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As others have said, the general rule is if it tastes ok as water it will taste fine in your wine. If you have really funky well water or municipal water, going with the "bottled" water might be best (which is just tap water filtered). Even heavily chlorinated water will dissipate and drop out...

WOW! That is impressive.

Not sure if I've ever had or made a "bad" combination, but the one thing I've seen over the years is one flavor overpowering the others. Raspberry is the biggest "culprit" :) that can easily dominate. Subtle flavors like apple, pear, banana, etc can get lost sometimes. Pineapple has a strong...

Like others, I've fooled around making port style wines. My best was a mocha port, made from a higher end zinfandel kit. I step fed it to reach higher alcohol (somewhere around 18%), and the yeast died out leaving some residual sugar. Then added everclear to bring it up to about 20%. Added cocoa...

If $1.00 a label is a reasonable price for you, labels at www.noontimelabels.com start there and go down with quantity. And we have The Everything Label specifically for home winemakers and brewers.

I think frozen/fresh raspberries would be the way to go. I've found raspberries to be very potent flavor that easily dominates others, so it shouldn't take much to punch it up a bit (although post fermentation you might want to put them through a food processor or really mulch them up when...

One of the most important things to remember with barrel alternatives is the surface area dictates how quickly they transfer their goodies to your wine. Chips are often used during fermentation because the give everything up within a few days or a week; when added after fermentation this results...

Oak will add different things depending on when its added. If oak is present during fermentation its smoother and the yeast create smooth tannins, after fermentation it adds harsher (not bad, no judgement :) ) tannins and more of the strong oak flavor. There's a lot of info on the internet you...

We've entered many wines over the years, and it's definitely a mixed bag. We've gotten a lot of really good feedback that really helped educate our own palates; a good example is a zinfandel that had a subtle note of what we tasted as a root beer kind of thing (not unpleasant), and all 3 judges...

Wow, I'm compelled to reply to this because I think your post does more harm than good. There are 2 things wrong with your post calling expired sorbate nonsense; 1) you're contradicting established chemistry fact, that sorbates ability to neuter yeast degrades over time, and other people are...

Certainly not looking to blatantly advertise, but seems pertinent to the conversation; Noontime Labels has The Everything Label that peels off dry, no water, solvents, or scrubbing. It's also reusable (remove and put on another bottle) and washable (keep the label on the bottle and use for...

Very interesting article with a bunch of good insights and information. I am baffled by a couple of things though. I mean this literally, not me making judgement of anything but actually being perplexed. I've been making wine, mead, and melomels for years with much success (and a few losers as...

Wow, that one pic after degassing really shows how some of these fruits are harder to get wine out of. :) Yours looked roughly a little less than half. Again, wow. :) I didn't think anything was going to be as bad as mango, but looks like strawberry is the new winner! :)

Getting ready to transfer my strawberry/cranberry mead, and can't get over how much soft fluffy sediment there is. I've dealt with this many times with our mango wines so there's no problem with dealing with it, but man... this was just 9 lbs of fresh strawberries in about 7 gallons; sheesh! I...

Wine Grapes Direct are fantastic, and Andrew and Michael are great guys (and knowledgeable and passionate about winemaking :) )

Another option that might be better is cold pressed coffee. I've used the Trader Joes cold pressed coffee a couple of times and it is absolutely delicious... all the wonderful smooth coffee flavor without the bitter.

Absolutely one of the greatest educations in winemaking I've ever had... splitting batches and experimenting with different yeasts. The yeast makes a HUGE difference in flavor, and I had no idea just how significant it was until I did an A/B test. Created 2 completely different wines, fermented...

D47 is one of my go-to yeasts for anything I want fruity... whites, fruit wines, melomels, etc. 71B is another. Both help create fruity esters. I do the same as you with the dry yeasts, just sprinkle on top. Theoretically the yeast would benefit from making a starter, but unless you do that...

Great labels and wonderful job. Congrats on everything! :)

For easy solution going forward, we have The Everything Label that is clean release removable label (and reusable, washable, erasable, and permanent)