Started a micro vineyard on an acre 4 years ago. 8 varieties and 3 shown here. Cyuga White, Chardonel, and Vidal Blanc. I’m not huge on white wine, but friends and family all seemed to love it. Fermented about a month and then clarified over the next 6 months. 140 375ml bottles

Started 7 days ago. Pressed grapes, added yeast and yeast nutrients. Left around 60% stems.

Pressed the must today, and as you see the wine is almost sugarless and tastes quite sour.

Should I add sugar now? I started with 20kg fruit, now I have around 13l of wine. How much sugar should I add?

I just transferred to 5 l carboys and theres been no activity like bubbling for an hour now

First time corking wine and I'm really not happy with the way it's looking. Followed some tutorials online. It said to soak them and to use a lot of pressure. They are getting completely mashed in by the corker. Is this a technique issue or an equipment issue?

So... I decided to drop the corks briefly into boiling water before corking to sterilize them. I did not know this was a mistake until recently. I've only soaked one batch of corks for wine.

I did let the bottles stand straight up for 3-5 days before storing on their side. I keep the bottles in my kitchen where it is relatively dry and not super dark (I don't have a great place to store them elsewhere). It has been about 4 months of storage so far. I have attached a picture of what one of the corks looks like currently.

I need reassurance: Will the wine probably be okay? I don't plan on letting them sit for very long (I want to start drinking at 6 months).

If not... how easily could I switch out the corks for new ones I have? Would it start the aging process over, or completely ruin what's already started? Is it better to take the risk and wait and see or no?

I am still relatively new at all this, and I have learned my mistake: I did not soak the corks for a recent batch nor plan to soak the corks for any batch in the future. I am just looking for advice on what to do for this batch.

Hi, new ro this subreddit. Been making mede(mead ) and other fruit wines for years now with succes. We use the grapevine to overgrow a wooden structure to sit under during the summer. I wanted to try to use these grapes to make normal wine for the first time. Do these look too far gone to salvage them for wine making ? The rest of our garden took to much of our time and I am afraid we missed the window.

And if so can I still use them for something else ? Your advice and help is appreciated 👍.

I'm making wine using a fruit that only exists here in Brazil: jaboticaba. I'm using Red Star's Côte de Blanc (probably not the ideal choice, but I'm using what I had at hand). The mash fermented for 14 days, I separated them, added some sugar because I felt there was still room to raise the alcohol content and now it's in a plastic bucket with an air lock.

I bought a barrel (jequitibá rosa, a Brazilian wood usually used for ageing cachaça) and it arrived today. Thing is, I can't get it open to wet the wood, the peg's stuck real good. Any tips on how to do it without damaging either? It's stuck real good!

So I just wanted some opinions. I’ve made a peach and while the peaches themselves had a good if rather light flavor it doesn’t seem to have shown through in the wine. I don’t know if that will change with age after it mellows a bit or not, honestly right now it doesn’t taste that good and I expected that. I am curious though about which fruits seem to shine through the best, something that has a bold flavor and is easy to work with( this is really the part I need help with). I thought about making an apple wine, maybe a strawberry or something of that nature because ironically enough I’m not a huge fan of grapes. Thank you for your time.

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

If you remember my last post; I inherited probably over 30 gallons of poorly made wine that had been sitting in a dead grandfathers wine room for 20 plus years. This is a write up of my experiment with the first 5 gallons that was a tremendous success. The 5 gallons in question was labeled "Bianco Bonanza," Likely a mixed varietal white. I just think that's cute. I asked the original owners if they wanted updates on the wines rehabilitation so I already have this all written out.

Tl:dr- I made it into 6 heavily intentionally complexly flavoured wine coolers, and a mulled wine. Below is my method of rebalancing and rehabilitating.

First racking and clarification. I just used sparkaloid. It did the job, didn't get rid of the autolysis note but it cleared up crystal. The goal for the 5 gallons was to split it into two separate parts, one which would be a series of wine coolers and the other which would be a more experimental mulled wine. I had a thought that since the wine more or less tasted empty other than the flaw, that it would take flavor from pretty much anything quite well. there are classes of wine that are becoming much more popular and modernity because they're funkier, orange wines for example, also Spanish sidra is their apple cider but they allow it to have a natural fermentation which makes it kind of unpredictable, and much funkier. I make a lilac wine every year, and this year's failed because I didn't actually pasteurize my syrup so it also kind of had a funky wild fermentation. I figured the acetic acid that was produced here would probably go far to round this out and make it much brighter so that was added first for both batches. it absolutely lifted the wine significantly and covered the major flaw quite well on its own.

