The rewards and frustrations of home winemaking

We are planning to bottle the syrah soon, and I will also probably bottle the primitivo as well. The merlot and petite sirah in the barrels have not picked up enough oak for our tastes, so we’re going to leave them for another year. I realized I haven’t cleaned out the airlocks on my carboys [...]

John and Paula York hosted the annual Ramona Valley Vineyard Association summer social at Hellanback Ranch. It was HOT, even in the shade, but such a beautiful location.  Everyone brought wine and a side dish, and John grilled up home grown and raised beef burgers — they were SO good.  We got to taste a [...]

We visited Fallbrook Winery yesterday with some of our friends.  It has been unusually cold and dreary around San Diego, but the sun eventually came out later in our tour.  We were greeted by Vernon Kindred, one of the winemakers at Fallbrook.  He walked us through some of the vineyards while describing the growing season [...]

I entered two wines into the San Diego County Fair Homemade wine competition: ‘Bahia Belle’ Bordeaux Blend, a 50/50 blend of cabernet sauvignon and merlot made from fresh grapes, and ‘Sail Bay Sundown’ RJ Spagnols Argentinian Trio Limited Release white blend.  One of my fellow winemakers also entered the same cabernet sauvignon and merlot as [...]

I popped by to check on the merlot and petite sirah in barrels at my friends’ office.  While I was there I took some samples to test for free SO2. Last time I tasted these wines there was no detectable oak, which was not expected from barrels that have only been used once so far.  [...]

Our May SDAWS meeting was held at Milagro Farm today.  Jim Hart hosted us and gave us a tour of the vineyards and told us about his recent wine releases.  He is winemaker for Milagro Farm Vineyard & Winery and also at Hart Winery in Temecula.  Milagro Farm Vineyard & Winery is in the Ramona [...]

Although I *said* I would give the syrah a few more weeks to finish MLF, it really doesn’t seem realistic that it would get going if malic acid levels have not dropped at all after 4 weeks.  I might actually be risking something bad happening in the wine in the meantime.  I posted this problem [...]

It’s been about 4 weeks since I added fresh malolactic bacteria to the syrah to try to get MLF going again.  I’ve been stirring it once or twice a week and keeping a heat pad on it overnight and in the cool parts of the daytime to keep the temperature between 70 – 80∘F.  I [...]

I checked in on the wines in the shower to make sure the airlocks weren’t contaminated or dried out, and saw another white layer on our 6-gallon carboy of merlot.  This was the first time I saw this white layer in this container, I found it previously on a smaller bottle of this merlot as [...]

I went out to help my friend Ray put posts in for his new vineyard at Highland Valley.  It was a great day, although we had Santa Ana winds.  That means nice warm, clear weather, and it also means strong gusts of wind up to 35 mph.  There were a few times we had to [...]