18- or 36-lb. (8- or 16-kg) plastic or cardboard crates that you can pick up at the vineyard or from a wine supply store that distributes for the vineyard. With so many wine grapes originating on the West Coast, vendors elsewhere in North America have made arrangements to receive and distribute fresh grapes from the West during harvest time. Some also import South American or South African grapes during North American springtime. Once again, your local home winemaking shop is a good place to start. They may sell fresh grapes, they may be aware of local growers who sell in small quantities, or they may maintain listings of local grapes for sale. Home winemakers typically pay about a dollar a pound ($2/kg) for locally grown grapes. Local wineries that make white wine will sometimes sell pressed and chilled white wine juice to home winemakers. If you find one of those, verify what sort of containers you should supply or if the juice is already packed in sealed plastic buckets for you to take away.

Ultimately, you have the other extreme example: Grow your own. Whatever your source, plan on about 100 lbs. (45 kg) of fresh grapes for 5 gallons (19 L) of finished wine; that’s about two cases of standard 750-mL bottles. In planning your vineyard, a rough idea of your eventual yield is about 10 lbs. (4.5 kg) per vine at maturity. Most areas of North America can grow some kind of wine grapes. Far northern areas with very cold

winters may prove impossible due to winter damage to dormant vines, but there are techniques available that can minimize the damage. Very hot areas also offer challenges, but commercial wineries are doing well in places such as Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. If anyone is growing grapes in your region, try to meet them and ask about their process and success. One of my viticulture professors exaggerated just a bit by saying, “if weeds grow there, so will grapes.”

EQUIPMENT

Now you have your grapes lined up for harvest time. What equipment will you need to have when you get home with the fruit? The basic tasks you need to complete are crushing (possibly with destemming), pressing, fermenting in bulk, aging (in a barrel, or not), and bottling. As with other aspects of home winemaking, your choices can range from small basic equipment through sophisticated machinery that mimics that of a commercial winery. For a kit or fresh or frozen juice, you will skip crushing and pressing and go right to bulk fermentation. For grapes, you will need a crusher or a crusher/destemmer. The crusher has a hopper and two rollers mounted with a hand crank. You place the crusher over a bin or bucket, put grapes in the hopper, turn the crank, and crushed fruit — with the stems — comes out the bottom. A crusher/destemmer is similar at the top but has another sheet metal box below the hopper with another shaft fitted with helical-mounted paddles. As the crushed fruit, called must at this stage, falls into the lower box, the paddles beat the stems toward an opening at the end of the box. Stems fall out that end and destemmed must falls straight through. For larger production, you can get a crusher/ destemmer with an electric motor instead of a hand crank. Your local store may rent equipment for harvest. If not, purchase prices range from a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand dollars.

For white wine, the next step is pressing. For red, it is bulk fermentation and then the pressing. Basket

presses are most common for home use. Vertical hardwood slats are held together by metal bands to make two halves of the press basket. The basket rests on a metal base and the two halves come apart to empty the basket after pressing. You assemble the unit, place a bucket under the spout, and pour in the crushed white must or fermented red wine and must. Wine or juice runs into the bucket (have two on hand) and is then poured into the next container. A cast iron ratcheting head is hand-cranked down a threaded shaft to apply pressure to the must. Common press sizes are numbered by the centimeters of di-

ameter of the basket, ranging from 20 to 55. The smaller ones work well for a few gallons (liters) of wine and the larger ones can work in the ton (tonne) range. Prices range from a couple hundred dollars to over one thousand. At the larger sizes, additional press types are available. Hydraulic presses use an electric pump or a hand pump to push a piston plate down on the must, with a basket similar to ratcheting presses. Bladder presses include a heavy rubber bladder mounted vertically inside a stainless-steel cage. You use a garden hose to inflate the bladder and the water pressure does the work, squeezing the

juice or wine out of the cage. Bladder presses require the bladder to be filled completely, so they are only intended for bigger batches.

FERMENTATION

Transfer your white juice into a narrow-mouth container like a glass or PET plastic carboy, leaving at least a few inches (6–10 cm) below the shoulder of headspace to allow for yeast foaming. Fit the neck with an airlock, a small device that will allow carbon dioxide to escape during fermentation but will prevent air from entering. For red wine, transfer the crushed and destemmed must into an open-top container like a foodgrade bin or polyethylene food-grade trash can. Now you are in the stage of adding supplies. Immediately after crushing, add about 50 ppm (partsper-million, mg/L) of sulfur dioxide to retard spoilage organisms and minimize premature oxidation. Powdered potassium metabisulfite or premeasured tablets of it are the most common methods at home. Once juice is in a carboy or must is in a bin, you will add yeast. A range of active dry yeasts and some liquid cultures are available for different grape varieties and desired wine styles. Dry yeast should be rehydrated with warm water following package directions before adding it to the must. For a kit, use the included yeast and follow directions.

You will see gas bubbles rising through the airlock for juice fermentations. For red must fermentations, a “cap” forms within a day or two as carbon dioxide inflates grape skins and pushes them to the top of the bin. Those events will lead to the next likely product addition: Nutrients. Grapes do not always naturally contain enough amino acids of the right kinds to support the healthy growth of yeast through a complete fermentation. To assure that the wine goes completely “dry” (no significant remaining sugar), we add nitrogen-containing products to the wine. Many products are available, ranging from the simple mineral diammonium phosphate to organic blends of yeast-derived extractives. I like to use one of the complex products

A basket press is the most common press type for home winemakers. Crushed grapes are added to the basket and pressure is applied using a ratchet system, pressing juice into containers below.

like Fermaid O or Superfood, adding usually about one gram per gallon (4 L) after about three days of fermentation. For a more precise nutrient program, you can send a juice sample to a wine testing laboratory and ask them to test for yeast assimilable nitrogen (YAN). With that number and information regarding the nitrogen demand of your chosen yeast from your supplier, you can tailor nutrient additions exactly. You will not need any added nutrients for a kit wine as the juice has already been adjusted by the manufacturer.

During active fermentation, you need to “punch down” the red-wine cap twice a day. In that process, you break up and sink the floating skins back into the wine. That allows the extraction of color and tannins and also keeps the skins wet with wine, so fruit flies don’t make a home among them. For punching down, you can use a special-purpose punchdown tool, a large potato masher, or even your well-washed bare hands. After several days, when gas bubbles stop rising in white wine or the cap begins

to sink in your red, confirm dryness with a hydrometer reading before moving on to the next phase. Press the red wine just as described earlier for white juice and pour it into narrow-mouth containers like carboys or barrels. To avoid excessive oxidation, make sure carboys are topped up to at least the bottom of the neck or barrels are filled to the bunghole. Since white wine has already been pressed, just rack (siphon or pump) the relatively clear wine off of the sediment in the primary fermenter into a topped-up container. For either red or white, it is prudent to fit either an airlock or a silicone breather bung, which is a stopper with a flap that seals against letting air in but lets gas out. Transferring or pressing may kick up a bit more fermentation and if you use a solid bung, it may get ejected from the carboy or barrel, leaving your wine exposed to air.

A brief aside here about barrels. When I was co-owner of a home winemaking shop, new customers would often say, “I want to make wine, so I need a barrel.” My answer was in-

variably, “No, you don’t.” Barrels are wonderful containers for storing and aging fine wine but owning and using one is another entire hobby of its own. Even in commercial wineries, there is a winemaker and a cellar master. The winemaker makes the wine, and the cellar master babysits the barrels. I suggest starting the hobby without a barrel program and adding one when you feel ready. Meanwhile, read about barrel use and oak alternatives in back issues of the magazine.

Whatever container you are using, you are now in the bulk aging phase of your wine. If you are making red wine or selected varieties of white, primarily Chardonnay, you might want to undertake malolactic fermentation. The major acid of wine grapes is tartaric acid and it goes through winemaking mostly unaltered. The second acid is malic. Most commercial red wines undergo a bacterial fermentation that converts the sharp-tasting malic acid into rounder, mellower lactic acid: The malolactic fermentation, or MLF. You can do this at home, too. While some winemakers like to

Punching down the cap of grape skins that float to the top of the fermenter during active fermentation in red wines twice a day is important to promote the extraction of color and tannins, as well as keeping the skins from drying out.

Photo by Dominick Profaci

inoculate with MLF bacteria while the wine is still in primary fermentation, I prefer to do it right after the transfer described earlier — racking of white or pressing of red. Consumer-size packages of liquid or freeze-dried bacteria are readily available online or from your home winemaking store. Follow package instructions and pay careful attention to the temperature. The process will go very slowly or not at all at levels below about 65° F (18° C). If you do MLF, you must fit an airlock or breather bung because a small amount of carbon dioxide is produced. It may take from two to six weeks to complete. A paper chromatography kit is available that will allow you to test for completion at home, or you can send a sample to a lab.

