Other Best homemade wine

[firstime]

I've made 2 winexpert eclipse 1 selection kit and an enpremiur

They are all new kits made within the past 4 months.

Based on your opinions what do you guys feel makes the best wine at home. Frozen pails. Must in pails. Kits. Or wine grapes.

 

[dralarms]

The absolute beauty of home made wine is if it taste good to you, that's all that matters. That said, I'm not a kit guy, I do buy a bunch of juices from www.homewinery.com and do some fresh fruit, and even do ( don't tell JohnT) welches frozen concentrates.

 

[sour_grapes]

I have only made kits, but it would be hard to argue that "the best wine" is made from anything but fresh grapes. Whether this is worth the equipment investment and work is a question only the winemaker can answer!

 

[Dhaynes]

The question of kit vs frozen vs fresh grapes is a hotly debated topic that frequently resembles a ideological holy war more that a rational debate. You will find bigoted people on both sides who are more interested in putting down people who don't make wine their way than they are in rational discussion.

I think it is really a very complex question with a lot of variables. Is it possible for a highly skilled amateur wine maker to make a better batch of wine from fresh grapes than they would be able to make from a kit? Absolutely. Is it possible that the beginning wine maker or even the averaged experienced amateur wine maker will make a better batch of wine from scratch that they would if they used a good quality kit? Maybe, but I think the odds are against it for a lot of reasons.

1) Access to quality raw materials. Kit manufactures have access to best quality grapes from some of the best vineyards around the world. They also have professional buyers who can travel to the vineyards to inspect the grapes on the vine and after harvest. The grapes you grow in your backyard aren't likely to be of the same quality. It's true you can order grapes or frozen juice from some of these same vineyards but who do you think they are going to give their best grapes to a) you a likely one time buyer of a few grapes or a frozen bucket or b) a major company who buys by the ton year after year?
2) Skill level of the person(s) overseeing the wine chemistry and blending of the raw materials. Kit manufacturers have professional wine experts making the decisions about what goes into the must including the blend of the grape juices, pH, acidity, tannins, yeast nutrients, etc. You have you.
3) Ability to keep experimenting until you get it right. The kit manufacturer will have made the kit probably a hundred times or more experimenting to find the best combination to produce the best results before they offer it for sale. You get one shot to get it right. It is true that the manufacturer may make trade offs that favor consistency over the best possible results with greater risk but the result of their hundred or so attempts is still likely to be better than an amateur's first attempt.
4) Freshness of the ingredients. Obviously fresh grapes are going to have an advantage here over the juice in the kit which may have been in cold storage at the manufacturer for months before the kit was made.

I think the most compelling argument for fresh grapes or frozen juice are more about the satisfaction of making it yourself from scratch than they are about the objective quality of the wine. This seems to be born out by the large number of kit wine that win medals in Winemaker magazine's annual international amateur wine making contest. So, bottom line do what you enjoy the most but don't be hating on people who chose a different approach.




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[firstime]

Thank you guys for your answers. I personally don't care what way someone makes their wine. I want to make my wine all ways. I'll even try making it from welchs. I feel as if I have a few naysayers who are doubting the wine I'm making. So for me I enjoy the process but I'm hoping the wine comes out great and not deer urine. I follow the directions to the T. The juice temp is regulated. So all is going well.

 

[Boatboy24]

You've got some really good kits there, but they are very young. If you have doubters, just don't share with them. If you do, give the wines ample time to mature - at least a year. I'm relatively new to making from grapes (only three batches so far), but I think your best bet for Reds is from grapes. That said, I have a lot of kit reds that are excellent, so I'm not saying you can't make good wine from a kit. White wines are a different story. Without the need to ferment on skins or whole clusters, you can make excellent wines from kits, juice buckets or whole grapes.

 

[firstime]

One thing I would like to do is find someone near me who makes home wine and taste it. Each LHBS I go to doesn't have a bottle that's not old and turned.

 

[cpfan]

One thing I would like to do is find someone near me who makes home wine and taste it. Each LHBS I go to doesn't have a bottle that's not old and turned.

So where do you live??

 

[Rocky]

This subject has been batted about a number of times and, as always, there are some interesting points of view. I am particularly impressed with Dhaynes' comments and agree with them whole-heartedly.

Firstime, one thing I will say to you is that you have chosen some excellent kits and should enjoy very satisfactory results.

I would respectfully have to disagree with my friend Pauls' statement that "it would be hard to argue that 'the best wine' is made from anything but fresh grapes." The accuracy of this statement is highly dependent on the quality of the fresh grapes.

As I have pointed out a number of times times, I have made wine at one time or another from everything (fresh grapes, fresh fruit other than grapes, kits, juice buckets) with the exception of frozen must. Over the years, I have made good and not so good wine from each source. Nothing is a slam dunk and many things can happen along the way.

For me, all things considered, i.e. the quality of the results, the equipment, the expense, the amount of work, the space required, the varieties available, my location, etc., very high quality kits make the most sense. At the same time, I allow that this is "for me" and may not be the same for everyone. To each his (or her) own.

 

[firstime]

I'm in Maryland. Between Annapolis and Baltimore. It weird. Each LHBS all tell me to come and taste the wine but when I get there and taste them they all end up telling me the wine is too old or young. But go ahead and buy another kit. I'm just hoping the kits I've made will not be noticeable. If I have a Blind tasting no one will be able to tell the commercial wine to mine in the $10-$20 range.

 

[ibglowin]

That all depends on the individual palette. You will have some who can tell and others who won't be able to tell. Some kit wines have more "kit taste" than others.

