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Articles by Bob Peak
Aug-Sep 2025 Archives - WineMakerMag.com
Back to All Issues Tips and techniques on testing your wine, plus guidance on gearing up your home wine lab. Also, advanced color extraction for red wines. technique Gum arabic is a natural anti-flocculant with a list of benefits that includes helping prevent tartrate crystals from forming, smoothing out young red wines, and adding mouthfeel to thin wines. Get to know this important additive every winemaker should have on hand.
Vegan Winemaking Products
The fundamental components of winemaking are compatible with a vegan diet. Grapes, yeast, oak, inorganic chemicals like potassium metabisulfite, and even cultured malolactic bacteria qualify. While definitions vary, wine made with such ingredients may reasonably be called “vegan wine.” Beyond dietary concerns, there are differences among vegan lifestyles, but the core principle is avoiding harm to animals.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Regular price From £39.99 Regular price -% "Awesome prints! Just received the 24" x 36" inch Andrew Swainson Jaws poster and can't believe how good it looks. Arrived really well packaged and was in perfect condition. Looking forward to my An American Werewolf in London print coming next month." “Superb printing. It’s soo shiny!! Awesome artwork! Love Matt Ferguson’s style and choices.” "Great prints, excellent prices, always responsive to any questions.
It's All Fine and Good
Fining procedures for home winemakers mostly fall into categories of clarification and stabilization. For clarification, you may need to drop out cloudy materials. For stabilization, you may be fining the wine to prevent a protein haze. Fining procedures are distinguished from other winemaking modifications in that the material added is intended to be removed as part of the process. Even if a wine is not flawed, there may be a qualitative improvement that can be addressed by fining.
Mid-Winter Check-In
As winter arrives in North America, wines of the 2024 harvest are finished fermenting and are somewhere along the cellaring timeline. If you made white, rosé, or red wine from fresh grapes or juice this vintage, here are some tips to check in on your young wine and make sure it continues to develop to its best potential. While execution and timing differ for different wines and storage conditions, three basic areas need to be considered for almost every wine.
It's Better with Barrels
The clay amphorae of ancient Rome are museum pieces long since lost from use in most modern winemaking. Some antique wine container styles, like the kvevri buried clay vessels in the Republic of Georgia, continue in use for specialized purposes. The oak barrel, though, has stood the test of time and continues in daily use around the world some two thousand years after the first one contained wine. Barrels can play a part in your home winemaking cellar, too.
Backsweetening - WineMakerMag.com
The backsweetening technique offers much more than just making sweet wine. While that remains a primary goal for many home winemakers who do it, other applications cover a range from just taking the edge off a harsh vintage to making traditional-method, Champagne-style sparkling wine. Regardless of the specific project or objective, some of the basics of backsweetening remain relatively constant. After reviewing some features, we will look at specific applications.
Going To Hear Music... Inspired By Bob Peak & Movies... Etc
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Star Trek III: The Search For Spock Poster By Bob Peak
June this year marks the 40th anniversary of the 3rd entry into the Star Trek cinematic series, and to celebrate, we are releasing a fully remastered edition of Bob Peak’s original art for Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. 2023 saw Vice Press launch its line of fine art prints celebrating the rich history of Star Trek movie posters, kicking off with Bob Peak’s artwork for Star Trek: The Motion Picture and following up with Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan.
Special Purpose Wine Yeasts
With every grape harvest or juice purchase, the home winemaker faces the choice of what yeast to use for the fermentation. We may develop a preference for a few reliable strains we go back to again and again. Other times, we may factor in analytical results of the juice with winemaking objectives. Based on sugar (Brix) content, we can check a yeast producer’s chart for alcohol tolerance.
Open House - The Steamworks, Sheffield
Saturday 8th June 2024 11am until 6pm The Steamworks, 111 Randall Street, Little Sheffield, S2 4SJ Dedicated to poster collecting, the Open House Poster Convention & Social includes some of the UK's best artists, designers, makers & independent vendors selling movie posters, art prints, t-shirts, vinyl, Blu-ray & UHD & more! Throughout the day you can also drop into the Podcast Lounge and join Mark Woodyatt from the Mark & Me Podcast who will be hosting a series of chats and live podcast...
