What's Your Winemaking Story?

I'm new to the site and the hobby, so the story isn't interesting, but nevertheless here it is:

I'm an avid cigar enthusiast. For around 15 years it's been my largest hobby, occupying the majority of both my time and money. I love to research all that goes into it, from growing to rolling. I've traveled the world in support of that hobby to learn more.

But ultimately, the research and knowledge is as far as it gets. It's a bridge too far to grow your own tobacco, harvest, blend it and roll it. It just won't work out well. It's not something that can be done on the personal scale. Enter in brewing. I say brewing because my interest initially started with beer, however, I could not go down that road because I recently stopped drinking beer as it was just awful on my stomach.

One day I was out buying wine for my girlfriend and I, as we love to go through multiple bottles per evening when the weather is right. I text her a picture of about 12 bottles and jokingly said "we need to start making our own wine". She replied with "let's give it a go!". So here I am. I bought a pretty hefty starter kit and dove into the world of wine making. There's many similarities in this hobby as my cigar hobby, but what I really like about this one is that I can get my hands in it. It adds a whole new perspective on it.

I am so new that I don't currently have any finished batches, but I have a Pinot Noir that is now in the bulk aging phase (6 gal), another Pinot Noir about to be racked to secondary, and a Malbec on deck. My plan is to have something going to bottle every 3 months. My first batch will be young at 3 months age, 2nd a bit more at 6 months age, 3rd batch will sit 9 months, and 4th will go 12 months.

So without a finished batch, I'm sitting with 5 carboys on hand and plans to get my production out to 12 months aging....we'll see how it works out.

I remember that story johnt and as I stated before many times please repeat it,it would be go for the winemaker's to help understand heritage stories.

My wife & I are empty nesters. We woke up one day and realized that we didn't have very many common interest anymore so we started looking for something we could enjoy doing together. We were interested in making wine but the nearest shop where you could get lessons and ferment a kit at their facility was 90 miles away.

One day I got a Living Social promo for a wine starter kit from Midwest Supply. We had an anniversary coming up so I ordered it and had it shipped to my brothers. I snuck the giant heavy box with all the equipment and a WE VR juice kit in the house and wrapped it. On the morning of our anniversary I drug it into the bedroom and presented it to her. I have a bit of a reputation as a prankster so she was sure this giant present was a joke of some kind. It didn't help when she opened the box and the first thing she pulled out was the plastic carboy. She had that look on her face like "What is this fool doing giving me a giant empty water bottle?" It just got worse as she proceeded to pull out plastic tubing, a giant spoon, a racking cane and then a big plastic bucket. It wasn't until she saw the juice kit in the bottom that she finally figured out it wasn't a joke. That was about 5 years ago. We've been going full bore ever since.

At first we had to clean and sanitize everything in the bathroom because the bath tube was the only thing big enough to wash a Cabot. Of course the carboy got wet and began to multiply. Before long we had like eighteen 6gal Better Bottles, two 5gal and five 3gal as well as ten 5 gal glass carboys that we got a deal on from another wine maker but almost never use.

About 2 years ago we decided to modify a section of the garage to make a wine making area. We put in a deep plastic laundry room sink with a hand sprayer and the biggest vent hood we could find to exhaust out the Kmeta fumes. The sink was cheap. There was a half bath about 10 feet away with a crawl space so getting it hooked up wasn't bad. The most expensive part was the vent hood and the large duct work needed to handle the volume of air plus having to rip open the ceiling to run the vent to an outside wall. But, it was worth every penny. We bought an inexpensive workbench that we caught on sale at Harbor Freight for like $79. We put up some peg board and a few little other things. It has made an amazing difference. No more lugging dirty carboys up two flights of stairs, breaking your back trying to wash them out in the bath tub or being overcome with fumes while sanitizing. The next project will be walling off part of the garage for a cold room but for now we are stashing bottles everywhere we can. We have around 300 bottles put up. We have to be careful opening closets and cabinets for fear of being buried under an avalanche of bottles.

