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Hi All, Well 3 months has gone by since the 1st rack of my Merlot. When the 1st rack was done I had 2 gallons of free run juice and 2 1/4 gallons of pressed juice. The ph at the time of racking was a dismal 2.99 (this is merlot and should be up near touching 4) and the taste was tart. Well...

Hi All, Question for those who know. I read (everywhere, that the 1st rack is done 1-2 days after the crush (red grapes)). I enclosed a picture of my carboys and you can distinctly see the separation of color, and the gross lees on the bottom. All the research Im seeing says rack once and then...

Hi All, Well this past week, I learned that Merlot is not the grape to be growing in Western Washington where I live as the season is too short and it doesn't get warm enough long enough. Typically Merlot needs at least 3 more weeks of good warm temperatures with our rain. But I also learned...

Hi All, Before I divulge too much embarrassing information regarding my innocent ignorance… I have a statement and a question. I need to remove four 3 year old vines. I attempted one… this isn’t so hard the whole thing was moving earth and then stopped solid. It has two 3/4” thick roots that...

Hi All, Wow what a day. Harvested the vinyard (7 vines 😆) that amounted to about 55lbs of grapes and ended up with a tad over 6 gallons of must which should turn into about 3.9 gallons of juice (give or take). The crushing and de-stemming went well (really see the need for a crusher 😁). As I...

Hi All, I'm about a week (or so) away from harvest. We have had a ton of rain lately and when I went out today to check on things found this. It's only on 2 clusters. The 3rd picture is a cluster which represents about all others on all the vines. What do you think?

Hi All, I want to be as ready as I can for the testing and correction of the must. I have artaric acid for upping the acidity and lowering the ph, but I do no have calcium or potassium carbonate to raise the ph (if needed). The hit results for the later on Amazon are staggering. What type of...

Hi All, I don't want to assume anything with the process. I have a checklist from MoreWine that suggests you check for sugar, make that correction and then test the ph and acidity. Is that correct? Dave

Hi All, As you may know, I’m a newbie in the grape growing and wine making hobby. I also only have 9 vines, but this year 8 of those vines produced like you see in the movies. 😀 Last year our September and October here in Western Washington were sunny and warm and really unbelievable. It rained...

Good Morning All, As I sit here studying my 2 favorite references for home winemaking, neither of them mention anything about letting the must sit for any length of time after adding SO2 before moving on to testing. They go right into discussion about testing and adjusting. I would think there...

Hi All, As I prepare for my first real year of attempting to make wine from my own Merlot grapes, I just opened a bottle of Merlot from my favorite commercial winery and thought “what is the ph, the acidity and the brix". Has anyone taken these measurements from a store bought wine? Couldn’t...

Hi All, Found Star-San at Amazon for a good price… cannot ship to my address. I found Star-san at other sites with shipping that costs more than the product! 😡 Any good substitute for it to use as the sterilizing solution? Dave

Hi All, The hope this year is I will have enough must after crushing to be able to use a 5 gallon bucket (may only be a couple gallons of must... I don't know how to judge that based on the number of clusters I have on the vines. I've seen folks just put a towel over the top and have also seen...

Hi All, If the answer is yes, I probably should have done it long ago. At this stage of the game would it benefit to cut them off? They’ve grown out of the main cluster arm from the vine. Someone tell me what this is called, I’ve read a name but it eludes me.

Good Morning Everyone, Last year I bought my first wine thief… a skinny little glass thing. It takes forever to get enough juice to fill a cylinder for the hydrometer. The only larger thief I seem to find is the 3 piece plastic thing that everyone says “don’t bother with, it leaks”. In some of...

What’s your favorite wine related movie?

Hi All, There certainly is a lot to learn from this hobby! I’m in the middle of my 4th year growing grapes and my 3rd year attempting to make wine. I really shouldn’t count the first 2 years as I really didn’t have all the equipment nor grape production to amount to anything more than a...

Hi All, A friend brought us a bottle of wine from Eastern Washington from a winery and it had no top on the bottle, just corked. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen this (closest is a screw top). Is there a downside to not shrink wrapping? Dave

Good Day Everyone, We're getting 3 days of cloudy and rain here in Western Washington. I went out this morning to visit the vines and this is what I found. Have you ever seen this... throwing new baby clusters 3/4 the way through the growing season? Dave

Hi All, This post might be intended for all the growers in western Washington. I have a ton of Merlot grapes this year from my back yard vines (see below), but as I review my journal, in 2021 from bud burst to harvest was 159 days, harvested on August 26th. Last year was 135 days and harvest...