If I have a Blind tasting no one will be able to tell the commercial wine to mine in the $10-$20 range.

 

[Brian55]

I'm in Maryland. Between Annapolis and Baltimore. It weird. Each LHBS all tell me to come and taste the wine but when I get there and taste them they all end up telling me the wine is too old or young. But go ahead and buy another kit. I'm just hoping the kits I've made will not be noticeable. If I have a Blind tasting no one will be able to tell the commercial wine to mine in the $10-$20 range.

Some will, some won't. It depends on the kit, how well it was made, how long it was aged, the level of the commercial competition, and the amount of tasting experience amongst the people at your event. The wife and I can pick out our wines almost every time, because we drink them regularly and know exactly how they taste and smell, plus we decide which of our bottles we're going to enter in the tasting. My brother can usually pick out our wines because he has a pretty good nose and has experienced a lot more of our wine than any of our friends that come to tastings, so he makes it his goal to try and figure out which is ours, and he does get it wrong now and then. The rest of the group typically can't tell whether or not any of the wines in the tasting are ours, until after the wines are revealed. Sometimes we'll opt to enter something from our store bought collection instead of our homemade, just to mess with my brother.. ::

 

[PhilDarby]

What`s great about home wine making, is, you have a very free hand in choosing what you want to make, almost all fruit and vegetable can be fermented, if care is taken, most preservative free carton juices, as well as tinned fruits, vegetables and wine kits.

When I started making wine, I did what most people probably do and made kits, as an easy introduction, with predictable results.

More recently I make random stuff, using fresh fruit or juice concentrate, that's part of the beauty of it, experimenting with flavours.

As someone else has mentioned, if it tastes good to you, then that's all that counts ultimately.

 

[jsiddall]

I would respectfully have to disagree with my friends Pauls' statement that "it would be hard to argue that 'the best wine' is made from anything but fresh grapes." The accuracy of this statement is highly dependent on the quality of the fresh grapes.

I think Paul was simply saying the best wines in the world have been made from grapes, and I fully agree. I don't think he was saying every wine from grapes is better than every kit wine -- though that may also be true for some winemakers.

 

[jas3019]

I'm in Maryland. Between Annapolis and Baltimore. It weird. Each LHBS all tell me to come and taste the wine but when I get there and taste them they all end up telling me the wine is too old or young. But go ahead and buy another kit. I'm just hoping the kits I've made will not be noticeable. If I have a Blind tasting no one will be able to tell the commercial wine to mine in the $10-$20 range.

The nice thing about where you are is there are several options to choose from. MD Home Brew and Annapolis Home Brew are pretty good but I've found better prices and better selection online. They're nice in a pinch though.

There's also Harford Winery that gets Chilean, Californian, and Italian juice and grapes (no Italian grapes though) so it'd be easy for you to try for yourself. Several members buy from them and they're pretty easy to deal with. You could easily start with a white juice bucket and see how that compares for you. I did this before I tried any kits, actually.

 

[sour_grapes]

I would respectfully have to disagree with my friend Pauls' statement that "it would be hard to argue that 'the best wine' is made from anything but fresh grapes." The accuracy of this statement is highly dependent on the quality of the fresh grapes.

I think Paul was simply saying the best wines in the world have been made from grapes, and I fully agree. I don't think he was saying every wine from grapes is better than every kit wine -- though that may also be true for some winemakers.

You are both right!

Jsiddall is correct: that is what I was thinking about. After all, if, say, juice made the best red wine, all winemakers would do that, right?

However, Rocky's comments add a significant insight. First of all, the context of the OPs question was "the best wine at home." So that is really what I should have been addressing. And the ability to make good wine AT HOME depends on a lot of variables.

It's all good!

 

[Rocky]

Exactly, Paul. I was responding to the IP's question in the context of homemade wine. I will certainly concede that the best bottle of wine in the World (or the best few million bottles of wine in the World, for that matter, if there were a way to measure and rank them) will have been made from grapes. I will also concede that the best bottle of homemade wine in the World (or the best few thousand) will have been made from grapes. However, I will maintain that somewhere in that ranking of homemade wine will be an excellent bottle from a kit wine.

My other point was that fresh grapes do not guarantee one a great or even a good wine. It largely depends on the grapes and the process. My experience with very high quality kits, in which category I include kits like WinExpert Eclipse, Cellar Craft/Kenridge Showcase and RJS En Primeur and Winery Series, among others, is that many more times than not they give me a very nice wine which I like, my family likes and my friends like. For me, that is my definition of a 'great wine.'

 

[firstime]

Thanks again guys for your answers. I'm excited to try the kits I've made in a year or 2. The summer I'll try to make wine from grapes hopefully, and until the maybe dragon blood wine.

I see that the grapes in the en primeur kit are dried and the grapes from eclipse are moist and halved. I personally prefer the eclipse but not sure if it matters. I have been squeezing the grapes each day the pushing the grapes under. Any opinions.

 

[Bergmann]

Accounting that the general description of mead is "Honey Wine, I feel by far the best wine is honey wine. Melomels come in second, and wines made from fresh grapes, or juiced third. Pyments are lovely also.

 

[terroirdejeroir]

I would echo the sentiment that it depends on the quality of fruit/grape you can get. For most folks a high end kit will be better than anything they can make from scratch. I started with kits, progressed to fruit wine, and now do about a 50% split of high-end kits and wine from grapes. My 2013 Norton has turned out very well, but the real test will be the grapes from Lodi that are showing a lot of promise.

Of course, I still do Blackberry and Peach and love them both.