At first we did mostly VR and Island Mist kits and build up our wine supply. Now we do mostly Eclipse and Selection kits with an occasional IM or VR kit to replenish some of our favorites. Right now we have 10 batches that have been bulk aging between 9-15 months. Just racked and sulfited 7 Eclipse kits in preparation for bottling including a Nebiollo, Shiraz, Pinot Noir, Zin, Cab Sav, Pinot Gris and a Chardonnay. Also have a VR Cab Sav, a Selection Luna Biancia and a batch of Dragons Blood to get ready to bottle.

About two years ago I volunteered to help run The Winemakers Academy website and FaceBook users group. I am now the co-moderator for both.

We probably give away about as much wine as we drink which seems to make us very popular with family and friends.

I grew up with winemaking as a norm in a lot of family members homes. And in a neighborhood in Philadelphia where on 1 block there were 4 different homes of family within shouting distance of each other. About mid 80's.
These old school Italians were 1st generation and one was off the boat. (Great grandparents). We couldn't be any more stereotypical. All got together for a big Spaghetti n meatball dinner every Sunday. Kids runnin around getting yelled at in Italian by grandma (no clue what she was saying). Slapped with wooden spoon for dipping finger into sauce that was on stovetop all day long. Women in the kitchen.
Behind the houses was the family's concrete business' yard with the big machines. We lived above the garages built into an apartment. I could go on and on.
I don't remember my great grandfather, but I remember his wine cellar with 2 big oak barrels, a hand crank big ol' crusher, and a GIANT tub sink with a spigot. I remember this wine room being the most impressive. All year smelling of fermenting must, even if it was all empty.
A few years they even involved all us kids in the process. And had us stomping away. Good times.
Cut to 10-20 years later, as a teenager and into my 20's I was always helping my father with his annual batch. With the older family mostly gone I think he felt the need to keep the wine going.
Now that he is getting older he has gradually scaled down to only 5 gallons a year. With none of my other 3 brothers getting into winemaking, I took it upon myself to not just help him with his batches but now make my own.
We get our juice every September from the same place the old guys used to go to way back when. Procaccio Brothers in south Philly near the stadiums. It's a produce supplier all year, and they do the grape juice in season as well as limited equipment. This place was all I knew at first. Used Their yeast. Their equipment. Their direction. And didn't think twice.
Helping him all those years only got me so far. As a kid I never bothered to ask "why" about anything. As an adult making wine on my own I finally started asking my dad why he did this. And why he does that. And he didn't know. He didn't care. He just liked doing it. But he never got too deep into it.
After a few years of making wine on my own without help I just couldn't deal with his way anymore. Just blindly doing it a certain way. If Everything goes perfect then great. If you have to troubleshoot your screwed. And that's what happened. I had a batch with bad bacteria and had no idea how to save it, or even if I could save it. And down the rabbit hole of researching I went. Which eventually led me to here. Which then led me to kits as well. Couldn't be happier I am Still brought back to that time of my life every time I walk down to the basement and smell that familiar smell of primaries cookin away.
AJ

@Ajmassa5983: I used to have that same pic as my avatar. Nice choice. I enjoyed reading about your winemaking journey.

AJ, I've looked at Procaccio Brothers' website every Fall and drool. Only problem is that it is a 5 hour trip up and back. My Grandpa/ma used to live on Chestnut street (where my Dad was born) though they hailed from Northcentral PA originally. Nice you live so close. Use those kits to learn how to use that nice juice and grapes they sell, then go get a small batch. Next year get a bigger batch. Eventually you can follow the truck and get what falls off the back like @JohnT . Your a special guy to honor the family tradition, Kudos to you and your family!