When MLF is complete (or if you are not doing MLF on this wine) you need to begin your sulfite program. There is a calculator for sulfite additions at winemakermag.com and in various wine textbooks. The common basis is that you need 0.5 mg/L of molecular sulfur dioxide (SO2) to protect red wine against oxidation and spoilage, or 0.8 mg/L in white wine. At normal wine pH levels, this will translate into about 30 mg/L of free SO2, which is the form we commonly test for at home. Maintain the required level by making monthly or

bimonthly additions and testing from time to time. White wines are usually ready to bottle in five or six months, after perhaps one more racking into another topped-up container. Red wines may age in bulk for a year or more, although many of us bottle just before the end of a year so we get the bulk storage containers emptied in time for the next harvest.

BOTTLING

Glass bottles with corks — synthetic or natural — are usually used for homemade wine. The popular screw caps you see on commercial wine are applied by a special machine that crimps the cap to the glass bottle threads, but there is a home screwcap option called Novatwist. Hand corkers are common and easy to use. A two-hand, wing-type portable corker is suitable for a few bottles, but in the long run you will be much happier with a floor corker. That device has iris-type jaws that squeeze a cork down to a diameter that will fit in the bottleneck as you pull down on a lever handle. A rod attached to the handle pushes the cork into the bottleneck. The most common bottles are standard 750-mL size and come in a variety of shapes and colors — all of which relate to marketing and have no effect on storage of your wine. You

can use 375-mL half bottles as well, although you may need to place a wooden block on the platform of your floor corker to adjust for the shorter bottle height. For filling the bottles, you can use an electric filler, a gravity-fed multi-spout filler, or a single bottle filler attached to the end of a siphon hose. The last is the most basic. Siphon your clear, stable wine out of the carboy into a bottling bucket. Add a final 10 mg/L of sulfite to ameliorate the oxygen exposure during bottling. Cork each bottle (using new corks from a sealed package) immediately after the bottle is filled. Store bottles upright for a day or two to allow the cork to expand in the neck of the bottle and produce a tight seal. After that, label if you like and apply decorative capsules. The most common capsule type is heat-shrink, applied by slipping it on the bottle and dipping the neck in simmering water. There is also an electric heat-tunnel device for shrinking capsules if you are bottling in larger quantities. The capsule is purely for appearance, like the label, and has no storage function. Keep your bottled wine in the dark. Either in a rack or returned to the cases, turn the bottles upside down or lay them on their sides to keep the cork moist. The cardboard case provides sufficient protection from light, but if you put bottles on a rack be sure the space is kept dark most of the time. Many wines experience a condition called “bottle shock” after bottling day. Not fully understood, it is thought that exposure to air and some agitation is responsible for transient chemical reactions that mute aromas and suppress flavors for a few weeks after bottling. Hold your wine for four to six weeks after bottling to be clear of bottle shock. Most white wines will not improve greatly with bottle age and are best consumed within a year or two. Some reds will become better with age, sometimes much better. Tannins will mellow out, sharpness will drop away, and mature wine characteristics will become prominent. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t drink it young, also. It’s your very own homemade wine: Do what you like!

The sugar level (Brix) can be monitored by floating a hydrometer in a test tube of juice or wine.

t’s that time of year again — time to celebrate those home winemakers who put as much e ort into creating labels to decorate the outside of their bottles as they do creating the wine inside of them. Our 23rd annual WineMaker Amateur Label Contest attracted hundreds of submissions from around the world, giving our judging panel of WineMaker sta the pleasure of viewing a wide assortment of creativity. And yet, for the first time in recent memory, we have a repeat Grand Champion in Eric Rosenfeld, who also took top honors a year ago. Along with him, there are some new names on the podium and a lot of fantastic labels we’re proud to share on the following pages. We extend our appreciation to all of the winemakers who shared their labels with us, as well as the sponsors who generously donated prizes for all of the winning entrants!

Eric Rosenfeld Scottsdale, Arizona

“I find myself drawn to impressionism and the way that style conveys emotions with color. The Super Tuscan wine I produced was similarly complex, containing both bold fruit and darker tannins and aromas. The ways these elements combined and swirled around my palate reminded me of the way the paint comes together on an impressionist canvas. I wanted to capture that in the label while maintaining the idea that all of this was born with a love for the playful and experimental in my winemaking.”

PRIZES

RJS Craft Winemaking En Primeur Winery Series Italian Super Tuscan wine kit from BSG HandCraft; Gift card from GrogTag; Vintner’s Best® Wine Base from Vintner’s Best®

Roman Beyer

Los Altos Hills, California

Roman’s daughter, a CalPoly student majoring in graphic design, created this label that caught all of the judges’ attention. “She has been doing artwork by cutting out various materials using color and texture. To make the 2018 Merlot label, she used a photo of our house, which is where the wine is made,” Roman said. In addition to winning gold for the label, the wine itself was awarded Best of Show at the Santa Cruz Fair!

John Cozzarelli

Nutley, New Jersey

John has been creating labels for his homemade wines for decades, telling us he’s designed around 200 labels in total! “Each year myself and my sons make approximately 10 di erent wines. I then must come up with a design,” he said. The labels generally use borrowed artwork, but where John gets the most enjoyment is airbrushing and selecting fonts and colors for his label. The way his last name appears to float from the label caught all of the judges’ attention in this design.

PRIZES

Jon Walusiak

Monmouth, Oregon

This label is an homage to Jon’s roots. A label on the back of each bottle (not pictured) tells the story of Uncle Ray moving across the country to Oregon in the back seat of a Studebaker with his five-year-old brother in 1935. Five years later, Ray’s family settled in the Pettibone farm where Jon’s grandfather raised five boys while tending to the farm. “Ray’s Place, on the Pittibone farm, has now passed on to the third generation where we now raise heritage apples, Pinot Noir, hazelnuts, and another generation of boys,” the label concludes.

PRIZES

PRIZES

RJS Craft Winemaking En Primeur Winery Series Chilean Chardonnay wine kit from BSG HandCraft; Gift card from GrogTag

RJS Craft Winemaking Cru Select French Merlot wine kit from BSG HandCraft; Gift card from GrogTag

RJS Craft Winemaking Cru Select Italian Pinot Grigio wine kit from BSG HandCraft; Gift card from GrogTag

Reader’s Choice

Receiving the most fan votes from a group of our favorite Honorable Mention labels, the winning label was, incredibly, created by someone who won’t be able to legally drink wine for another 15 years! “The original artwork was done by my 6-year-old grandson after I told him these grapes turn from green to red,” said Brian.

Honorable Mention

PRIZES Gift card from GrogTag; Collection of special issues from WineMakermagazine

Brian McCarthy Tucson, Arizona

Gift card from GrogTag PRIZES

BARRY COLLINS Phoenix, Arizona

BOB MURRAY Pennsauken, New Jersey

BYRON BARNES Blanco, Texas

CASEY DUNCAN Cortez, Colorado

CHRISTOPHER BODELL Skaneateles, New York

DENNIS MCCARTER Rohnert Park, California

MIKE WORKMAN Saratoga, California

TIM MORAVEC Lincoln, Nebraska

DAVE YOST Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania

JIM COSTA Washougal, Washington

PENNY WALKER San Diego, California

JEREMY KOMITO Norwood, Pennsylvania

MELISSA MOSLEY Los Olivos, California

TERRY SCIARRINO Westlake Village, California

SULFUR DIOXIDE FACT AND MYTH

Revisiting what we know about SO2

by Clark Smith

Over the last 40 years, I have published a handful of articles and taught hundreds of classes about sulfur dioxide in wine. Beyond the basics, there exists a raft of common wisdom that is simply untrue.

Through this article I will draw on my own research over the last four decades as well as other important literature that has somehow failed to make its way into the mainstream enological academia consciousness, much less its disciples in commercial winemaking. What you'll find, is that there are a lot of myths about sulfur dioxide that are widely believed. You can count on my viewpoint to be controversial.

Before I delve into this juicy subject, let’s review the basics.

Photo by Charles A. Parker/Images Plus

WHAT IS SO2?

Please stop calling it “sulfur.” The chemistry of this element is complicated enough without confusing its four nearly unrelated branches: The sulfites, the sulfates, the sulfides, and elemental sulfur.

Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is a noxious gas produced by the burning of elemental sulfur. In its bound form, it is also produced in small amounts by yeast during fermentation.

Myth #1: Sulfur dioxide has been used since the early days of winemaking to protect oak barrels from microbial spoilage.

It’s use in wine is a recent development. According to ancient wine scholar William Younger’s masterful 1966 book Gods, Men and Wine the Romans used “blue smoke” as a pesticide in orchards, in magic, and in a primitive form of gunpowder, but didn’t like its e ects on wine. There is no evidence that they or any prior winemaking culture used it in winemaking for the first seven millennia of recorded winemaking and the Roman Latin language records are quite thorough and readable, covering over half of Younger’s impeccably researched 564-page tome.

