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we finished ours. Do you need any help finishing yours !!! LOL, Roy

Special wine for a special Day. A 2013 Castello di Amorosa, Sangiovese, Napa Valley, truly the BEST Sangiovese we ever had. We bought it last summer on our RV trip to California .

Really cool!! We are just getting into making wine art projects, hope to be able to post pics soon. Roy

Newest wine, just moved into secondary is a 50% Cab, 25% Blackberry, 25% Blueberry, it's a 15 gallon batch. We love fruit/Cab blends, this one is Home Winery concentrates one pint to a gallon, with raisins & lots of oak added to primary. Next racking it will be put in a barrel. It will be hard...

We use oak dust in the primary, oak chips go in the first & second racking so. Then we use oak spirals each racking there after. We age our Reds 18 months before bottling. Now that we have 2 barrels we age our biggest reds in them. Roy

Thanks AJ & John for replies. I was planning on a co ferment of Cab & P. Syrah, BUT think I'll ferment separately & blend after bench trials, but before it goes to sleep in the barrel. Thinking this will be a Home Run. Roy

Thinking about my fall grape order, has anyone blended Cab & Petit Syrah. My Cabs have been lacking body & color, thought some P Syrah could help. Roy

I had a friend in Cresent City Fl that grew Noble grapes, his vineyard was a few acres. We never saw the vineyard but drank some of his Noble wine. It was a bold, dark Red Wine. It was 15 yrs ago so I can't remember if it tasted like a Cab, but it was good, & we drink and make a lot of CB. We...

My solution was to put my carboys on rolling carts. Two to a cart. Worked great, so easy to move around. But this year I was running out of room so I built a table above. I've only had the table a few weeks but it seems to work out great. Hope to have 2 more barrels on top in the future. Roy

Now that we have a good wine inventory, we age our kits 12-18 months in a carboy & barrel. Therefore we don't use the clarifying agents. We do vacuum degas & then keep a airlock on the carboys. Roy

We too are scaling back some. We have almost 900 bottles and 250 in carboys. So we are now concentrating on making wine from grapes & juice buckets. Will still make some wine from concentrate for our early drinkers, but early drinkers are now at 1 year vrs the 6 months they used to be. Roy

I smoke with our wine chips all the time. But I especially like smoking with soaked oak spirals! I have tubs of both. Roy

Bernard, Thanks for sharing your Banana Wine recipe. I've been wanting to make one for a while. I do add Banannas to many of our fruit whites for a little extra body, looking forward to a straight Banana Wine. Roy

I'm fortunate to have a dedicated wine room, making 350-450 bottles a year. Currently 22 carboys &'one barrel. But it's still difficult to age our wines. But our oldest is now almost 10 years old. Patience & self control along with increased production is the answer to aging your wines.Roy

The W E Nebillio is one of our fav's. Ours is now 22 months old & close to its year, won't say prime. Our 4,year old Nebblio is almost gone, sad love this wine. Used std yeast etc. still Great!! Roy

Nice labels! S. P. Is fun to make, fast & good to drink. Great on the rocks around the pool or on the boat or patio. Enjoy, Roy

Well besides handles for Empty carboys, I have the carboys on rolling carts and a vacuum pump to transfer the wine. There fore I don't need to lift a full carboy ever. Roy ps don't ask about breaking a carboy & losing 5gals of wine!! (The reason for above)

JG & AZ, I don't understand how you can lose a gallon of Lee's. After I transferred ( see post #2) to secondary I had a softball size clump of squeezed grape skins & added raisins left over. Maybe I squeeze too much. I also use a " fruit straining bag" because the mesh is more open than a paint...

I'm a free floater, feel we get better extraction. A little pain to rack, I use a mesh bag around my vacuum tube pickup, then turn the bag inside out & pour the last of the must into the bag & squeeze dry. Roy

We don't do a lot of whites either. But did a Reisling kit, keptt it in the carboy for a year, pretty good, even better after 6 months in the bottle. Started another Reisling 4 months ago because we liked it so much. Roy