I'm not sure where their juice would fall on the high/low quality scale. My impression was that they were pretty legit. And not too expensive either.
I did it backwards. Made juice batches. Some good. Some not as good. Then later decided to fully commit to this and absorb as much info as possible. And will get this juice better every year I hope with practice in between seasons with kits now.
5 hours is just a tad over the travel time threshold for just one stop. Suggestion? Make a weekend out of it. Take off work Friday. Plan something fun. Catch a ballgame with the kids Saturday. Citizens bank park is very kid friendly. (I suggest a Phils game w/ kids. Def not Eagles for kids) Then wake up Sunday, grab your juice, and then be home by dinnertime.
I used to LOVE going there as a kid. (Unlike going to 9th st Italian market. Ya know. The vendor street where Rocky ran. With random metal trash can fires goin. I hated how bad it smelled!) they have a few tables set up to taste different wines made from the year before. With some bread, pepperoni, cheese, etc... haven't changed their setup in my lifetime (aside from moving up the street to a bigger building) and I prefer it that way. Do it!

My father taught me. He came from southern Italy (Calabria) in 1953 at the age of 17 via trans-Atlantic ship. He made wine off and on. My folks were in the food catering business here in Canada, so some years we just had lots of commercial wine hanging around and didn't make it.

When he arrived in Canada he made wine with his other Italian buddies in a cellar of a triplex apartment they rented! Their Jewish landlord was apprehensive at first but trusted them enough! I think in those days it was very rare for people to make wine at home. Anyhow there were Italian grapes vendors bringing grapes in from California and they'd buy in from local corner grocery stores!

Fast-forward to today, he's since long retired and has been making it consistently for a couple of decades now. We bought more equipment over the years together and it has become a September tradition.. Not always the best wine - he's old school and keeps his wine-making very simple - no adjustments, wild yeast and about the only thing he's every added is a packet of So2!

I've since taken it to "another level" and have implemented more techniques, additives and adjustments.. although not sure if it is any better.. just different!

We still do it together and at 80 years old, he has taken on some of my more "modern" approaches! We're now testing his wine for PH, TA and So2.

I love hearing his stories about his childhood wine making. His dad would use the same huge oak barrel year after year. The washing technique was a hoot- he and his older brothers would take the barrel down to the beach (they lived along the Ionian seacoast not far from Sicily) and they'd pour sea water into the barrel and throw in a large chain and they'd roll it and shake it together. The salt water would "disinfect" and the chain exposed new wood!

Good times... Salute!!

Siwash, seems like many similarities in our stories. I don't know about you, but seeing how the old timers did it and how non-technical they were about many different things really gives me a better perspective in how I approach winemaking as a whole.
Their finished product was always good, and I've never seen a batch ruined. Sometimes I have to catch myself from getting hung-up on specific details and remember that all these things I worry about that they didn't are not going to make-or-break my batch. Just slightly alter it. Enjoyed your story.
Saluté

We has planted a few grape vines many years ago. My wife did make grape jelly from the grapes for years but finally got tired of that. So we started trying to make wine. The grapes we have are nothing fancy probably concord or a variety like that that is very cold hardy.
We have also planted some cherry trees which have been rather fruitful. They are pie cherries so the the wine from these trees is rather tart but have a nice cherry flavor.

We get around 4-5 gallons of juice from the grapes, and when I make the cherry wine we make 5 gallon batches as well.

Don't have a nice fancy setup like some of the others on this forum. Just primary fermenting buckets, carboys for long term aging and storage. Only have a hydrometer at this point, really want to get a good meter for pH, TA, SO and all that good stuff so I can improve the final product. I would say one good investment has been the floor stand corking machine for when I bottle. Makes it so much easier and quicker than the old hand model.

Still find it fun to take the fruit and make something decent to drink. Have done a fair number of kits, and find the white kits go over much better than the Red kits. I think the Red kits turn out much better with the tweeks that many of the wine makers here are doing. I have to start trying more tweeks and see if the final product improves.

I started in 1988. My daughter was born, my wife was still in school, we had just spent our entire paltry life savings on a house and were trying to furnish it. After all expenses, we had very little left over to support our wine habit. I considered a life of crime, but decided to pinch enough pennies to buy some second hand equipment and a cheap wine kit. It was good and the rest is history. I'm now financially secure enough to buy whatever wine I want, but still make almost all of what I drink. I mostly make eclipse kits and juice buckets, but sometimes experiment. I have no idea how many 6 gallon batches I've made, but its definitely in the hundreds. I launched 16 kits and 5 buckets in 2016. It was a busy year.