The earliest recorded use was by a Franconian monk named Martin Bayr in 1449. Inexpert use in the coming years led to its abuse being curtailed to only the sanitation of used casks in the Holy Roman Empire Wine Purity Act of 1498, according to sulfite-free winemaker Paul Frey.

Today, sulfite use is so prevalent that most winemakers, including many world-famous enologists, are under the false impression that sulfites are essential to winemaking.

Myth #2: Wines require sulfite to avoid spoilage.

According to Dr. Andrew Waterhouse, former Chairman of the Dept. of Viticulture and Enology at UC-Davis, “Without sulfites, wine is extremely perishable and should be refrigerated for its entire 1-year life cycle between harvest and then from

the winery to consumer.”1

So how come my sulfite-free WineSmith Roman Reserve wines, nowhere touted as sulfite-free in marketing, are still my best-selling, most highly priced wines after 5–8 years in neutral cooperage?

Admittedly, it took me 40 years to acquire the knowledge to make such wines and I am not encouraging readers to jump into this challenging undertaking, so let’s move on to modern conventional winemaking.

I will also admit that I have no idea how to make sulfite-free white wines. Frey Vineyards in Redwood Valley, California, does it quite successfully by completely eliminating oxygen throughout the winemaking process as brewers do, resulting in modern, conventional, fresh whites. You can’t do this at home.

The Georgians do it by making amber wines with six months of skin contact, essentially alcoholic teas, which age for decades into complex, rich, dense wines that bear no resemblance to modern whites. This will work if you’re into this style and have the time to wait.

FREE SO2 IN WHITE WINES

SO2 gas can be purchased in canisters in liquefied form under pressure and dissolved in water up to 9% (commercially available as 6%, which is safer) or combined with potassium hydroxide (KOH) to form K2S2O5, a white powder called potassium metabisulfite (KMBS). When any of these are added to wine, they distribute themselves (collectively known as sulfites)

into equilibrium according to pH. The free SO2 equilibrium looks like this:

Note that the leftmost species has no charge and thus is quite volatile. It’s the only one you can smell. No, it doesn’t smell like rotten eggs — that’s H2S, an unrelated sulfur compound. It hurts to smell, rather like a freshly struck match. It’s only present in tiny amounts, but it’s the species that is toxic to microorganisms because it can easily penetrate cell membranes due to its neutral charge, thus pickling the cell in a similar manner to vinegar or pool chlorine. Because it also has an unpleasant smell, your job is to regulate its concentration at the pH of your wine, using the table in Figure 1.

You simply multiply your free SO2 determination by the stated percentage (times 100 to express it as a fraction) and shoot for 0.8% ppm SO2 (m). This is usually expressed as mg/L, which is e ectively the same thing as ppm in these small concentrations. Note the ten-fold variation in this percentage over the pH range of wine.

The bisulfite form (HSO3-) doesn’t fight microbes. It inhibits a specific browning enzyme called polyphenol oxidase (PPO) and not much else. It does combine with an oxidation product of ethanol called acetaldehyde (the smell of stale apples and fino Sherry) to form the acetaldehyde-bisulfite complex (ABC), which is in slow equilibrium with the free SO2 (FSO2).

The right-most species is called sulfite (SO32-) and is present in ex-

Figure 1: Distribution of free SO 2 at various pHs

tremely low concentration and thus doesn’t do much. It can react with oxygen: 1⁄2 O2 + SO32-, but this reaction is very slow, occurring over weeks and months, which brings us to:

Myth #3: FSO2 is a potent anti-oxidant that scavenges oxygen and protects wines from oxidation in racking and bottling.

In fact, FSO2 will not prevent aromatic freshness from turning to staleness nor prevent browning, and over the course of a couple months post-bottling will itself oxidize in about a 4-to-1 ratio, so that if your bottling dissolved oxygen is 4 ppm, typical of a hand filler set-up, your 15 ppm of FSO2 will disappear completely. So yes, it reacts, but at a suboptimum rate.

MEASUREMENT

FSO2 analysis must be done onsite. Its level seriously deteriorates on the way to the lab you send it to for analysis. For home winemakers, there are three methods for measuring SO2: Titrets, iodometric (Ripper) titration, and aeration/oxidation. Let's take a closer look at these:

1. CHEMetrics Titrets run about $1 per analysis. I hate them. They are tricky to use and are laughably imprecise. They come in various levels, so you have to know the range you’re in before you start. They will not guide your wine caretaking very well. Weigh your savings against potentially needing to chuck your spoiled wine down the drain.

If you’re serious about winemaking, save up for a real analysis. This will probably involve your learning to titrate. This involves acquiring a stand supporting a burette (a graduated cylinder with a valve on the bottom) that you fill with a reactive solution of known strength. You place a known quantity of wine in a beaker or flask along with a dye that will indicate when reaction is complete. You dribble the reagent from the burette until the dye changes color, at which point you stop, read how much titrant you used, and calculate your FSO2 from a formula.

2. Iodometric titration has several

forms, all involving iodine titration. (Titrets are iodometric titration, too, but an unfortunately oversimplified version.) Until recently, the indicator dye was potato starch, which turns blue when excess iodine is present. This works fine for white wines but with reds, the endpoint is hard to see and phenolics present substantial interference. Today we have Vinmetrica SC-300, which overcomes these problems by substituting amperometry for potato starch. It includes a pH meter and titratable acidity (TA) capability. The whole setup with the stand is about $750 and is a boon to the home winemaker.

3. Aeration / oxidation: This is the most popular method for small wineries. It involves drawing air through an acidified sample of wine and trapping the SO2 with hydrogen peroxide, producing sulfuric acid (H2SO4), which can be titrated. The vacuum can

be drawn with a small, inexpensive pump on a 10-minute timer. Such a setup costs about the same as a Ripper setup, but you don’t get the pH meter.

Both of these have alternative analysis for total SO2 (TSO2), from which we can calculate the bound by subtraction. I won’t go into the details here, because in most instances, this isn’t very useful information, so they are not routinely run unless your wine is unaccountably gobbling up SO2 additions. Standard winemaking results in TSO2 not much over 100 ppm, and 200 ppm is where a soapy, oniony flavor begins to appear in the finish.

HEALTH ISSUES

I’ll estimate that 10% of the wine-drinking public are concerned that they have an allergy to sulfites. Since the human body produces about one gram of sulfites per day, or about

SO2 is added to maintain a desired level throughout the winemaking process. However, some studies indicate the additions subtract from positive characteristics that help protect red wines as they age.

ten times the amount in a typical bottle of wine, this is obviously impossible. The anaphylactic shock diners have experienced when filling their plate with lettuce containing pure crystals of sodium bisulfite (to prevent browning) and then dowsing it with low-pH vinegar is not an allergic reaction. It’s SO2 gas exploding from the plate to your nose and precipitating acid rain in your lungs.

I disagree with Paul Frey that sulfite-free wines are necessarily good for your health. We do, however, agree that modern medicine is pretty clueless in this area.

That doesn’t mean that sulfite-free wines aren’t interesting. I make them myself and consider them my best wines. But sulfite-free wines

tend to contain ten times the level of biogenic amines, a major source of red wine allergy with lovely names like putrescene and cadaverine, the smells of dead animals.

Nevertheless, they can be the most profound and long-aging wines you’ll ever encounter. But they’re a high risk/high reward delicacy like Eppoises, half-shell oysters, or fugu.

Sulfite-free winemaking is a viable enterprise for the master winemaker who is not risk-adverse.

Myth #4: Even if no sulfur dioxide is added to wine, fermenting yeasts will produce SO2 from the naturally occurring inorganic sulfates in all grape juices. Thus, it is impossible for any wine to be completely free of sulfur dioxide.

Not really. The reaction of diphenols and oxygen produces a byproduct of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), which instantly reacts with any sulfites, be they free or bound, converting them to sulfate (SO42-), which lacks sulfite properties. This happens when young red wine receives any oxygen, as in racking, barreling down, or during enological oxygenation, so a great many un-sulfited reds have no detectable sulfites, as with my WineSmith Roman Reserves.

THRESHOLDS

In 1984, I wrote an article titled “SO2: The Limits of Our Understanding,” which explored the dual questions, “How much is enough?” and “How much is too much?” Besides the health issues addressed earlier, the latter involves sensory detection.

In 1982, Patricia Howe and I while in Rosemarie Pangborn’s lab at UC-Davis, looked into sensory thresholds. Incredibly, our literature search revealed that the only sensory study ever done on SO2 in wine was a 1955 survey of 56 compounds by Hinreiner and Berg. Because of flawed methodology, they reported the sensory detection threshold at an astounding 120 ppm!

Pat and I developed an ascending dual quadrangle test that was far more sensitive — so much so that we never did find the actual threshold, defined as the point where 50% of subjects can find the spiked sample. All I can tell you is that 24 out of 36 subjects were able to pick out 0.45 mg/L, nearly half the recommended storage maintenance level of 0.8 mg/L. This doesn’t mean they disliked the spiked sample, nor did they recognize what was causing the di erence.

