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That makes sense, don't know why mildew didn't occur to me. I wouldn't say conditions were perfectly ideal but we had a day when I could have seen that happening.

Yesterday I realized that the shorter (less than foot tall) Marquette I planted last year had a lot of nasty looking blackish and dying leaves. The taller vines trained up on the poles seemed perfectly fine. I assumed I had screwed up and had drift onto them from glyphosate/simazine mixture I...

Thanks, this is what I thought. The trunks have no visible damage but unless a LOT of buds come out in the next couple weeks...down they come. This vineyard is the closest I am to farming now....but I grew up farming...so I'm well familiar with this game. Just with typical farming a crop loss...

We had a 70-100 year winter here; 3 consecutive -15F days with high winds and then a couple more several weeks later. With the exception of my Foch, my varieties sustained significant and varied levels of damage. My couple table varieties (Candice and Ontario) had very high percentage bud...

So far, 1/2 to 2/3 of the vines have clear growth within 2" of the ground, ready to produce new trunks. Out of 20 vines, I can't say there are more than 2-3 that have ANY buds alive on the current canes. I will give them a few weeks, hoping as many as possible come back from the root. I can...

Try it both ways, with and without pectic enzyme. I can't tell the difference, can you? If I can tell a difference it's in favor of the cleared wine.

The article refers to the concentration in the resulting distilled product, where the methanol has been greatly concentrated. We have absolutely no idea how this relates to what would be found in homemade wine. It cites 320-656 mg methanol / 100mL 40% ethanol...

I did a rough pruning a couple weeks ago, but am now waiting a few more days to go in and do a final cut as I wanted to make sure I knew exactly what was alive and undamaged. My reds (Foch, Oberlin Noir, and Marquette) were mostly fine with some death on the smaller diameter wood. My Cayuga...

If I get down to 32-35F for a week, I get satisfactory shed of crystals. I use an old fridge I got for $50 off craigslist and fit with stronger racks to hold 3 carboys for this.

I think grapes will likely be less affected than most other plants. We had a really rough drought in 2012, one of the worst ever here, and my grape yields were still about 60% of a really good year. Granted that on a commercial scale that's a big drop. I took my first drive through...

-14F here the last two mornings; supposed to warm up tomorrow. We do have a foot or more of snow on the ground, so I'm hoping for the best. It will break my heart if the whole vineyard dies back to the ground.

Snobs can certainly be frustrating, especially when their low opinion is not based on actual facts/experience. However, one must also be cognizant that a large share of wine drinkers have never, ever had fruit wine. It really is a whole other drink to many people. I have shown up at a wine...

Aw man. 6 weeks ago I was in North Dakota trying to hunt those things. Phenominal to watch, very difficult to hunt. I spent most of the day working on a climate-controlled shooting house in the back of my barn. I'm not sure if it was that or racking a bunch of my wine and moving carboys...

Very nice!

So you are a month from starting fermentation? The biggest thing you need to do is just wait. I don't make kits but I can tell you I am still clearing wines started from fruit in July and August. Really, just be patient and let it sit a couple months and see where it is at. Three days after...

It can be used as a distillationconcentraiton method (ice wine) if the solids are removed, but while the alcohol concentration does increase it is not a clean separation of water and alcohol. And the temperature at which you will find a frozen lump of wine busting the carboy is not all that...

35, but probably a bit of an oddity growing up. Small town farm boy, B&W TV until I was 5 (I loved Lone Ranger and Rin Tin Tin), one-room country school through 6th grade. I was handing out milk there when Challenger blew up. Biked everywhere...not sure I'd let my kids do that now even in...

Respectfully, this is not true. When I worked as a molecular biologist we froze very high alcohol solutions routinely as part of the process to precipitate and purify DNA. 70% ABV frozen solid as can be. The alcohol does not separate out from the water during the freezing process. The...

While this may be technically true, your prescribed technique is, for all reasonable purposes, illegal for the home wine (port) maker. You need high ABV fortifier and such high ABV brandy is not routinely available to us non-commercial people. Consumer-level brandy is too weak and would be...

I have 20 Foch, with 2 years of wine off them. The first year it was 100% Foch, and I did not do MLF. It was sharp and not great. The next year I had low yield due to drought, so I mixed 2/3 Foch with 1/3 Oberlin Noir in the primary and did a MLF. The wine is a year old and I am quite...