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That’s not necessarily true buying grapes from others tends to be more expensive sometimes than growing your own. As for tasting rooms driving sales kind of. We don’t have a tasting room at our winery at all and do not offer tastings on site we well to retailers and restaurants and consumers...

Those prices are high for Templeton/ Paso area. You would only get those prices realistically from 3 vineyards in the entire area.

We went all plastic as stainless tanks had such a long lead time and the prices were mental. For plastic tanks look at FlexTanks they are the best quality plastic wine tanks on the market.

Believe me I know I spent a very long time as a home winemaker before I worked in a commercial winery. I’ve done it all and had to work with what I could get to make blends. I am fortunate now to have flexibility and freedom to really experiment and make wines that were not possible before I...

Although we are trying to keep a consistent style at the winery for our Cabernet which I am hoping comes out stylistically like last years which was definitely what we wanted and the strange weather last year gave us perfect numbers for ph and brix it is unlikely that we will get the same...

I have done field blend wines that are very unique because the percentage of each varietal in the vineyard changes every year so you don’t tend to get consistency in wines but each wine stands out.

I only do blends during fermentation and never after I find it works better and you do not notice it as much I have found any wines blended post ferment to be out of balance and to me it stands out and doesn’t come together as well,

I got my hands on some Zinfandel, some Cab Franc and my hands on Alicante bouschet and blended them like 50% Zinfandel 30% Cab and then threw in 20% Alicante as a well I have a bunch of grapes what do I do with them blend. I like doing things people tell me not to because winemaking is a great...

Well it happens lol I tend to go off topic a lot lol. We are in a major city but we are the only winery in the entire city so we’re milking the market being the pioneering winery. The state has a few wineries but nothing crazy.

The absolute only thing I add to any commercial wine if I think I need it because I’m pretty hands off on additives is Color Pro which does help with haze along with breaking down skins and extracting more stable color compounds. I go for minimal intervention and as natural as possible these...

It’s fun to make wine but you have to slow down and enjoy what you make. I tasted our 2023 batch last month it’s been aging in tanks with oak staves at the winery for the past nearly 12 months we are just 1 month shy of a year right now. It’s definitely basically ready to bottle and release...

My neighbors served my last batch at their sons wedding and it went down well with the wedding attendees so I am pretty sure I am going to make it next year,

I do run a commercial winery and we don’t filter because all the sediment drops out over the year of aging and we rack several times. I do not know if you could clear a wine with a centrifuge I just know that they remove alcohol with them, I would also be concerned with excessive oxidation...

50 gallons is a good amount of wine for a home winemaker. Argentine Malbec is a good pick solid wine. I make the full 200 gallons that I am legally allowed to make at home but am licensed so technically I can make more if I needed to. But I have 300-400 cases in my wine cellar here at the...

Sediment doesn’t matter cause it pretty much all falls out naturally in tank so if you have a wine with enough sediment to need to filter it you have other problems. The filter pads home winemakers use are made from the same material than the pro stuff is made out of just obviously a smaller...

K Meta does decrease in effectiveness with age and exposure to oxygen. So it is best to replace it yearly.

I have used it in thousands of gallons of commercial wine, it has never stripped any color, aromatics or flavors compared to control and has been in my experience the least damaging of all the fining agents. I am sure that home winemakers could be implementing all kinds of practices that could...

It does not strip out anything, it does not affect any color, flavor or aroma molecules, only yeast, bacteria, and any other foreign matter in the wine. It’s exceptionally good at preventing spoilage down the road. I only use it or egg whites in the reds at our winery.

It will be early this year but also over ripe I expect having to correct acidity this year

Probs will be low sugar tbh, as for California it’s likely to be a regular year, 2023 was amazing and it started off wet then leveled off quickly and has been hot and dry. So I’m anticipating potentially having to pick early this year as I believe we will see more raisined fruit and overly ripe...