It’s that time again for the San Diego County Fair Homemade Wine contest Awards! I submitted 3 wines this year: 2009 “Cabrillo Bridge” Petite Sirah, which won a silver medal (should have been a gold!), 2008 Winexpert Limited Edition Carmenere/Cabernet blend, which won a bronze medal, and 2011 Winexpert Symphony, which won a silver medal. […]
Tag archive: wine kit
We had a great time at the Winemaker Magazine conference in Santa Barbara last year in 2011, I was sorry to miss it this year. But, the Finger Lakes are not exactly driving distance from San Diego! I did get some great news today — I won a Gold Medal for my 2011 Cellar Craft […]
The oak trials were bottled about 2 months ago now, and I’m ready to do a tasting of the panel. My husband has agreed to help me out, since there are 7 different wines to taste. First is the unoaked Winexpert Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay: dry, but not crisp, with subtle hints of apple and pear. […]
I pulled out another bottle of my ‘La Jolla Caves’ Winexpert Crushendo “Montagnac Vieux Chateau d’Oc” red rhone blend to see if it is doing anything useful in the cellar. So far, this is one wine kit that has disappointed me all along, and I just don’t think this wine is going to come around. […]
It is finally time to bottle the oak trials today! I am also bottling the 2009 Petite Sirah that I did egg white fining on, so I can compare it to the unfined wine side-by-side. The chardonnays all cleared out really nicely, which is great so I can bottle directly from the individual jugs — […]
The oak trials continue! All wines were stabilized and cleared about a week ago. Today I’m racking them all, and the unoaked wine kit will be split into 1-gallon batches. I had just under 6 full gallons after racking, so I used the little bit left over to top the pre-fermentation oak batches. I realize […]
I was inspired by Tim Vandergrift’s Hands-On oak trials at the Winemaker Magazine Conference in Santa Barbara to set up my own set of oak trials. I decided to just get a basic chardonnay kit, the Winexpert Vintners’ Reserve Chardonnay. This kit does come with a small pack of oak, but I pulled it out. […]
The awards ceremony for the San Diego County Fair Homemade Wine Competition was yesterday. I couldn’t make it because I had to run the shop, but my hubby went to enjoy the fun and bring home my awards. I submitted 3 wines, and they all won medals: the 2010 Winexpert limited edition Pacifica White won […]
We recently attended the Winemaker Magazine conference in Santa Barbara, California. It was a two-day conference loaded with seminars covering all aspects of winemaking — wine chemistry, wine kits, growing grapes, fermentation. We learned a lot of great information to add to our arsenal of winemaking techniques and met several home winemakers from around North […]
I bottled the Cellar Craft limited edition ‘Chateau du Pays‘ today. I intended to bulk age this wine 6 to 8 months, but realized I was a carboy short for upcoming winemaking and didn’t have time to get another one fast enough. As usual, there was one partial bottle left at the end, which went […]