We were able to gauge individual thresholds with 94% confidence and thus were able to find no unusually sensitive individuals, no bifurcated threshold groupings.

Our study also measured equilibrium headspace compared to ideal solution behavior and found a close match to Henry’s Law predictions. Remember, this is all white wine.

Since our senior project was never published in a peer-reviewed journal,

The Vinmetrica SC-300 Pro Kit is a reliable way for home winemakers to measure sulfite levels in their wine using iodometric titration that does not rely on color change as Ripper sulfite tests do.

Photo by MoreWine!

Berg’s finding remains today, as far as I know, the only published research on SO2, attesting to the thin coverage of basic enological research in the literature. Please say it isn’t so.

SO2 IN RED WINES

Here’s where it all comes off the rails.

Pat continued this work in elaborate studies for her doctorate at Cornell, culminating in an important yet as yet little-known thesis. The startling revelations of this work include:

• FSO2 ain’t free. When you directly measure the SO2 in the headspace above a red wine, you find little or none. What we are measuring with standard Ripper methods or aeration-oxidation excludes those bound by acetaldehyde because it is in slow equilibrium with the free. But the portion bound to pigments, especially young monomeric anthocyanins, is in rapid equilibrium with the true free, and due to mass action, is drawn in and included as part of the so-called “FSO2.” FSO2 ain’t free.

• Forget about molecular SO2 calculations. Free SO2 doesn’t actually exist at all in young red wines, as it is all bound to anthocyanins, and is well below ideal concentrations even in older reds.

So what does protect red wines from spoilage? Two answers.

The first is competition from beneficial organisms. Prior to the turn of the millennium, all wine microbiology was based on agar plating. We now know that the vast majority of wine organisms can’t be plated.

Dr. Charles Edwards and Washington State University have pioneered the use of PCR (as in COVID DNA testing) to unlock the mysteries of wine microbiome. The vast majority of wine organisms are either benign or beneficial, imparting the treasured bottle bouquet whose profundity lured many of us into the biz in the first place, and to out-compete Brettanomyces for nutrients. This microbiome does not flourish in the presence of draconian cellar practices such as excessive SO2.

What does flourish? You guessed it — Brettanomyces. It’s an opportunistic pathogen, a hospital dis-

ease caused by excessive sanitation. Since it employs a whole suite of clever practices to hide out from SO2, what the preservative mainly accomplishes is to kill off beneficial microbiome, leaving a clear path for Brett. Although petri dish plating of sulfited wines does show diminished numbers, Dr. Edwards discovered that the preservative renders it “viable — nonculturable.” Enology’s funniest joke.

That joke was on me. My Master’s thesis was on SO2 levels necessary to kill Brettanomyces. I isolated 58 cultures from California wines and tested the level necessary to kill as defined by a one-million-fold decrease in plateable colonies in 24 hours. Since SO2 makes Brett viable-nonculturable, turns out it was a total waste of time.

The second protection of red wines

from Acetobacter spoilage is the wine’s ability to absorb oxygen, or “O2 appetite.” Aline Lonvaud-Funel at University of Bordeaux discovered in 2000 that pigment-bound SO2 is ineffective against vinegar bacteria. The real take-home message is that your reds will take care of themselves if made from sound, properly ripe (but not over-ripe) grapes so that they have a healthy oxygen-consuming reactivity. One sign of high reductive potential is the production of small amounts of H2S.

Paradoxically, SO2 disrupts red wine’s natural anti-oxidative capability, short-circuiting oxidative polymerization, in our measurements, by 92%, thus inhibiting the wine’s natural immune system by over an order of magnitude. Thus, SO2 acts, not as a reducing agent, but as an antioxidation suppressant. Not good.

So what, if anything, is the function of SO2 in red wine? My opinion of the desirable pH zone for reds is between 3.70 for light reds and 3.85 for

big, long-aging Cabernets and such. In this zone, conventional wisdom is to maintain 20 to 30 ppm “free” to scavenge aldehyde without reference to pH, thus avoiding oxidation and browning. FSO2 has almost no beneficial anti-microbial effect, so molecular SO2 levels are irrelevant.

I should stress that there is no middle ground. If you have any FSO2 at all, you will experience phenolic O2 appetite suppression. You must intentionally choose either an all-in no-sulfites regimen (only for experienced hands) or stick with the conventional 20–30 ppm.

You may be wondering why all this is news. Enology, like all modern science, is politics. We tried to publish the thresholds work along with my Brettanomyces study in 1986, but politics intervened. The American Society for Enology and Viticulture seemed to think that if we kept our heads low, sulfite labeling could be prevented. Yeah, right — that certainly worked well. This is how academic publication

politics works.

I know that my views are controversial. While conventional enology recommends a safe path to good wine, I point to a methodology for greatness. This is where home winemakers can outshine commercial wines. As long as you’re not using winemaking to feed your family or your community, you can afford to take more risk and embrace advanced techniques outside the box that have solid scientific foundations and can lead to greatness seldom achieved in the commercial game.

REFERENCES:

1 https://blog.wblakegray.com/ 2011/05/sulfites-in-organic-wineupdate.html

* The numerous studies and papers referenced in this article are too long to list in full here. They may all be found through the Dropbox link at http://postmodernwinemaking.com/ sulfur-dioxide-revisited.

DON’T MISS OUT ON:

• 24 Big Seminars

• Group Interactive Workshops

• Tasting Party

• 8 Hands-On Winemaking Boot Camps

WINEMAKER LEARNING TRACKS

ADVANCED WINEMAKING

• Advanced Malolactic Techniques

• Maximizing Cold Soaks

• Willamette Valley Pinot Panel

• Post-Modern Tools to Build Wine Structure

• Crafting Age-Worthy Wines

• Making Brandy

GRAPE GROWING

• Canopy Management

• 5 Biggest Growing Mistakes

• Backyard Grape Growing Q & A

HIGHLIGHTS

• Willamette Valley Winery Tours

• WineMaker Competition Awards Dinner

• Sponsor Exhibits

GENERAL WINEMAKING

KIT WINEMAKING

• Keys to Wine Clarity

• Troubleshooting Q & A

• Award-Winning Country Fruit Winemaker Panel

• Crafting Italian Reds

• Calibrating Wine Equipment

• Basics of Wine Analysis & Testing

• Making Limoncello & Other Citrus Liqueur

GROUP INTERACTIVE WORKSHOPS

• Advanced Kit Techniques

• Award-Winning Kit Winemaking Roundtable

WINEMAKER BOOT CAMPS

• Side-by-Side Oak Trials

• Winemaking Table Topics

• Winemaking Hot Subjects

• Willamette Valley Winemaking

MEET WITH WINEMAKING SUPPLIERS

• Advanced Winemaking from Grapes

• 2-Day Fundamentals of Modern Wine Chemistry

• Winemaking from Grapes

• Distilling

• Small Winery Start-Up

• Home Wine Lab Tests

• Backyard Grape Growing

• Judging & Scoring Wines

• Willamette Valley Winery Tours

As an attendee, you’ll have the opportunity to check out the latest equipment, products & supplies from many of these leading winemaking vendors Friday & Saturday.

TITLE SPONSORS

And more sponsors to come!

SMALL-CLASS WINEMAKER BOOT CAMPS

2 BIG DAYS & NEW CAMPS!

THURSDAY, JUNE 1 • 10 AM – 4:30 PM

Maximize your learning by taking two different Boot Camps. Full-day, small-class Boot Camps will run pre-conference on Thursday and post-conference on Sunday from 10 AM to 4:30 PM and include lunch. Attendance is limited to just 35 people per session and do sell out. This add-on Boot Camp beyond the conference registration is a great opportunity to get an in-depth learning experience in a small-class setting and learn hands-on from experts.

ADVANCED WINEMAKING FROM GRAPES

Go beyond the basics and understand complex techniques to get the most from your winemaking using fresh grapes. This workshop intended for intermediate and expert home winemakers will tackle a range of tips: From dialing in extraction levels on the front end all the way to protecting your wine with advanced tips through bottling.

DISTILLING

Walk through the small-scale distilling process. You’ll leave understanding the various types of small still equipment, as well as the small-scale distillation process for brandy, whiskey, rum, and gin. Get your questions answered throughout the full day as you learn the art of distillation using a small still.

WINEMAKING FROM GRAPES

Learn all the steps of making wines from grapes including crushing and fermenting all the way to bottling. You’ll work with fresh grapes and operate the different pieces of equipment and the tests you’ll have to run on your wine.

BACKYARD GRAPE GROWING

You’ll learn site selection, vine choice, planting, trellising, pruning, watering, pest control, harvest decisions plus more strategies to successfully grow your own great wine grapes.

HOME WINE LAB TESTS

Step-by-step teaching on how to properly test your wine for sulfites, malolactic, acidity, and pH. You’ll have the chance to run these different tests yourself to give you a valuable hands-on learning experience so you can accurately run these tests on your own wine at home.

