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Wow Stickman, that’s really beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

Sure did. The fruit was in great condition and numbers exactly as Peter indicated. I didn’t press early as he recommended but instead waited till dry (14 days), and just made sure to not press too hard. The tannins are definitely high but actually quite soft and from an early taste I can say...

Yes there are quite a number of assumptions working in the background. Like the assumption that any must with an initial PH below 3.9 will experience an increase of 0.27 through the course of fermentation and malolactic fermentation. But because of the malic acid ratio with higher PH musts, any...

Looks good Stickman! Sometimes those CA grapes require a bit of an acid addition, but otherwise I'll look forward to hearing how your wine turned out. I built a model which requires only the inputs in orange and just for fun plugged in your initial numbers. Those grapes you got were clearly...

Sounds like most of you are on the east coast, but for those of you in AZ I’ve been using Peddlers Sons for a few years and couldn’t speak more highly of them. I bought about 1,000 lbs of grapes last year for about $1.2 per lb. The grapes generally come from Central CA, but are in excellent...

Gotcha. Well I haven’t made that DB recipe but it certainly has quite a fan base. Probably the way to go if you’re fairly new to wine making. If you’re committed to crushing more fruit and adding as little water as possible you’d really need to know your starting PH and starting gravity. From...

You could add calcium carbonate or acidex to reduce acidity, though it’s only used in extreme situations where your initial PH is lower than 3.0, and only use enough to raise your PH up to 3. Otherwise your wine will end up tasting unbalanced if you “science” the crap out of it. I’d recommend...

About a cup or two of distilled vinegar added to a large pot in a water bath. Make sure it’s distilled because you really don’t want a mother of vinegar culture introduced to your bottles. I’ll leave the bottles upright filled with water (no vinegar just in case) for a few hours. Some labels...

Thanks RT. I feel like I’ve spent countless hours wondering if I over or under oaked my wine, and felt like there was no way I was alone with that anxiety. It’s always nice to have a plan and I’m happy to share.

Good call! Here goes. Let me know if this doesn't work.

So short answer, they don’t! Barrels are irreplaceable for so many reasons. However, if you’re like me and live in a place with only 30% humidity and average temps of 82 in the house during summer, barrels aren’t an option. But if you’re just looking to replicate the oak phenolics of commercial...

Or if you can only age your wine for 6 months using oak cubes, you'll need to increase your dosage accordingly (see below).

Embedded below are some of the most common routines practiced by winemakers.

They won't let me attach excel files but if you're interested send me a message and I can send it to you.

If anyone out there was like me and wanted to understand how to convert a barrel program into an oak cube dosage, I created a tool which might be helpful. The trick is understanding how both barrels and cubes give off their phenolics over time. Below is the graph for barrels. Anyway, there was a...

You nailed it, reductive being all about limited oxygen exposure during fermentation and aging. Oxygen is needed to keep your wine from going reductive, which tends to produce stressed yeast producing mercaptans (basically sulfur compound). It's not always a bad winemaking style, and often done...

Your initial SG of 1.116 = 27.2 Brix which is very high. You would probably want to get that down to at least 25 Brix = 14.5% ABV just to keep the yeast happy. Though since it's a kit wine I'm assuming it's meant to end at 13.5% ABV (and has been acid balanced at that number), which means you'd...

I think every European winemaker would agree with you. And it's hard to argue with that.

I agree every must is different, and in a perfect world lab tests would need to confirm your PH & TA readings before and after primary, and after MLF to really know what you're working with. But what I'm saying is that generally once you find your initial PH and TA, they tend to move in...

My pleasure! That’s what this forum is all about :) Technically if you just added the sulfite last week now would be the time as most of it is still volatile and would dissipate rapidly while still inhibiting oxygenation. Either way there is nothing wrong with waiting a few months before or...