Category — winemaking

Stories and news from the wine world:

• Wine Word of the Week: Clarification
  — Clarification is the wine-making operation which removes suspended and insoluble material from grape juice, or new wine, in which these solids are known as lees.
• Sulfites in Wine
  — Sneaky Sulfites Cause Splitting Headaches, or Do They? The truth behind sulfites used in wine.
• Wine May ‘Protect Against Dementia’
  — The beneficial effects observed are due to compounds called flavonoids, found in red wine.
• Time Works Against Opened Wine Bottle
  — The problem arises when you taste several wines or simply don’t want to drink an entire bottle by yourself or with a friend.
• Report: American Wine Industry Healthy
  — Wine Intelligence, a London-based wine industry consulting and market research firm, is reporting that American wine is doing just fine…

Stories and news from the wine world:

• The Vintner’s Case for Global Warming
  — French winemakers are buying land in northern areas that haven’t been able to produce wine in centuries. Areas like upstate New York, Ontario, and British Columbia that were marginal wine producers are becoming important winemaking centers.
• Winemaking: Requested Recipe (Pineapple Wines)
  — By the time the fruit reaches your local market, the intense flavor and sweetness made be decidely reduced. For that reason, pineapple wine made from canned pineapple or pineapple juice are, generally speaking, every bit as good as wine made from fresh pineapple fruit.
• Using Wine Recipes for Fruit Wine
  — Once you have all the basic equipment together you can start looking for wine recipes to make your own fruit wines.
• Winemaking Calculators Go Online
  — New website’s free tools provide help for busy winemakers.
• Wine Critics and their Discontents
  — You might think that the job of wine critic would be heavenly—traveling the world, tasting wines and talking and writing about them. What could be better? But there are downsides and trade-offs to the job.
• Wines to Make a Party Swing
  — So you’re having a party? There is nothing worse than going to a party and being given a bad tasting glass of wine. There is no excuse for this, and so this article gives you a few ideas on what to serve your guests.
• The Way to Make Wine: How to Craft Superb Table Wines at Home
  — Written by a vintner and science editor with twenty-five years experience, The Way to Make Wine is the most readable and reliable handbook among the many winemaking guides.

The results are in from this year’s NYS Fair Home Wine Making Competition. Of 283 entries, 25 entries were from juice/concentrate, like the kind you make at Lakeland Winery. Nearly ALL the Concentrate wine won a medal! A DOUBLE GOLD went to Chocolate Raspberry Port (which is available for you to make in November) and the Estate Cabernet Sauvignon. GOLD went to Strawberry Riesling; Peach Apricot Chardonnay, and Orange Blossom Muscat. SILVER went to Sangiovese; Montepulciano; Cabernet Sauvignon; Grenache Mourvedre; Stag’s Leap Merlot, and Green Apple Riesling. BRONZE went to Rioja; Shiraz; Merlot; Gewurztraminer; Three berry Pinot Grigio, and Tempranillo Cabernet Sauvignon.

Thank you to those who made their wine at Lakeland Winery and submitted it for a chance to win. I’m sure your efforts were noticed by the judges, who some were surprised that your wines would taste so good.

As the organizer for this years competition, I am planning to also be part of next years event at the State Fair. I hope you will join me and learn what’s involved in judging wines. Get a close up, personal view of how judging is done.

These are the final comprehensive results for your viewing: 2008-home-wine-competition

Here’s Step 2 of my How to Make Wine Video series! In this second video I explain how to transfer your fermenting wine from a bucket and into a glass carboy with a siphon, also known as “racking” your wine.

Enjoy, and be sure to leave some comments and share with your friends. :)

I received a call today from Troy at NYS Assemblyman Bill Magee’s office. He said, ‘your bill passed the Assembly by a unanimous vote”. MY BILL?, I think. WOW! UNANIMOUS!

For close to a year I have been trying to get legal permission to do in New York State what has been legalized by the Federal Government for probably 7 years. And now it’s finally here folks: permission for people to make their own wine at a Licensed Winery. The following are the exact words of BILL #7194:

Section 76 of the alcoholic beverage control law is amended by adding a new subdivision 7 is added to read as follows:

7. Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, a winery licensed pursuant to this section may engage in custom crush wine production allowing individuals to assist in the production of wine for sale for personal or family use provided, however, that (a) the wine must be purchased by the individual assisting in the production of such wine and (b) the owner, employee or agent of such winery shall be present at all times.

But, this is only one hurdle. A more difficult task is approval by the State Senate, in particular Senator John DeFrancisco, who is co-sponsoring this bill. Please give him a call at (315) 428-7632 and tell him how much you want Bill #7194 passed. They will be recessing for the Summer I think next week, so don’t put off your call.

In the mean time, you can continue to make your own wine as a privilege of membership to our FREE wine making club.

Andy

p.s. There is another bill in the works that will allow people to make wine at a facility NOT licensed by the State Liquor Board. They would be able to get a separate license just for that purpose from the State Department of Agriculture and Market. The wheels turn slowly in government…but they do turn.

Step 1: Starting the process of making wine from a juice concentrate kit. Let me know what you think!

Enjoy!

Here’s a quick preview of Step 1 of our upcoming How to Make Wine Video series by yours truly (they’ll all be available online for free):

Recently, a very special guest swing dance instructor was in Syracuse for the weekend. Her name is Debrah and she’s from California. As a nice gesture I thought I would bring her a bottle each of Stag’s Leap Merlot and Wasington Columbia Valley Riesling.

During a break in the dance that night I brought her my present and was startled when she immediately started drinking straight from the bottle. With a wide eye look of panic, she draws the bottle from her mouth and exclaims, “what the #@% kind of wine is this!!” I was again surprised by her reaction, but soon relaxed when she said, “this is the best #@!% merlot I’ve ever had”.

Since she was from California, I took this as a huge complement.

The following evening during another dance event, a woman whom I know to be a little snobbish when it comes to eating and drinking. She has told me, “I only go to the best restaurants.” She comes up to me and tells me this story: Apparently, the other night Debrah was sharing her wine with some people, and offered it to Kathy (the wine snob). Kathy says, “no thanks that’s Andy’s wine, isn’t it”? Well Debra goes off the deep end and says to kathy, “you gotta try this fantastic wine”! Kathy relates to me that she DID try the wine and was AMAZED how good it tasted. Well, that just about made my day.

Two wine lovers, one from California and the other from Syracuse agreeing that my juice concentrate wine was FANTASTIC! I was pleased as punch :) Don’t just believe my story. Try it and see for yourself, how delicious is wine made from juice concentrate.

Andy filtering wine.

We are in the middle of putting together a few ‘How to Make Wine’ winemaking videos and had a videographer over on Saturday to film each step in the winemaking process. We had a lot of fun with the first day of filming, so keep an eye out for the videos in the next few weeks!

Andy mixing grape juice and adding yeast.

For anyone who wants to make wine the simple and easy way (i.e., with some Welch’s frozen grape juice!), the Beer, Wine and Food blog offers up 8 simple steps to turn juice from the grocery store into a quick batch of wine. Don’t plan on winning any awards with this approach, but it’s a great hands-on experience nonetheless:

“I feel there are numerous people looking to get into winemaking and would like to take a simple approach. Or, maybe you are an experienced winemaker looking to make a batch for quick consumption. Either way, here are the simple steps to making wine. The procedure is designed to make 1 1/2 gallons which will probably end up being about 1 gallon bottled.”

Read on to learn more…

8 Simple Steps to Making Wine [Beer, Wine and Food]