WILLAMETTE VALLEY WINERIES INSIDER TOUR

Tour several wineries as you explore the world-famous Willamette Valley and have plenty of opportunities to ask their professional winemakers your winemaking and grape growing questions. You’ll be served lunch along the way and have tastings of award-winning wines.

2-DAY FUNDAMENTALS OF MODERN WINE CHEMISTRY

Learn on Thursday and Sunday from wine expert Clark Smith how to use wine chemistry as a practical tool to improve your winemaking. You’ll cover wine chemistry from crush to bottling and how they can inform better decisions resulting in better wine. *This 2-day boot camp includes a 550page manual that will be a valuable wine reference for this 2-day workshop and for years to come.

JUDGING & SCORING WINES

Learn how to evaluate your own and other wines in the same way as a trained wine judge so you can use these skills to help your own winemaking. Gain a sensory appreciation for various common faults and how to properly use the 20-point UC-Davis judging sheet as a foundation for evaluating wines.

SMALL WINERY START-UP

Walk through the steps, planning decisions, and key financial numbers you need to know if you want to open a smaller-scale commercial winery. Learn how to better achieve your dream of running your own small winery.

WILLAMETTE VALLEY WINERIES INSIDER TOUR

Tour several wineries as you explore the world-famous Willamette Valley and have plenty of opportunities to ask their professional winemakers your winemaking and grape growing questions. You’ll be served lunch along the way and have tastings of award-winning wines.

SCHEDULE AT-A-GLANCE

Pre-Conference WineMaker Boot Camps & Winery Tours • Thursday, June 1, 2023

Fundamentals of Modern Wine Chemistry – Day 1 of 2

10 AM – 4:30 PM

Winemaking from Grapes

Day #1 Friday • June 2, 2023

8 – 9 AM

9 – 9:15 AM

9:30 – 10:45 AM

10:45 – 11:15 AM

11:15 AM – 12: 30 PM

12:30 – 1:45 PM

–

PM

Calibrating Wine Equipment

Advanced Winemaking from Grapes

Backyard Grape Growing

Distilling

Home Wine Lab Tests

Willamette Valley Wineries Tour

Breakfast & Registration

Welcome & Introduction

Making Brandy Canopy Management

WineMaker Exhibits

Keys to Wine Clarity

Advanced MLF Techniques

Award-Winning Kit Winemaker Panel

Lunch & Keynote: Southern Willamette Valley Winemaking with King Estate

WineMaker Exhibits

–

Basics of Wine Analysis & Tests

Willamette Valley Pinot Panel

WineMaker Exhibits

WineMaker Workshop: Side-By-Side Oak Trials

WineMaker Tasting & Wine Sharing Party

DAY #2 Saturday • June 3, 2023

8:30 – 9:30 AM

9:30 – 10:45 AM

10:45 – 11:15 AM

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM

12:15 – 1:45

5 Biggest Grape Growing Mistakes

TECHNIQUES

BY BOB PEAK

JUST THE pHACTS A

Understanding, testing, and adjusting pH

cidity is critical to both the taste and the stability of wine. Sometimes, though, experienced winemakers talk about its two main aspects — pH and titratable acidity — in ways that are hard to follow. Titratable acidity (TA) is a mass/ volume number that expresses all of the acid in wine that will react with a sodium hydroxide titration solution. It is reported as if all of that acid is in the form of tartaric acid, although that is not generally the case. pH expresses the activity of free hydrogen ions, often shown as H+ (or combined with water as H3O+), in terms of their availability to participate in other chemical reactions in the wine. Life processes in living systems are strongly pH dependent, often taking place in only a narrow range of values.

TA values tend to match intuition, with numbers getting larger with a higher concentration of acid in the wine. pH values are just the opposite. Water dissociates naturally from H2O into H+ and OH-. When these occur in water (aqueous solution) at exactly equal values, the pH is 7.0 and the solution is described as neutral. When H+ is more abundant, the resulting acidic solution has a pH less than 7.0. Alkaline solutions are those above 7.0. The scale is considered to run from 0.0 to 14.0, although pH values below zero are physically possible with strong acids and values above 14 can be reached with strong bases. In wine, the entire range is from about 2.8 to 4.2 and all wines are acidic. pH is the aspect of wine acidity that takes center stage in today’s column.

While agreed upon among scientists worldwide, the pH scale is not just an arbitrary construct. It originates in the natural condition that the dissociation of water occurs to a very, very small extent and is entirely reproducible. It varies with temperature, so the agreed-up-

on temperature for the conventional scale is 77 °F (25 °C). In the early twentieth century Danish chemist Soren Sorensen proposed using a base-ten logarithmic scale to express hydrogen ion concentration. That is, each lower pH number is ten times the concentration of the next higher one. He expressed those numbers by using the logarithmic value as the pH number. So a solution at pH 3 contains ten times as many free hydrogen ions as one at pH 4, and so on for the whole scale. Specifically, the pH value is the negative logarithm of the hydrogen ion concentration. The value can be derived from the equilibrium equation between hydrogen ions and hydroxide ions in pure water. At 25° C, the equilibrium value is 10-14 molar or 10-14 = [H+] x [OH-]/[H2O]

Since the hydrogen ion concentration [H+] is exactly equal to the hydroxide ion concentration [OH-] at neutrality, each of them is 10-7 M and the exponent of the hydrogen ion concentration, -7, shows us a pH value of 7. All the other numerical values of the pH scale follow mathematically. The dissociation constants of specific acids use similar notation, with the negative logarithm expressed as pKa. The most important practical aspect of pH measurement in wine has to do with stability. Free sulfur dioxide (FSO2 or free sulfite) is much more effective at lower pH. As you can observe with the sulfite calculator at winemakermag.com/sulfitecalculator, lowering the pH from near four to closer to three dramatically increases the proportion of molecular sulfur dioxide in the wine. Since the molecular form is effective against spoilage, a lower pH wine is significantly more stable.

Color changes with pH in natural materials first defined measurement of pH. Scientists noted that certain materials change from one color to another at specific and repeatable pH levels. Red

The most important practical aspect of pH measurement in wine has to do with stability.

A benchtop pH meter offers several advantages for winemakers compared to stick models, but the cost can be prohibitive for some folks.

TECHNIQUES

wine is one such natural product, as can be seen with adding ammonia to a bit of wine, then vinegar. Called indicators, such materials can be used to show the endpoint of an acid-base titration or the pH of a sample. If you group several indicators over a range of interest, you can come closer to the true pH value by trying them successively on your sample. That principle is still in use today in the simplest pH measurements for home winemakers: pH sticks and strips.

One style of sticks uses four or five squares of different dyes applied to a plastic strip. You dip all the pads into a wine sample, then compare the colors that develop with reference patterns printed on the box. For winemaking use, these sticks have several drawbacks. First, they are often graduated in only 0.5 pH units. That means if you interpret the color reading as pH 3.5, you can only really be confident the pH is from pH 3.25 to 3.75. We already know most wines fall in that range without even doing a test! Another limitation is that the ink used to print reference colors on the box is not exactly the same as the dyes on the stick, so the colors do not always match well. Finally, if you dip a stick in red wine, it is likely to give a pink or purple tint to the squares, making matching even more difficult.

Fortunately for scientists and winemakers everywhere, Sunkist Growers had a problem in the early part of the twentieth century. As they processed lemons into various products at their Southern California packing plant, they needed to monitor the pH of the lemon juice for quality control. Indicators are messy and not very precise, so they looked for other methods. There were research-grade instruments that could measure the potential (voltage) of a solution and calculate the pH, but the signal was weak and measurement was cumbersome. Sunkist scientists were put in touch with Dr. Arnold Beckman at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Beckman was a chemist who also had experience with electronic devices of the 1930s. His proposal was to use a vacuum-tube voltmeter to amplify the signal from a hydrogen electrode, ultimately leading to a rugged, reliable, and rapid pH meter. That meter was also the foundational instrument for Beckman Instruments, the forerunner of the $3B Beckman Coulter instrument manufacturer still operating today.

While Beckman’s early meters (and the first ones I used in college) used an analog needle display, virtually all modern meters have a digital readout. They still use a high-impedance voltmeter, but that is now solid state instead of using vacuum tubes. If you own a pH meter, it probably appears to have just one probe. Just as with the original, though, it has two electrodes. For home winemakers, such a “combination electrode” is usually mounted in an epoxy or plastic body. The glass electrode — the one that responds to pH of the wine — runs down the middle of this body and terminates in a glass bulb at the tip. Surrounding the body of the glass electrode is a cylindrical pool filled with a potassium chloride gel. In that gel is a silver wire and some kind of frit, wick, or porous ring that allows an electrical connection between the gel and the wine sample. The gel is at a constant pH and the meter detects the millivolts of electrical potential between the embedded wire and the glass bulb of the exposed glass electrode (look closely at yours and you will probably see all these features).

