New to WM but not to Wine. How good can I make it?

[bigpappa6]

Hello all. I live in Iowa and am a huge fan of wine, beer, and spirits. After a recent trip to Napa my wife and I have decided that we'd like to start making wine (I know, stop me if you've heard this one before...).

Here's the million dollar question: how good can it be? I hear people tell me that you can make kit wine just as good as a $70 bottle of Cab but I have a hard time believing that. Given everything that goes into a great wine I just have a hard time believing that a kit can turn out as good as an oak barrel aged Napa Valley Cabernet. I could see it maybe if a person actually started with the right grapes but juice from a kit? I have my doubts. On top of that - and I mean no offense to anyone - but it seems the people who tell me it's so good are also people making a ton of fruit wines like apple, rhubarb, and cherry. Those things taste like wine coolers to me so I have trouble taking those folks seriously when they tell me that I can make quality wine from a kit. I simply have to wonder if we have different definitions of "quality".

Are any of you folks really into the higher class chards or cabs and making similar wines at home? If so, how do you do it? I'm honestly using price as a guideline for what "class" I'm talking about simply because I have definitely noticed an increase in quality along with the increase in price, at least most of the time. Don't get me wrong, I like my average Robert Mondavi $9 Cabernet for an every day wine but if that's all I wanted to drink I'd just go to the store and buy it. I want to make something really special.

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Arne]

I am pretty much in the fruit wine class. Your first trys probably will not be up to the standards you want, but if you keep trying, I am betting you can make wines equal to the best ones you have ever had. Can't help you much with the kits as I have not made any. Good luck with it, Arne.

 

[Boatboy24]

First, welcome.

I'll stay in the "price" world, because that's one thing we can all relate to, even though your $9 Mondavi might cost $12 somewhere else. To give you some background: prior to getting into this habit, er, hobby, I was typically drinking $10-$15 wines for my "everyday" stuff and would shop for bargains. Edna Valley and Copolla were frequent visitors to my wine fridge when on sale. For more special occasions, I'd go $20-30 or so. I started with "low end" kits - the kind you can get for about 40 bucks on Amazon. I'd make them to 5 gallons, and add some oak while aging. The wines were drinkable, but I'm happy to say I only have a handful of bottles left from those early batches. But for $2/bottle, I think I got well more than I paid for. I now make high end kits - most of which come with grape skins or grape packs. I'm tweaking them with a combination of yeast changes, barrel aging, finishing tannins or sometimes all of the above. My cost for these kits is closer to $6/bottle. Still pretty cheap. Once these kits hit 12-18 months of age, I think they compete quite well with commercial wines in the $15 range - some I'd say I'd happily pay $20 for. They are all very good, but not quite the same as commercial wines. I've recently started making wine from fresh grapes and can tell you that even though my first batch (Petit Sirah from Amador, CA) isn't even bottled, it is going to be quite good. It's less than a year old at this point, so I've got some more waiting to do though. And the batch now still fermenting from Chilean Cabernet and Merlot grapes I feel is going to be exceptional.

To summarize, are you going to make a kit wine that competes with a Silver Oak cabernet? No. And if your expectations are there, you'll be disappointed. But you can make some pretty darn nice wines that you'll enjoy, and will likely be proud to serve to friends and family. It is too early for me to tell from my experience, but making from fresh grapes has much more potential and I have high hopes for the fresh grape batches I'm doing. But at this point, I have no intention of ceasing my production of kit wines either. FWIW, white wines from kits appear to be quite good - especially the higher end. I have a Sauvignon Blanc that I made about a year ago that is excellent. I'd put it up against just about every $20 bottle I've had. Again, considering mine only cost about six bucks, I'm very pleased.

Sorry if my reply is a little long-winded. But when asking for opinions on the quality of kit wines, I think it is good to get the responder's perspective. Bottom line: the "quality" of the wines you'll get from kits is subject to personal perception. But I will say that the "value" you get is quite good. As I said of the Sauv Blanc - I made a wine that I feel competes with $20 wines and it only cost me $6. Great value in my book, and I have the pride of knowing I made it.

 

[blackspanish777]

Welcome to the forum! I agree with Jim. It all depends what your expectations are. But I can promise you. You start making your own wine and you will become addicted.

 

[cmason1957]

I am going to echo what Jim above said. If you purchase the low end kits ($40-70), you can make something that approximates a $6-10 bottle of wine. Kits generally make 30 bottles. I always make them to the full 6 gallons and top up with a like wine, now that I have done this a few years, they are my wines, 2-3 bottles maybe that get added, when I first started, they were commercial wines.