I intentionally made flavour profiles that were quite intricate and leaned into savoury-ness for the wine coolers.

• strawberry/mint/coriander/sumac/hibiscus
• ginger/peach/cardamom
• pumpking/mulling spices
• cherry/rosemary and star anise
• Black berry/summer savory/ lemon
• plum/mixed field flowers and cinnamon.

The addition of herbs was very intentional along with the fruit syrups that I had made through the cheong method; luckily I just had all these sitting around I just had to make combinations that made sense. The herbaceousness should add an element that rounds out that flaw. The pumpkin cheong was made from the guts of a pumpkin that I hollowed out last october :D. The cheong syrups themselves also had dormant yeast that led to surprisingly vigorous bottle carbonation. Finally some acid correction with citric and malic acid. These were then pasteurized to finish them as a sweet, very drinkable treat.

Lastly I made my mulled wine, used quite a bit of spices that I had my cabinet to see if I could get something a little less pedestrian. Black cardamom along with green cardamom, Ginger, orange peel, long pepper, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, pink peppercorns, maple syrup, star anise, juniper, cinnamon, an old can of spiced apple cider I canned a few years ago, and a little bit of an older batch of maple wine that I made. It's pretty good. Less crushable, but very nice warm, and it will be a treat with some warm apple cider and a little orange juice added for some freshness.

To the people who said this was pointless, a waste a time or gross, please be more uncomfortable with waste in your day to day life. I think the work of a man should not be wasted. I think the fruits of the earth should also not be wasted. We have engendered a culture of waste. It is at the core of much of our social rot. Cookery as we know it is a matter of preservation. Almost all the beautiful food and drink you've ever had was originally made to make those ingredients go a little further for a little longer. That's literally what wine is. If I am to take something that was destined to be refuse and make it whole again, that is how I pay respect to this world we live in, and make it a little better. I am lucky to be in the position to have the will to do so.

Now if anyone has any suggestions for the rest, I'm all ears!

Spain has an long tradition of orange wines (vino brisado) which is often forgotten. Today, i decided to start a test using the old ways. The idea is to have a minimum-intervention wine while using old tecniques.
About the wine: Its white Muscat (var. small berried) manually pressed. SG of 1.110. will ferment on it's grape marc following a red-wine (tinto) fermentation method. Yeast used (EC-1118) has an alcohol tolerance around 18% ABV.
About the pot: A fired clay pot made by hand with the interior permeated with beeswax will house the wine. Its sealed with salted flour paste (engrudo) and linen gauze, kept tight by linen thread and sealed with wax. The only hole on the vessel holds the airlock, filled with alcohol.
The plan: The pot will keep the wine untill the fermentation gets dry on sugar.

Any propositions about what to do after fermentation? Should i sink the wine's marc hat during fermentation or leave it be? Any other thoughts on this? Ty

My property in Milwaukee, WI has had these grapes on it for decades possibly 30+ years. I got hopeful that they might be Riesling but it seems unlikely. They have red stems, round green berries, fuzzy underside of leaf, 7 lobes, woody bark on stem, and a U shaped naval gap. I am thinking they might be La Crosse variety or hybrid. Did the skin test squeeze on a grape and the thick skin came off all in one piece. The grape when crushed didn’t have strong fragrances and didn’t smell of green apple unfortunately. Anyone able to help identify this grape or confirm it would be good for wine making? Have about 50 feet of it. Thanks in advance!

Going to make some orange wine and pet-nat 🍇

Our first grapes of the year:
35 year old Granche
Contra Costa County AVA
140 lbs picked (making wine in an SF apartment, no garage)
~115 crushed and destemmed, remainder left whole cluster for carbonic maceration
BRIX: 19
pH: 3.13
TA: 7.4
YAN: 220

Yeast: 11.4 g of ICV-GRE with GoFerm Protect Evolution
Added 15g Fermaid O at start of fermentation
Solid cap formation in >24 hours

This is our first time dealing with sub 20 Brix. Expecting a light colour, high acid wine. Will likely lose some acid as a result of temperature control.
Carbonic maceration is an experiment. Maybe 7 days, we’ll see. Will most likely finish with the GRE as well.