Mine is kinda strange. Became a "home distiller" and that was my passion for many years. Then got into beer making. A good friend was a winemaker and got me into the hobby. Now I exclusively make wine.

We bought a house in 2012 that had around 30 muscat vines in the back yard. The first year i have all the grapes to a friend who made wine from it, he got half, we got half.
The next 2 years I didn't do anything with them. Some time around then my wife bought me a 1 gallon brew your own beer kit which turned out well, but I didn't do anything else. With a 3 and 1yr old at home i was plenty busy.
My wife's extended family are all grape growers here in Niagara region, so I was exposed to the idea and had access to some equipment.
In 2015 i decided to try making my own. I got lots of carboys and other equipment on Kijiji (think craigslist), borrowed a press from a friend, and got to it. I also bought a Riesling juice bucket that year from a local farmer.
Then one of the relatives with all the grape fields asked me if I'd make some wine for him from his grapes, this is a very sweet Dornfelder he makes for his mom. He was too busy that year. So I made it too.
Got about 90 bottles of the Muscat, 24 Riesling, and 140 bottles of the Dornfelder (i kept 4 cases of that).

All of those wines turned out OK, so in 2016 I made it again. Less yield from the Muscat, only like 24 bottles. For the Dornfelder though, I wanted to make the portion I kept for myself as a normal dry red, so I did that, it was my first red wine.

2017 I again did Muscat since we have the grapes and love the flavour, but got into fruit wines. We got a bunch of free peaches so made peach wine, made a dragons blood variant, cherry wine. Instead of the Dornfelder I was given some Cab Sauv, so did that. Also got some free coronation grapes we mostly made jams with, but made some wine with that too. I also bought a bucket of Kerner juice, trying that out.
I've made a couple apple ciders along the way too, my wife loves those.

For 2018 looking forward to even more variety. There are some wild Mulberry trees in the area I'd like to pick from, and I'd like to try a mead too. I'd love to try distilling at some point too, as I've developed a taste for whiskey, but currently thats a no-go here.

Our cellar in the basement had some benches, the guy that owned the house before me apparently made wine too judging by all the staining. So that helped me get going too. I've since upgraded the cellar. Half the cellar is for wine making, the other half is for all the canned jams/salsas/fruits and the like my wife and I make each year. We have a large (for the city) vegetable garden which keeps us busy in the summer.

My winemaking story began when my dad passed, went to his funeral and my brother was making "wine", brought a little back with me but couldn't drink it, just over a year later my mom passed so had to go back home and my brother was still making his wine. Convinced me to try it and it was better but not by much.

Well you know how brothers are, I told my wife I bet I could make better wine than him and I got started reading, learning and buying stuff. Well my brother has said my wine is better than his and I helped him improve his stuff.

dralarms said:

Well you know how brothers are, I told my wife I bet I could make better wine than him and I got started reading, learning and buying stuff. Well my brother has said my wine is better than his and I helped him improve his stuff.

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I like that story! I can just picture it! (I do have several brothers....)

Thanks for the link to LuvaBella. Will definitely be making a trip from Steubenville to Youngstown this year!

Joe

winojoe said:

What is your winemaking story?
...read below

When and how did you get involved in the hobby?
I started making both wine and beer in January of 2002. Started with wine kits, and then quickly graduated to Fresh Grape Juice in the Fall of 2002. Being from Detroit area, I searched for local fresh grape juice. Not being able to find any, I set my sights on Canada and found a place called Erie Shore Vineyards. I was only a 20 minute drive after crossing the Ambassador Bridge. I bought 5 gallon buckets of freshly-pressed Baco Noir, Vidal and Riesling. They turned out great. Especially the Baco Noir, which was like drinking a meal. It was very bold. So, I went back for more the following season (2003). The price per bucket went up, but I bought the juice anyway. I went back there the next season (2004) and was really surprised that the price went up significantly. Five buckets cost me $300+. That was when I decided to continue my search in the U.S.A.