As you move up in kit wine cost, the quality of the finished product goes up, right along with it. I have one that is now about 3 years old, from one of the first kits I made, waiting for a special occasion to drink. I had given one away to my son-in-laws parents that I discovered at their house 4 months ago, that my SOL and I enjoyed greatly. It was a very nice full-bodied red with almost no tweaks applied to it at all.

Fresh grapes are wonderful to work with and you can and probably will be able to make something as good as any bottle you have ever had. Last year my wife and I had some friends blind taste 6 Chambourcins, including one that we had made that was 2 years old. They picked ours as being better than the other 5 and they were all commercial wines. We made it blind by my wife putting them in brown bags and I poured, without knowledge of which was what.

The other nice thing about making your own wine is, you like your reds slightly sweeter (or drier) or with more vanilla or spice, guess what you can add those things in a variety of ways.

This is a great hobby that you can be as much fun as you want to make it.

 

[sour_grapes]

Thanks, Jim and cmason (Craig? I have forgotten!) for those explanations. The context helps!

 

[ibglowin]

I could not had said this any better Jim. Excellent response.

First, welcome.

I'll stay in the "price" world, because that's one thing we can all relate to, even though your $9 Mondavi might cost $12 somewhere else. To give you some background: prior to getting into this habit, er, hobby, I was typically drinking $10-$15 wines for my "everyday" stuff and would shop for bargains. Edna Valley and Copolla were frequent visitors to my wine fridge when on sale. For more special occasions, I'd go $20-30 or so. I started with "low end" kits - the kind you can get for about 40 bucks on Amazon. I'd make them to 5 gallons, and add some oak while aging. The wines were drinkable, but I'm happy to say I only have a handful of bottles left from those early batches. But for $2/bottle, I think I got well more than I paid for. I now make high end kits - most of which come with grape skins or grape packs. I'm tweaking them with a combination of yeast changes, barrel aging, finishing tannins or sometimes all of the above. My cost for these kits is closer to $6/bottle. Still pretty cheap. Once these kits hit 12-18 months of age, I think they compete quite well with commercial wines in the $15 range - some I'd say I'd happily pay $20 for. They are all very good, but not quite the same as commercial wines. I've recently started making wine from fresh grapes and can tell you that even though my first batch (Petit Sirah from Amador, CA) isn't even bottled, it is going to be quite good. It's less than a year old at this point, so I've got some more waiting to do though. And the batch now still fermenting from Chilean Cabernet and Merlot grapes I feel is going to be exceptional.

To summarize, are you going to make a kit wine that competes with a Silver Oak cabernet? No. And if your expectations are there, you'll be disappointed. But you can make some pretty darn nice wines that you'll enjoy, and will likely be proud to serve to friends and family. It is too early for me to tell from my experience, but making from fresh grapes has much more potential and I have high hopes for the fresh grape batches I'm doing. But at this point, I have no intention of ceasing my production of kit wines either. FWIW, white wines from kits appear to be quite good - especially the higher end. I have a Sauvignon Blanc that I made about a year ago that is excellent. I'd put it up against just about every $20 bottle I've had. Again, considering mine only cost about six bucks, I'm very pleased.

Sorry if my reply is a little long-winded. But when asking for opinions on the quality of kit wines, I think it is good to get the responder's perspective. Bottom line: the "quality" of the wines you'll get from kits is subject to personal perception. But I will say that the "value" you get is quite good. As I said of the Sauv Blanc - I made a wine that I feel competes with $20 wines and it only cost me $6. Great value in my book, and I have the pride of knowing I made it.

 

[horacegoeskiing]

Hmm, I've been reading this thread with great interest. My wife and I enjoy fairly fruit forward commercial reds where we can taste the blackberry or black cherry and other fruits that you typically find with a good bottle of red around 13-15 dollar range. We’ve only been making red kits for the last 6-7 months so I appreciate that these are definitely classed as young wines. Those that we have sampled such as WE Selection Luna Rossa/Chilean Malbec appear very nice red wines already but as yet no individual fruits coming forward at all yet. We have 4 other wine kits with grape skins (Eclipse/Kenridge Showcase) ageing at the 5 month age range that we won’t touch until there a year old. So I suppose my question is, will these wine kits with time develop these nice fruit forward profiles that we've used to enjoying with commercial wines.