Gave my first wine ever, a taste after a month post bottling, five racks later, and some Ph balancing.

Came out with this bright looking Rosé wine. Which wasn't what I was hoping for, but it's what the grapes wanted. Friends who tried it with me said it reminded them of a juicer, tangy Rosé. Better chilled too. I'm so lucky

Can't wait for next season

Hi all, first time taking winemaking in my own hands with my father and Claude:). We currently have 50 Regent vines ( 200 vines in total for experimentation) in Belgium next to Antwerp. We are trying to make a fruity, light red and a pet-nat. Doing 10% whole bunch and the rest consists out of almost whole berries. Feedback or opinions are welcome ! Cheers.

First wine and I am on day 14 racking from the bucket to secondary, will it be okay for another 2-3wks?

Earlier this year I found out I had a ~45 year old Cayuga white vine and last night I pressed the grapes took a lot of work getting to that point with some ups and downs but have learned a lot looking forward to next year going exponentially better!

Don't think we got the best from the amount of grape. Got it in the tank with cooling plates set at around 5°C. Kept chilled at about 11 °C for 20 hours. Then had a pipe leave the chiller while at work. Got home it was at 19. Chucked ice in the chiller and stabilised it at fermentston to 16°C. Now running for 2 days fermenting at this temp. Sugar turing to alcohol from reading so still getting away with it. But hey, wine is a yeasty lityle bstard. 😄

Picked up 150lb of Lemberger from a vineyard on the east banks of Keuka lake, NY last week.

- Brix: 19.5, TA 0.75% pH 3.14
- Crush & destem, added 50ppm kmeta
- 36 hour cold soak @ 50f
- Pitched RC212 along with fermaid O and optired
- Second dose of fermaid O @ 15 brix & co-inoculated with VP41 MLF
- 3 daily punch downs

So far color and flavor are fantastic although the grapes seem to be better at holding onto their juice than cab cabernet family varietals.

Anyone worked with this grape before? Hoping to make a medium to full body single varietal with this batch, aging it in stainless steel for a year then bottle for another 6-12 months.

Any tips/pointers appreciated!

Any tips?

I have chance to work at a large scale winemaker or be a third year at a small one.

Not really sure how to proceed. one has knows and the other is unknowns.

The place I’m familiar with is closer but the other place is much larger.

What would you choose?

Thanks in advance.

Hello dear people,

So I have just finished pressing my must after the primary fermentation into the secondary ferment vessel and I just had to post an update because I'm so proud of myself for not fucking it up (so far).

This has been a journey, and I have been adapting and growing and learning along the way and I think its a small miracle that this is still going well.

So I bought around 40kg of grapes around 22.09 and 20kg of them arrived on 24th. The seller insisted on selling via courier, and I was way too far from him to be able to realistically and not expensively get there. So the other 20kg got fucked up and the guy sent it to me essentially next week. Oh well. Tough shit. I mean I was glad he was willing to just send me another 20kg for no additional compensation (I do hope he got some refund from the courier).

So I fermented the first 20kg, for around a week with stems and everything, than pressed, added the campden tablet (actually I did that a day after, when it managed to go a little bad and develop a thin film of Kahn, but it restarted!). Then a week later I got the second batch, repeated the whole process and just now I filled my 25L vessel for the first time AND IT DIDNT BREAK OR SHATTER im so happy I could cry.

Not to mention fermentation restarted! Oh bliss!

I now have around 35 liters of wine in second fermentation and I'm going to need an army of bottles soon.

Hi, i have been homebrewing for about a year now but have only done meads. My mom’s birthday is coming up and i wanted to make her a sweet red wine.

I was hoping for some quick tips before i start. I bought seedless red grapes and plan to just mash them, use bottled spring water and lavlin d-47 and let it sit

Should i remove the pulp at a certain time or let it sit the whole fermentation?

Hello everyone. This is my first time making wine, I used grapes from my garden. I tried to be super clean, I disinfected everything with chemipro oxi. Now there is this white layer on the wine. I don't know what to do. I now added a little sulfite and closed it off again. It's now a month after the first fermentation was done. Then I put the wine in these bottles.

Does anyone know what this white layer is and if it is bad? And how to solve it?

Thank you in advance!