Drinkable Wine

My main goal in winemaking was to make a drinkable wine. The first wine I made was from a Wine Expert Riesling kit. My son Timothy gave it to me for a birthday present. After the past bad experiences in winemaking with grapes, a kit wine seemed to be the perfect start to making a

What Do I Name My Wine?

As an amateur winemaker, I will not be selling any of my bottles of wine. It is against the law and in my golden years, I do not want to be behind bars in a very confined space. The worst part, being confined in jail, I would not be able to have my daily glass

The Mystery is Solved

John and I were anxious to get to the next Missouri Winemaking Society’s meeting which was going to be on Wine Faults. We would finally find out what went wrong with the Chardonel. It was really off tasting and I was beginning to think that it might not be bottle shock. However, if we blended

How To Make an Aromatic White Wine

I could not figure out why my white wines were tasting flavorless. John and I became members of Missouri Winemaking Society in 2016 and never missed a meeting. I became a sponge open to any information and suggestions at the meeting. I asked a fellow member. “Why are my white wines flavorless? Is it the

Missouri Winemaking Society to the Rescue

I had caught the Winemaking bug. I started to read everything I could get my hands on including the book Home Winemaking for Dummies, (which actually was a very good book and perfect for me), joined an online winemaking forum, and subscribed to Winemaker Magazine. The more I read, the more confused I became. And

The End of Winemaking

I finally calmed down after that fiasco of fermenting the Chardonel wine. I have never seen a bigger, sloppier mess than that overflowing fermenting wine pail. And I still was not too sure about this winemaking thing. “Mom, I’m sorry. I think I may have filled the pails too high. Sorry, you had to clean

A Big Sloppy Mess

We followed Timothy’s instructions to the letter. Daily, we stirred the juice, measured the specific gravity (The specific gravity refers to the amounts of fermentable sugar or possible alcohol percentage in the must or wine.) and kept the lid on the pail, loosely. The glass hydrometer slightly bobbed up and down in the fermenting must. The yeast

More is More

The Chardonel wine definitely did not turn out as good as what we had hoped. But, it was drinkable. It may have had a wine fault, but we knew nothing of wine faults at this time. (A wine fault or defect is an unpleasant characteristic of a wine often resulting from poor winemaking practices or

The First 200 Pounds of Grapes

Timothy, our son, had asked for our help in making his first batch of wine made from grapes. We very rarely say no to our children and also thought it would be a fun adventure. I was looking for a hobby to occupy some free time. Winemaking looked like it would be so much fun.

Winemaking?

My first memory of wine was when I was 8 or 9. There sat a gallon jug of Chianti on our Sunday dinner table. I came from a robust Italian extended family, living in a 3 story flat with my parents, 2 brothers, a sister, a great aunt and an elderly cousin. My dad was