The surface of the glass bulb is a glass-and-water gel a couple of molecules thick. Maintaining that condition is why you store the pH electrode in storage solution or pH 4 buffer. When the electrode is immersed in a sample, hydrogen ions exchange with sodium ions in the glass gel until equilibrium is reached between it and the sample. The ratio of hydrogen ions to sodium ions dictates the millivolt signal between the glass electrode and the reference electrode. Some fancy software built into your meter displays the millivolt signal as pH. Because electrodes vary and their response is not ideal, it is customary to first calibrate the pH electrode before using it. Do this at least once a week during the active winemaking season each year. Use a pH 4 or 4.01 buffer and a pH 7 buffer. Follow the instructions included with your meter. If your meter will calibrate properly, it is performing as intended and the results can be trusted. If it will not calibrate, you may need a new electrode. Some small portable meters do not have interchangeable electrodes, in which case you need a new meter. Since the electronic meter rarely fails, it is productive in the long run to buy a more sophisticated meter that will allow you to replace the electrode once every few years.

With your calibrated pH meter in hand, you are ready to use it in your winemaking. First job — measure the pH of the juice or must on harvest day to plan your fermentation. White juice is usually in the range of about 2.9 to 3.6 and red must is usually about 3.3 to 3.8. If you are seriously outside those ranges, begin planning right away for what you will do. If your pH is too high, the rule of thumb is that about 1 g/L of tartaric acid addition will lower it by about 0.1 pH. Since that addition will also raise your TA by 1 g/L, the acid taste of the juice (and resulting wine) will be strengthened. Do not just keep adding tartaric acid to chase a particular pH number — keep TA and taste in mind also. If your pH is too low, adding 0.43 g/L of potassium bicarbonate will raise the pH by about 0.1 unit. Once again, keep an eye on TA and your senses focused on taste. For chemical acidification or deacidification, run bench trials of about 100 mL each so you have a clear idea of what will happen to your juice if you adjust the whole lot.

You can also raise a too-low pH wine microbially with malolactic fermentation (MLF). While tartaric acid is dominant in grape juice, significant malic acid is also usually present. Near the end of primary fermentation, inoculate with malolactic bacteria culture. If MLF goes to completion, it will drop the TA by about half the original malic acid value. That is because malic acid has two active hydrogen ions per molecule while the fermentation product, lactic acid, has only one. When the TA drops, a corresponding rise in pH should also occur. For all the TA testing, you can also use your pH meter to detect the titration endpoint of pH 8.2. Some small portable meters have a thick, rugged glass electrode. They are sufficiently accurate to measure pH, but the electrode response is too slow to monitor a titration. Meters with a separate combination electrode at the end of a cable should be used for titrations.

After your wine is finished, measure the pH again. This value is the one that will be critical as you use the sulfite calculator at the website. After that, rinse the electrode, store it in pH electrode storage solution, and put the meter away in a secure location until harvest comes around again.

VITICULTURE TIPS

10 steps to grow better wine

If wine is made in the vineyard, why are we so focused on winemaking, chemistry, tools, oak, solutions, and tasting? I have a simple answer: Wine is more fun than farming. Farming is about getting dirty and tired, having a physical connection to the plants — sore hands, legs, and backs. But in the winery we drink beer and watch the wines develop right before our eyes — and likely sample them all along the way. A vineyard is a slog in the hot sun. Winery work is boozy and a bit more fun in the cool shade. Even in the traditional winemaking cultures, the peasants bring in the fruit and the owners of the chateau might be in the winery crushing the baskets of grapes as they come in.

But who is the real hero of wine? The grower, of course! You can’t have a steak without the steer and you certainly can’t make wine without a vineyard. Heroes always have a journey from safety into danger. We find something magical in the darkest part of the forest and it often turns to dust as we return back to mundane safety. But, understood correctly, the danger of the hero’s journey informs and strengthens us. Leaving the coziness of the couch on a winter’s day to go prune the vineyard is a heroic act in today’s insulated humanity.

The purpose of this article, then, is two-fold. One: I celebrate your commitment and encourage hard work and observation in this upcoming vintage. Second: Let’s give you some tools to assess your successes and failures in the previous growing season and find measurable ways to improve our wine quality where the vintage is honestly produced: In the vineyard.

THE 10 STEPS TO BETTER VINEYARD SUCCESS, IN ORDER OF YEARLY VINEYARD PRACTICES

#1:

DORMANCY

The Eurasian grapevine that most of us use for winemaking, Vitis vinifera, evolved in the forests between the Black and Caspian Seas in Transcaucasia, an area that gets quite cold/frozen in the winter months. Like most trees and shrubs found in this climate, the European grapevine drops its leaves and becomes lignified and hardened/ woody in the coldest months to preserve its nutrients/resources.

Do it better! Put the vineyard to sleep clean and seeded. Pros drill or sow a cover crop between rows first thing after the vineyard has been picked clean, nets stored, buckets cleaned and stacked, and the rows walked to look for random tools and trash pickers may have left behind. Cover crop is usually a mix of grasses, clovers, legumes, and wildflowers to stop erosion, add green manure, and attract beneficial insects. Hope for a few moderate rains to get the cover crop established before serious erosion can occur (on hilly vineyards).

#2: PRUNING

When the vines have lost all of their leaves, usually between December and January on the West Coast, it’s time to make a few test-cuts for pruning to see if the vines are ready to be trimmed for the next growing season. Try to make the test cut on a warm(ish) winter day at least a few weeks to a month after the last leaf has fallen. Make a few test cuts through the woody canes, and then wait an hour. If the cut on the live vine

BY WES HAGEN

Cover crop is usually a mix of grasses, clovers, legumes, and wildflowers to stop erosion, add green manure and attract beneficial insects.

Photo by Wes Hagen

BACKYARD VINES

side stays dry, the vine is ready to be pruned. If the pruning wound “weeps” with watery xylem fluid, the vine is still moving liquid and nutrients around — wait 7–10 days and repeat the process until the wounds stay dry.

Do it better! Pruning is the foundation for the entire vintage’s balance and quality in the vineyard. In general, we prune the vineyard to focus the growth on a very specific part of the vine that encourages balance (12–15 leaves per cluster) and smaller amounts of fruit for the vine to ripen for best flavor and intensity. Pruning too much can cause too few clusters and rapid ripening, leaving too much wood on the vine causes rank growth and a vine that struggles to ripen a crop that would produce diluted and uninteresting wine. So how much pruning is the right amount?

Start by pruning traditionally for the first 3–5 years — cutting your spurs to two buds, spaced about a hand apart (spur or cordon training), or by selecting 1–4 canes to lay down and use to produce fruit next year (cane pruned). If these terms are confusing, give them a Google and take a few moments to learn. Then weigh the pruned material taken off each vine and make an average pruning weight. Now we’re ready for some serious lessons in balance.

Dr. Richard Smart, my viticultural guru, makes it clear and scientific:

Golden Rule 1: Pruning to 20 to 30 buds per kilogram (9–14 per lb.) of pruning mass. (This means to weigh how much you prune off your vines on average and leave 9–14 buds on the vine when you prune for each lb. of pruning weight.)

Golden Rule 2: Aim for 15 shoots per meter of canopy (4–5 shoots per foot). Assume you will get one shoot per bud.

#3: BUDBREAK AND FIRST SPRAY

The vine takes its left over nitrogen from the current year, stores it as arginine for dormancy, and then it shifts back to nitrogen in spring to allow the vine to wake up, pressurize, and push the buds into small leaves during budbreak. Budbreak occurs

not due to ambient temperatures, which may swing wildly in spring, but instead uses soil temperature, which is an excellent gauge of the approaching warming. When the soil warms to 50–55 °F (10–13 °C) most vines will begin to force their buds open and expose the vine’s fleshy and vulnerable baby leaves to the elements.

It takes a few weeks for the leaves to start photosynthesizing at a rate that the vine becomes a net exporter of carbohydrates, at which point the vine begins to grow rapidly from the sunshine absorbed.

Do it better! Most vineyardists will suggest the first fungicide spray should be at about 4–6 in. (10–15 cm) of average shoot growth after budbreak (a few weeks, likely). In high-pressure mildew/rot environments, I would start spraying after all buds have broken, and at 3–4 in. (7–10 cm) of average shoot growth. In low-pressure mildew/rot areas, waiting for a full 6 in. (15 cm) of average shoot growth is fine. Remember mildew and rot overwinter under the bud shield, so the young vines may look mildew-free, but trust me that those tender young tissues are swarming with pathogens trying to gain a hold. Pros know to spray using the correct label formulation/mix and to never make their sprays stronger than label recommendations. With a backpack or hand sprayer, you may need to make multiple passes to make sure the young shoots are soaked in material on both sides, and that the clusters are also sprayed when the canopy starts hiding them.

