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Anyone having anything special for National Wine Day? I opened up a 2013 Tempranillo Reserva I've had in the rack for a while. The cork came out in pieces but the wine seems none the worse for wear.

I've had this cellaring guide from WineFolly for a while now. What's the consensus - is this applicable for kit wines (specifically, reds) stored under good, temperature-controlled conditions?

As someone who leans towards the introversion side of the scale on the Myers-Briggs profile, I tend to engage in a fair amount of ruminating and conjecture - sometimes more than I probably should. One item that's been running around my brain of late concerns the subject of a wine's aging...

It looks like of the 3 red kits, only one of them comes with skins (the Barbaresco). I wonder why they continue to NOT include skins in these pricier "premium" releases.... https://labelpeelers.com/wine-kits/

So I just finished a first stab at SP (I'm calling it Lemon Sunshine), made pretty much according to the original directions. A few thoughts... 1) Fermentation went fine with just sprinkling the EC-1118 on top and then stirring it in about 12 hours later, then stirring well a couple of times a...

This story came up in a round-about way on my social media feed... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-08/bordeaux-17-pricing-causes-backlog-of-wine-stocks-liv-ex-says

I planted some grape vines in the spring of 2016. Unfortunately, that was before I got into winemaking, and I simply chose a couple of varieties from the Stark Brothers catalog. I ended up getting 2 concord and 2 canadice. I know neither one is really considered great for wine, and I'm not sure...

I have a room in an unheated, non-air-conditioned basement where my carboys sit to do a bit of aging. Because of limited space, I'm only aging in the carboys for around 3 months before bottling. During the cold of winter, this room hovered in the upper 50s to lower 60s. With the abnormally warm...

I just degassed and started clarifying a tweaked Fontana Malbec after two months of bulk aging (part of my goal to get some "early drinkers" in order to give some better kits more time), and when tasting, it was noticeably tart - significantly more tart than it was when it went from secondary to...

All of my carboys (and all of my physical bulk aging space) is currently occupied, but I'm thinking ahead to future batches. I'm toying with the idea of using a 49 oz. can of Vintner's Harvest plum puree (which is 100% unsweetened fruit) with a 16L Selection red kit, with the idea that the...

...Premier Rouge - pitched into a WE Trinity Red - won the battle, I discovered upon checking in on the progress this morning. Methinks I should have used the 10-gallon white trash can I used for my initial elderberry-cherry batch at the end of 2017. And the next time I use Premier Rouge, I...

Scenario: Let's say I racked my WE Nebbiolo kit into a carboy (along with 1/4 tsp K-meta) after secondary fermentation for a planned 3 months of bulk aging before bottling. But then some other need came up for that carboy (a friend asks me to make some wine for his wedding, or I see a great...

I just started my LE17 Petit Ruby Cabernet earlier today in my 7.9 gallon brew bucket, and now I'm wondering... I have a pack of dry GenuWine grape skins from a Chilean Malbec kit that got damaged and started leaking during shipping a few weeks ago. I know that for kits with such skins, they're...

In the spirit of experimentation, I ordered a variety box of these from Amazon. They're raisins made from actual wine grapes, with the seeds still inside, and without any other preservatives. The "best before" date is Apr/May 2019, so I have plenty of time to play. wineraisins by kyle5434...

So, being an engineer by training, and still fairly new to the hobby, I thought I'd try a relatively low cost, controlled experiment to see how different yeasts might render frozen concord concentrate. To that end, I made up (4) 1-gallon batches, all with the same ingredients expect for the the...

I thought I'd experiment with some fruit wines, so I picked up some of the Vintner's Harvest concentrates and purees - apricot, plum, and peach. My basic plan for a 3-gallon batch is as follows: 1 - 96 oz. can apricot concentrate 1 - 49 oz. can apricot puree 1-2 cans of frozen white gape...

I'm sort of thinking ahead here... Right now, as a 54-year-old of average strength, I can generally manage lifting/moving a 6-gallon glass carboy of wine across a room or from room to room. But as the effects of age inevitably make their presence known, I'm thinking I should have a plan for...

I've got a walkout basement. There are no HVAC vents down there, but it doesn't suffer wild temperature swings. In the room where I'm planning to bulk age, the temps tend to hover in the upper 50s in the dead of winter and the mid- upper-70s in the heat of summer, so I'm not overly concerned in...

Today I racked my first ever batch of wine off its secondary. It's an elderberry-cherry. I had 10.7 lbs. of frozen and de-stemmed elderberries off the bushes I planted 3 years ago (harvested in September). I probably should have just done a 3-gallon batch with that, but I decided to use some...

I ordered the RJS Cru International Cilean Malbec kit last week. Looking at the tracking, it looks like it made it to my regional UPS delivery hub on Saturday (12/30/17), and the latest tracking status says "Loaded on Delivery Vehicle" on 12/30. It's scheduled for delivery tomorrow (1/2/18)...