 

[ibglowin]

IMHO you need a small barrel to fully bring out the flavors and bouquet of fruits in kit wines. The controlled micro-oxidation and concentration via evaporation of a barrel is a must if you want a kit wine to taste anything like a commercial wine. A wine that has lived its entire life in a glass container will never taste anything like one that has spent some nice amount of time in a wooden cask.

 

[seth8530]

Just to reflect what everyone else is saying... A lot depends on the quality of the kit or the grapes you source. If you have good grapes, the wine will practicaly make itself. It is when you do not have perfect grapes is when things get intersting and you need to start tweaking the must. However, I will say I beleive that their is NO reason why a home wine maker can not make a bottle of wine that cost >100$ on the market so long as he has the proper skills needed and the proper grapes to work with.

That being said, an advantage of home winemaking is you can make EXACTLY the wine you want to make... Want some pepper/leather notes in that cab sav?? Then give it some Hungarian oak. You want a spicy pinot noir? Blend with syrah.. After a fruit forward red? Ferment it cold.... Find out it is a little bit light on body since you fermented cold? Blend it with a hot fermented wine to get a fuller bodied yet slightly fruity red..

In home winemaking the world is your oyster!

 

[bigpappa6]

Thank you all very much for your input, it has been EXTREMELY helpful! I may need to post these questions in a different thread but here 'goes anyways:

In looking to make wine in a barrel I understand that small barrels will actually oak the wine faster than large ones. I don't think I can afford to get enough grapes to fill a full sized barrel but I can certainly get enough for a 5 gallon barrel. Does anyone have any thoughts on how to keep it in the barrel for aging and breathing without over-oaking it? I was thinking that it might be good to get a used barrel and then just put an oak stave in it. Thoughts on that? Anyone tried it or do it that way now?

 

[Geronimo]

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to keep it in the barrel for aging and breathing without over-oaking it? I was thinking that it might be good to get a used barrel and then just put an oak stave in it. Thoughts on that? Anyone tried it or do it that way now?

In order to keep from over oaking, most people run a batch through a new barrel for 2-3 weeks, then another for ~6 weeks. After that, you can age a batch for many months.

If you go the used barrel route, being sure that it's clean is the utmost importance. Or you can use staves in glass carboys, or any combination of barrel/stave/carboy. Even in the commercial world, many wines just get 1-2 years in oak and then move to SS tanks.

 

[Boatboy24]

Thank you all very much for your input, it has been EXTREMELY helpful! I may need to post these questions in a different thread but here 'goes anyways:

In looking to make wine in a barrel I understand that small barrels will actually oak the wine faster than large ones. I don't think I can afford to get enough grapes to fill a full sized barrel but I can certainly get enough for a 5 gallon barrel. Does anyone have any thoughts on how to keep it in the barrel for aging and breathing without over-oaking it? I was thinking that it might be good to get a used barrel and then just put an oak stave in it. Thoughts on that? Anyone tried it or do it that way now?

If you're going to get a barrel, you want to be sure you have 2-3 batches ready for it. The first batch in a new 6 gallon barrel will probably only last 4-6 weeks until the oak starts to get a little strong. So you'll want to have another to put in after that. 2nd batch might go 8 weeks, and by the third, you're getting 10-12. 12 weeks appears to be the sweet spot for kit wines in a 6 gallon barrel.

A brand new, 23 liter Vadai barrel can be had for less than $200 delivered. At that price, it's hard not to recommend a new barrel. Going used will save you a few bucks, but opens you up to a lot of risk, as you don't know how it was cared for and exactly what was in it.

 

[horacegoeskiing]

Ferment it cold... looks like another learning curve is in front of me! One last question on the fruit forward profile. I'm currently ageing the following kits
Showcase - Red mountain and Chateau du Pays
Eclipse -Stag's Leap
Selection with Grape Skins - Tempranillo
Just wondering if anyone had noticed hold old the wines were when individual fruits started appearing in the flavour profile like cherry, blackberry etc.
Thanks
Will

 

[seth8530]

Ferment it cold... looks like another learning curve is in front of me! One last question on the fruit forward profile. I'm currently ageing the following kits
Showcase - Red mountain and Chateau du Pays
Eclipse -Stag's Leap
Selection with Grape Skins - Tempranillo
Just wondering if anyone had noticed hold old the wines were when individual fruits started appearing in the flavour profile like cherry, blackberry etc.
Thanks
Will

Yep, fermenting cold is possible, and it does produce more fruit forward wine. However, be aware that it is lighter on colour, tannin and structure.. So, if doing a red you might want to have something ready to blend it with to back it up a bit.