#4: SHOOT REMOVAL/SUCKERING/WEED REMOVAL

These are the moments where your practices in the vineyard will begin to become serious and require weekly time in the vineyard getting the new year dialed in to make great wine. We have three goals here: First is to remove one shoot from any double shoots (a bud where two green shoots emerge instead of one) in order to space the shoots out so the fruit won’t be crowded when it ripens. Second is to remove any non-fruitful shoots in the canopy and on the

trunk/head to focus the vine’s energy on fruitful shoots in the correct position. And finally, to remove weeds from the vine row that might compete for nutrients or block sun from the vine’s canopy.

Do it better! Vines and common weeds generally don’t compete for water/nutrients after the vines are established. Just-planted vineyards are the exception; I am careful to keep them weed-free. But short weeds in the vine row of an established, producing vineyard don’t bother me unless the weeds get near the fruit/ canopy. Remove double shoots and “extra shoots” that are too close. Each shoot and fruit should have its own niche space in the canopy. How much space? Clusters should not nest into one another, or even touch. Shoots without clusters can always be removed. Suckers on the trunk and near the ground can always be removed as well, even if they might have a cluster on them. Extra shoots tend to show up near the head of the vine and on the outer edges, so make sure those areas are tidy and shoots spaced so the fruit can have its own space.

#5: EARLY CANOPY MANAGEMENT

This images on the facing page show vertically tucked shoots that have been picked, have gone dormant, and demonstrate good vertical shoot positioning from the year and we can imagine that each cluster had its own space to absorb sunlight to improve flavor and minimize rot and mildew pressure.

Besides shoot removal and suckering, your first canopy management “pass” will likely be a shoot-tucking exercise, as long as your vineyard trellis has shoot positioning wires. Grapevine shoots want to climb trees and, given a trellis to ascend, they generally will. But vines also tend to droop down from trees and trellises as well, so we use catch wires in the trellis to weave the growing shoots into a vertically oriented position, as we see in the “after” image on page 59. This makes a “solar panel” of leaf area perfectly positioned to capture sunlight and turn it into carbs for growth and sugar for ripening.

BEFORE AFTER

Do it better! Shoot positioning can be frustrating when you attempt to wrangle a shoot and it breaks. I find shoot positioning is easier on a warm day, after the morning chill has abated, so the vines are more pliable. There’s no replacement for experience in this — when you learn to shoot position you will break some shoots (they will grow back and heal) until you learn how much touch is enough, and how much is too much.

Leaf plucking: Once you have a full canopy, at least 10 leaves per cluster, go ahead and pluck the leaves (with the stem/petiole!) from the fruiting area to encourage sun and wind movement. In cool, foggy climates you can pull almost all leaves from the fruiting zone. In moderate heat zones you can pull 50%, leaving some leaves to shade the fruit 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. In arid, hot regions you need to be very cautious with leaf plucking to avoid sunburn. Do some experimental work on rows early in the vineyard’s life to see how much leaf area to pull to give the clusters sun exposure with no burn.

#6: FERTILIZATION

If a vineyard is mostly healthy, even struggling a tiny bit, fertilization is NOT necessary. Fertilization tends to increase vigor and decrease wine quality, so let’s be overly cautious. If your

vineyard produces at least 12 leaves per cluster and 3- to 4-ft. (0.9- to 1.2-m) canes on each position, your vineyard is dialed in. If the shoots are stunted, and are less than 2–3 ft. (0.6–0.9 m), you will want to add some nitrogen early in the season, before flowering. A 15-15-15 fertilizer with chelated micronutrients would be my choice. You can also use an organic fertilizer but it gets expensive and the vines won’t know the difference (but the soil and environment might).

Do it better! Pros use petiole sampling. When flowers emerge, we pick 100–200 leaves from the vineyard (choose leaves adjacent to a flowering cluster), then tear the stems/petiole off, put them in a brown paper bag and send them to an agricultural laboratory. Better yet, contact the lab and ask for their protocol for a petiole sample for varietal winegrape production. I use Fruit Growers Lab in Southern California, and they have always done a good job for me (www.fglinc.com). Your lab report will come back with a range for both macro and micronutrients. Some research on deficiencies on the internet should help you put together a plan, or you can hire me to do it: weswines@gmail.com.

#7: FLOWERING

By the time your vineyard starts

flowering (and yes, they smell wonderful, like jasmine or orange blossoms) your canopy management should be 80–90% finished. This means your shoots should be tucked/positioned to expose the fruit zone, your leaf pulling has given the fruit zone sun flecking and air movement, and when you spray the vineyard, coverage should be excellent with one pass on each side. Keep a journal detailing flowering dates and once you have a history, plan to do your last fungicide spray a week before traditional flowering date. If there are a few flowers when you spray, fine, but spraying a vineyard in full flower will increase shatter and your clusters may suffer in their fullness.

Do it better! A bit of calcium and zinc, either foliar or ground application, before flowering can increase fruit set. This can be done (without nitrogen) every year without increasing vigor. Make sure to fertilize at least 1–2 weeks before the normal flowering date, which is perfect timing for a calcium/zinc foliar application mixed with your fungicide.

#8: LAST SPRAYS AND TIMING

I never spray sulfur, wettable or powder, at or after bunch closure, when the small green grapes swell up and the cluster fills out. Trapping sulfur spray inside the cluster may cause stinky aromas in winemaking — you can use stylet oil or a strobe/synthetic fungicide if your local law allows it. Grapes become immune to powdery/downy mildew after veraison, at 19–20 °Brix, so once the fruit has softened and is ripening, you can hold off on fungicide, unless Botrytis is a concern (not much you can spray for Bot in a home vineyard anyway . . .). Most locales can stop fungicide sprays after veraison.

Do it better! Keeping a yearly calendar of important vineyard milestones is quite valuable: Budbreak, canopy, first leaf thinning, flowering, veraison, field testing numbers, and harvest. Pros make charts and tables as 5–10 years of data will help timing in all of these vineyard practices and will inform you of ripening curves and allows you to correlate dates and practices with wine quality.

Photos by Wes Hagen

Before and after, shoot positioning to produce the tidy “solar panels” of leaf area.

BACKYARD VINES

#9: VERAISON AND CLUSTER THINNING

Veraison is when the grapes soften and change color — from hard and green to soft and gold, grey, pink, red, purple, or black. Biologically, veraison summons birds. The color change means the fruit is palatable to grape-eaters and that the seed has enough coating to go through their digestive tract and come out the other end ready to sprout a new vine. Veraison for a winegrower, though, means a few things. You should have all of your barrels and winemaking equipment (including labor, interns, and volunteers) all lined up. Yeast should be in the fridge, fermenters should be cleaned and covered, equipment tested and ready. Harvest could be as quick after veraison as a month, but usually begins around 50–60 days after color appears.

Do it better! Veraison presents one of the hardest decisions in winegrowing: How much (if any) clusters we want to “green thin,” or drop on the ground. There are two things to discuss here. First, I always drop the last 5% of fruit on the ground that is lagging behind after 95% of the vineyard is fully colored up. This includes clusters with green/pink wings (if you’re really cheap you can cut off the green/pink wing of the cluster). This will help every cluster be consistently ripe at harvest — I try to make sure every cluster at harvest is within 1–1.5 °Brix of every other cluster. This is how the finest wines are grown and made. Of course you lose that bit of wine, but the wine you do make will be much higher in quality.

Another awesome hack: Collect all the discarded/dropped green/ pink clusters and make verjus. Verjus is what the French used before the introduction of citrus/lemons in the region for acid in their cooking. As many may have already surmised, it is the “green juice” of unripe grapes. Bonus here? You can test your crusher/ destemmer and/or wine press before harvest using unripe grapes, press the juice, sulfite it to 30–50 ppm free (for stabilization) and then put it in small bottles for holiday gifts.

#10: FRUIT TESTING AND HARVEST

Testing fruit from a backyard vineyard has some challenges and limitations. Commercially, I like about 20 lbs. (9 kg) of fruit for a proper field ripeness test, taking full clusters from randomized rows, plants, and areas of the plants to avoid “fruitovore bias.” Humans are genetically programmed to pick the ripest fruit in their visual acuity. If you choose grapes or clusters by sight, my experience is that your fruit will come in at least 1–2 °Brix less ripe than if you did a proper random sampling.

Do it better! To choose the perfect moment for harvest, consider tests, weather, and labor availability. First, always harvest at night if you can. The fruit is happier, cooler, and less likely to start fermenting and producing volatile acidity. Second, do field samples where you fill a Ziploc baggie with at least 50 berries from randomized rows, vines, areas of the vine, and sections of the cluster (1st berry comes from bottom of cluster, next from the sunny middle, third from back/shaded middle, one from the top, one from the shoulder, and repeat). Mush up the sample, test white juice right away, leave red macerated samples in the fridge overnight to allow the must to soak up and give a more accurate reading of sugar and pH. Balance your harvest date with balance of sugar/ Brix and pH, and yes, you should test both. I like white wine grapes between 22–24 °Brix and at 3.2–3.6 pH and red wine grapes between 23–26 °Brix

and 3.3–3.8 pH. If a terrible rainstorm is coming, that may trigger a slightly early harvest and you can chaptalize the must by adding a calculated amount of sugar for mouthfeel/ alcohol. If a light rain is coming, say less than an inch (2.5 cm), I don’t generally worry. Make sure you have enough folks to help you bring all the fruit in quickly and easily, so you can have a late “picker’s dinner” after and celebrate your hardcore hour(s) of vineyard labor with friends, delicious things, and last year’s wine.

