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I was recently given three WE Selection International kits from a local winery because they said they needed to clear some stock. They were the White Merlot, the Italian Amarone, and the Australian Chardonnay. We did the White Merlot first. It's time for bottling and I feel the wine may be...

Hey gang. I'm about to purchase my first fruit press. I'm looking at a 14L press with the lead screw tilt out design with stainless steel basket. I like this one because I plan to do fruit wines as well as grape wines. It looks like it should do the both jobs for me just fine. I can get...

Hey gang, long time no see! I'm sure there's a ton of new faces here since I was last on back in the day. I'll throw up a reintroduction here soon. But first, the meat and potatoes of my question.... I just got lucky and scored the last two Cru Specialty Orange Chocolate Port kits that I...

Greetings board! So, my wife and I bottled our Blueberry Acai Skeeter Pee this past weekend and as we have done with several batches prior we used our Buon Vino Automatic Gravity Filler. It has been a dream to use up until this weekend. It started failing us in regards to its shutoff as...

So, I've been off the reservation for awhile, but things are returning back to normal in Maestro world. 2011 is looking to be a great year and I am excited to be back into some winemaking. My wife and I have several kits going right now, with plenty more to do through the year. We are hoping...

Ok, so we fermented our cherry wine that we made from fresh bing cherries. We used the recipe from the purple recipe book, Winemakers Recipe Handbook, which I understand many of you have. I racked once more into a clean carboy to further age it and allow it to clear. I tasted it and it had...

Hi gang! I've been crazy busy at work and have been away from the interwebz for quite some time for anything not work related. I've finally got a little time to post up here some new labels I made for our latest batches that have finished in the last month or two. First: Lemon Wine...

That is all. Discuss.

We are getting ready to start a cherry wine and the recipe we are using calls for a little bit of grape concentrate be added to the mix. What grape concentrate do you think this is? Just frozen concentrate from the grocery store or the expensive wine grape concentrate? Just wonderin' to be...

So my wife and I bottled our RJ Peach Chardonnay last night. It turned out beautifully and tastes great. It has a beautiful light peach color (go figure) to it. As promised earlier this month here is the label I made for it. Hope I don't offend anyone too much with this one. ;)

Ok, started our first batch of SP this week and followed the recipe pretty much to the letter with the small exception of adding about a pound more sugar. We used the slurry from our RJ Peach Chardonnay. After about a day the fermentation action was rockin'! It's been fermenting good now for...

So this is our first label. It has a story behind it and the interesting name. A friend said that the wine had a blood like look to it due to its deep red color. Since it's our first ever batch we called it our virgin batch. The two came together and the name Virgin Blood was born. I enjoy...

Ok, so we are into our second batch of kit wine now. After we rack it we plan to start a batch of Skeeter Pee from the lees. After that we plan to try some of the recipes from here to make wines from fruit, not from the kits. I know we don't have everything we need so I am asking for a little...

When we bought our winemaking equipment kit the store owner included several little packets of C-Brite with it. He told us that we just needed to use the C-Brite to cleanse and sanitize everything and then use the C-Brite solution to rinse our bottles prior to bottling. Now I am reading a lot...

Made a pan-seared sirloin with a red wine sance. My wife made basil/garlic mashed potatoes to go along with it. I rubbed the sirloin down with a crushed peppercorn/allspice combo and made the red wine sauce with shallots and a tasty zinfandel. It all turned out so very nice. Then, poured...

Since starting into winemaking I have become really interested in designing my own labels from scratch. While I know I can buy prepacked labels with artwork already on them I feel that it takes away from the originallity of the whole wine package. I mean, if I am going to call it my wine then...

My wife and I started our first ever batch of wine almost a month ago. We've been following the instructions almost to the "T" save for the exception that we added more sugar to bump the abv up to 12.5%. We are nearing bottling at the end of this week. The wine looks beautiful so far. Deep...

Greetings and salutations to you all! I am Joe from Atlanta, GA. I am 32 and fairly new to the winemaking gig. I am looking forward to learning and growing in it and getting to know you all as I go along. My wife and I are nearing the bottling stage of our first ever vintage and are...