I found a place in Detroit called California Wine Grapes Company, and bought a bucket of juice from them. They were not friendly people. Actually, rather nasty to the customers. Guess that comes with being the only place in town to purchase buckets of grape juice. Because of this, I continued my search to find another place.

It is now the fall of 2005, and I found a place near Youngstown, Ohio called Luva Bella Juice Company. It was 4 hours away. After talking to a bunch of guys in my homebrewing club (I joined a brewing club in 2002, called The Pontiac Brew Tribe), I took the trip to get 20 buckets. We split the cost of fuel amongst the 20 buckets. I did this for the Spring (Chilean Juice) and Fall (California and Italian Juice) for the next couple years. The owner of the place, Frank, kept telling me he needed someone to start a business in Michigan selling his juice. In 2007, my wife and I decided to give it a try. So, we created a company (Macomb Vintner Supply LLC) and started taking orders that Fall. We sold exactly 300 buckets of grape juice out of my garage. The business rapidly expanded. Two years later, in the Fall of 2009, we had to find somewhere else since the garage could not handle the quantities, and the subdivision rules "forbid" running a business out of the house. I cut a deal with a friend who had a building and paid him to use it on a few certain weekends of the year. He went out of business in 2012, so I had to get my own building. We are now up to 5+ truck loads of grape juice each year selling both buckets and drums. This includes both Spring and Fall. Customers are home winemakers, wineries, meaderies and breweries.

What was your first setup like and what is your current setup like?
First set-up was as basic as one could get.
Current set-up is more sophisticated (I am an electrical/computer engineer by trade). It includes enolmatic bottle filler, pneumatic corker (modified italian floor corker), stainless VV tank, etc. Not much to really automate with wine, but you should see the automation on the beer brewing set-up.

How many batches have you done?
I lost count.

Where has the hobby taken you?
My wife and I are opening a winery. It is located in Sterling Heights, Michigan (a northern burb of Detroit). Name of the winery is: Buon Amici Winery, and should be fully operational by April 2017


I believe the achievements made in my life are by the grace of God, and treating the customers with the respect they deserve.

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I started about 30 yrs. ago and made fruit wines from any fruit I could obtain for free or almost free! I did 5 gal. batches of pear, grape, and a couple of other fruit wines I cannot remember now. Everyone agreed that the pear was the best. Fast forward to last year when I retired and hadn't done any winemaking since those earlier years. I tried one of the kit wines in 6 gal. last fall valpolicella type and just bottled it recently. Will need to age it a while I think. I can't wait to try my next batch. Will be something along the lines of DragonBlood, something we can drink sooner rather than later. I will also try a source for fresh wine juice I just found on here that isn't too far away from home.

My hubby kept trying to talk me into making wine, but I didn't want to because I didn't want 30 bottles or whatever of one flavor. He's a brewer himself.

But, one day, I attended a Canine Cancer 5K with my youngest sheepdog, his predecessor having passed away from osteosarcoma, and they had a silent auction going on. In it was a little starter kit. Hubby bid on it, and won. We bastardized the crap out of that kit, having no idea what we were doing, and ultimately dumped that first batch.

Now I make whatever suits my fancy, generally in 1 gallon containers but on occasion I make larger batches, and I call my wines "Pandemonium Wines" because my youngest sheepdog's name is Pandemonium, and it reminds me of my last sheepdog and where I got started in wine making.

I never cared for wine until about 4 years ago when my company won a contract to build a 12,000 sf Tasting Building for an existing Winery. In talking with the Owner and Winemaker I found the process to be very interesting. To add to the education the basement level was to be a cheese making facility so there was milk and cows involved and we were asked to build a Class A dairy barn. The entire experience perculated in my head until 2 Christmas's ago when I asked for a wine making equipment kit. I'm a year and a month into it now and just wish I had started sooner.

I really like to drink...plus, I am a habitual adventurer...so it was only natural

the bench