Conclusion: If you’ve read my columns for any period of time, you know my firm rules for the vineyard:

–Get vineyard labor done early and often, make a plan and stick to it.

–Keep a journal and write down labor, milestones, ripening curves, harvest dates, etc.

–Take tasting notes on your juice samples and correlate flavors of the grapes with how the resulting wines turn out (e.g., picked Chardonnay had a kiwi flavor and wine was too sharp).

–Exploit local winegrowers/makers for their secrets and schedules and I always recommend to exploit friends, family, and especially teenagers to get their hands dirty and get some real work in for discipline.

The more you study, the less you work. Keep reading and learning and you might find ways to make your vineyard tasks easier and more likely to increase wine quality.

Of course, make sure you choose and plant vine varieties that are well matched to your local terroir.

This is when I would start cutting 5% of the greenest clusters.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.com

ALABAMA

THE WINE SMITH

6800 A Moffett Rd. (US 98)

Mobile 36618

(251) 645-5554

e-mail: winesmith@bellsouth.net

www.thewinesmith.biz

Home Winemaking and Brewing Supplies.

CALIFORNIA

THE BEVERAGE PEOPLE

1800 Empire Industrial Ct., Ste. A Santa Rosa 95403 (707) 544-2520

www.thebeveragepeople.com

Fast Shipping, Great Service, Cheesemaking & Brewing too.

BREHM VINEYARDS®

www.brehmvineyards.com

grapes@brehmvineyards.com

Phone: (510) 527.3675

Fresh grape pick-up in Petaluma, CA

Frozen grapes in Richmond, CA

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.

DELTA PACKING CO. OF LODI, INC.

6021 E. Kettleman Lane

Lodi 95240

(209) 334-1023

fax: (209) 334-0811

bcostamagna@deltapacking.com

www.grapesofgold.com

We offer premium California wine grapes & juice. Please call for a supplier near you.

MOREBEER! & MOREWINE!

995 Detroit Ave., Unit G

Concord 94518 (925) 771-7107

fax: (925) 671-4978

srconcord@moreflavor.com

www.morewinemaking.com/

showrooms

Absolutely Everything! for Wine-Making

MOREBEER! & MOREWINE!

991 N. San Antonio Rd. Los Altos 94022 (650) 949-BREW (2739)

srlosaltos@moreflavor.com

www.morewinemaking.com/

showrooms

Absolutely Everything! for Wine-Making

MOREBEER! & MOREWINE!

1506 Columbia Ave. #12

Riverside 92507

(951) 779-9971

fax: (951) 779-9972

srriverside@moreflavor.com

www.morewinemaking.com/

showrooms

Absolutely Everything! for Wine-Making

MOREBEER! & MOREWINE!

2315 Verna Court San Leandro 94577 (510) 351-3517

srsanleandro@moreflavor.com

www.morewinemaking.com/

showrooms

Absolutely Everything! for Wine-Making

NORCAL BREWING SOLUTIONS

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

www.norcalbrewingsolutions.com

Full line of wine, beer, & distilling supplies, hardware, and ingredients. Manufacturers of lees filters, punchdown tools, and custom solutions.

VALLEYVINTNER, LLC

(925) 217-0058 or (866) 812 WINE (9463) Toll Free info@valleyvintner.com

www.valleyvintner.com

75+ years wine making expertise!

Owned & Operated by winemakers serving the winemaking community. “The Vine, The Time, The Wine”

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 1-800-352-4238

www.brew-wine.com

Specializing in 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 80 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

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

WATERLOO CONTAINER CO.

MICHIGAN

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.

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 800 wineries in 37 states!

2311 N.Y. Route 414 Waterloo 13165 (315) 539-3922

contactus@waterloocontainer.com

www.waterloocontainer.com

Supplier of wine bottles, corks, and closures to all sizes of winemakers.

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

Text: (984) 251-3030

www.americanbrewmaster.com

Wine Kits, Wine Ingredients and additives, corks and bottles since 1983! Wow. 1983!

ASHEVILLE BREWERS SUPPLY

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!

NITTANY VALLEY TRUE VALUE

1169 Nittany Valley Drive

Bellefonte

(814) 383-2809 f

ax: (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.

WINEMAKER DIRECTORY

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!

WASHINGTON

BADER BEER & WINE SUPPLY

711 Grand Blvd.

Vancouver, WA 98661

1-800-596-3610

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

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!

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

DRY FINISH

BY KIEV RATTEE

HIGH ROWS, FULL HEARTS

Helping a friend harvest

Imet Brian Ford from High Rows Vineyard at a 4th of July party in 2021. We hit it off talking about the intimate community of Vermont’s commercial winemakers and grape growers. In 2008, he and his father, Bill, had joined that network when they carved out a few acres of forest to plant their Ripton, Vermont, vineyards where they now grow the red varieties Marquette and St. Croix, and whites including La Crescent, St. Pepin, Brianna, Osceola Muscat, and Prairie Star. For over a year since meeting Brian I had intentions of making the hour and a half drive north to visit the vineyard and try their wines. Last year I finally decided to make it happen and to earn my samples with some sweat equity by volunteering for harvest.

After putting myself on the volunteer roster, I awaited confirmation from Brian about when the grapes would be ready. Late in September he reached out and said to come up the morning of October 1st. Upon arrival I was given a quick tour of the well-manicured vineyards, then helped Bill unclip and remove the last of the bird netting before gathering with a handful of other volunteer pickers to get our harvest instructions. We were each given a pair of harvesting shears and a bright yellow lug for the grapes we picked. This was a small but experienced group, many of whom had helped harvest at High Rows for several years. Each pair of pickers worked on opposite sides of a row slowly filling their lugs with the gorgeous fruit destined to become High Rows Vineyard’s next vintage.

The St. Croix grapes we were picking were mostly perfect, but the sweetness within attracted a myriad of bees and hornets. In addition to the bees and hornets burrowing into some of the grapes, many birds had enjoyed this

year’s vineyard bounty — despite the extensive bird netting. Brian estimated that he lost nearly 25% of some varieties to birds and other critters (like raccoons). Bird and animal losses are a frustration to grape growers everywhere and this was a reminder to me of the often challenging agricultural roots of wine. Regardless of whether you’re making wine from kits, juices, or fresh fruit, someone somewhere took great care to successfully farm those grapes.

Our small but efficient harvest crew kept a good pace despite continually chatting and laughing across the rows. After completing my assigned lot of St. Croix, I finished my day on a row of La Crescent. The crew took one last turn around the vineyard to make sure we’d picked all of the clusters. Finally, feeling accomplished at the vision of all of our full lugs stacked at the end of each row, we retired to a semi-circle of Adirondack chairs near a small tent where Brian’s mother, Carol, had a crockpot of bacon cheddar soup ready for our lunch. We sampled past vintages of High Rows’ Mountain Red and Goshen White field blends and savored the last bottles of a couple of limited creations.

As the harvest volunteers began to disperse, I saw Brian driving the tractor over to collect the lugs to bring them to the crushpad. I stayed on to watch him and his dad crush and destem the reds and to lend a hand moving the drums of fresh must into the cellar to dump into the rectangular open-top fermenters. After a full day of rewarding work, I said my farewells to Brian and family. He walked me to my car and said, “Now onto the Goshen vineyard.” It was already mid-afternoon, but he had another crew all lined up and picking down the road at the second of their three source vineyards . . . a wine grower’s work is never done.

Our small but efficient harvest crew kept a good pace despite continually chatting and laughing across the rows.

Brian and Bill Ford crushing and destemming the Mountain Red field blend after the 2022 harvest at High Rows Vineyards in Ripton, Vermont.

Barossa

BIG & BOLD SHIRAZ

Shiraz is Barossa’s signature wine; it is one of the most famous red wines in the world, with a reputation for being rich and full bodied with velvety tannin. The varietal thrives in the region’s Mediterranean climate which is ideal for producing full-bodied red wines. The combination of hot, dry sunny days and cool nights ensure consistent, timely ripening which contributes to the style’s hallmark ripe tannins and highly concentrated fruit flavours.

Winexpert Private Reserve™ Barossa Shiraz

Cooked black fruit flavours of blackberry and plum with layered notes of dark chocolate, coffee, licorice, pepper and spice.

SWEETNESS: DRY OAK: HEAVY BODY: FULL ALCOHOL: 14%