As far as the kits, I can not say because I have never made one before... However, their are plenty of people on this forum who have experience with kit wines who should be able to help you.

 

[Deezil]

I see that I've been missing out on a good thread.. But there was no shortage of good answers!

What you get out of wine making, depends a lot on what you want to put into it... If you want to make low end kits with what they send you, or fruit wines with relatively low pounds/gal, age them out for a few months and drink it just to call yourself a winemaker.. That works, there's nothing wrong with it, but as the OP mentioned, you end up with something that's more like a 'cooler'.

You can invest in higher quality kits or fresh fruits.. you can invest in glassware/stainless steel and oak barrels.. you can source specialty yeasts, higher grade nutrients and additives..

But the other half of that, is you have to want to understand, why you're doing, what you're doing. That's not something money can buy, and that's one of the bigger secrets to making good wine.

 

[tonyt]

Gosh I'm late to this great thread and I only have one comment to add to the spot-on comments by Jim boatboy and the others.
Bigpappa6, back to your original post I want to mention the concept of "Cellar Palate". Some of us tend to eventually tweak many of the batches we make into our own preferred taste. We add oak, tannin, back sweetening and so on to our own taste with sometimes only minor varietal differences. Whether intentional or now it often seems to happen. I'm not saying it is a particularly a bad thing or not. With me I can get most of my batches (kits) to mimic my favorite under $20.00 wine and drink and share them happily throughout the year. Then when I pop the cork on a Silver Oak, Jordan or Banfi Brunello, I say WOW THAT'S GREAT too bad it costs an arm and a leg!

 

[Geronimo]

Before I started making wine, I had tasted two or three Amarones and one or two Barolos. I knew I liked Barbaresca and a few other Italian vins I'd had dans le sud de la France.

But the cheap *** that I am, I couldn't pay $200 for 4 glasses of wine more than rarely. Don't even get me started on Barolo.

 

[bigpappa6]

Thank you all again very much for your replies. This is some VERY helpful information. The last thing I need to find out is where the heck I can get decent grapes in Iowa. I'm sure I'd need to bring them in from out west.

As a general question:

I do a lot of smoking (BBQ that is...) and I've learned something about it in the years I've been at it. I've learned that several people out there are convinced that rubs, sauces, mustard, spices, and various myths about timing and foil and who knows what else is what separates the men from the boys and creates amazing BBQ. The biggest truth I've found is that it's so simple most people don't want to accept it. To make amazing BBQ you quite simply put some rub on the meat (and the type of rub is pretty flexible), put it on the smoker, and as long as your temp doesn't go crazy then you'll have some great food in a few hours. It's that simple. The primary factors are quality of your meat and how patient you are with your time and temperature. That's how food is smoked.

I have to believe it's the same with wine. If you start with a good grape and have patience with your time and control variables (cellar temp, etc) then you will get good wine. Am I pretty close to being on point there?

 

[seth8530]

Yes for the most part... However, it is rare that you get the perfect grapes. The chances of you getting grapes that have the perfect sugar, TA and PH are relatively low. Thus, one needs to make adjustments. Also, thier are plenty of products (tannins, enzymes to enchacne extractoin and perhaps most importantly nutrients) that will help ensure a nice final product.

Actually, let me hop on my soap box, the most beneficial "additive" you can add to your must during fermentation is nutrient. This is very important because without it you run the risk of your must being nitrogen deficient which can stress out the yeast and cause it to make all sorts of nasty off flavours.

This thread goes into some of the details of adding nutrients to your wine. It is a little long and not always to the point but it has lots of good information. Most of it primary source information from scottlabs.

http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f86/got-off-phone-fermaid-people-38704/

Their is also a quick and dirty version of this thread done by deezil which used information from the above mentioned thread

http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f86/yeast-nutrients-39655/#post439968

Obviously you can see that my nutrient of choice is fermaid K/O used in combination with a rehydration nutrient such as goferm... This preference is a direct result of scottlabs being willing to divulge their sciecne and research to the wine/mead making community. The biggest uncertainty with nutrient additions is estimating the initial YAN without doing a test for it.



That being said, the proper use of tannins, acid, and other various additives can really help round out a wine IF used in the right way. Also, choice of oak is can play a very important role as well.