Home Winery Design
When a hobbyist first plans to make wine, designing a “winery” may not even be an important thought. Sourcing grapes, renting or buying equipment, and deciding where around the house or yard to set up are issues that need more immediate attention. In the longer term, though, if you intend to ferment wine in quantities approaching the U.S. federal limit for amateurs — 200 gallons or 757 liters for a household with two adults — giving some thought to winery design will pay off.
Vice Press offer Star Trek: The Motion Picture Fine Art Posters by Bob Peak
Star Trek has a rich history of amazing artwork, and the posters of Bob Peak are considered some of the most seminal. Working alongside Bob Peak’s son, Thomas Peak, Vice Press have remastered Bob’s original artwork for release as fine art posters, starting with Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture Fine Art Posters By Bob Peak
Star Trek has a rich history of amazing artwork, and the posters of Bob Peak are considered some of the most seminal. Working alongside Bob Peak’s son, Thomas Peak, we have remastered Bob’s original artwork for release as fine art posters, starting with Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Kentucky’s Cradle of Catholicism
In April 2017, I decided to do some online genealogical research to learn more about the paternal side of my family. Somewhat providentially, I had the good fortune to discover an online document that has revealed a great deal of information about my family’s Kentucky roots. I’m referring to “The Peakes of Nelson County, Kentucky,” which was researched and written by retired University of Kentucky professor Dr. Robert Zwicker and his cousin, John Stewart.
Inert Gases for Winemaking
In earning a chemistry degree and working in laboratories, I thought of “inert gases” as being the same as the “noble gases” of the periodic table: Helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, and radon. Once I started making wine, though, and got into some more advanced topics, I found winemakers consider the inert gases to include argon, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide (carbon dioxide is not really inert — more on that later.) One more gas — a blend of two of these— comes up in winemaking as well.
Versatile Vino: Using wine in other hobbies
Mostly, we make wine at home to enjoy drinking it. We share it with friends and family, make pairings with special foods, and maybe even take it along to a potluck party to let new friends try a taste. Beyond the delightful consumption of our wonderful adult beverages, we may also enter them in competitions, perhaps winning medals or ribbons while gaining valuable feedback on our work. But is one hobby ever enough? Today we will visit other DIY things to do with some of your homemade wine.
Using Tannins: Purposes, sources, and use in winemaking
Oak gallnuts are created when oak trees get attacked by a wasp. The tannins found in them have become part of the mix in several tannin powders available to winemakers. You can see it right there in the name: Tannins. From an Old High German word for oak or fir tree, these materials are grouped together for their fundamental ability to tan hides. That is, they can turn raw animal skin into leather by binding with proteins and making them insoluble in water.
Finishing For Whites and Rosés
Now that our homemade wines have been sleeping in the cellar all winter, it’s time for some more activity. While the reds will probably go on aging in bulk for a few more months, spring is the time of year when I like to bottle whites and rosés from the most recent vintage. The wines are fresh, aromatic, and cold stabilized. Of course, you have been adding sulfites and testing the levels, so you could go directly to bottle. But that is not your only option.
Offbeat Reds - WineMakerMag.com
Article Getting sick of the same old Cab? Try a red wine that’s more out of the mainstream, like Carménère, Charbono, Dolcetto, Montepulciano, or Tinta Cão. Already a member? Log In Article Getting sick of the same old Cab? Try a red wine that’s more out of the mainstream, like Carménère, Charbono, Dolcetto, Montepulciano, or Tinta Cão. Already a member? Log In
Lifespan of a Wine Barrel
A barrel made of oak wood has been the preferred container for aging wine for hundreds of years. This remains true today despite modern advances in plastic, concrete, and stainless steel. Barrels maintain their popularity even though they are expensive, clumsy to handle and move about, and perishable. That last point — that a barrel “wears out” over time — is a key to its enduring appeal.
Thinking Outside the Bottle: Presenting Your Homemade Wine
You are proud of your homemade wine! And you should be. It takes time, patience, knowledge, and skill to craft an excellent adult beverage. Those of us who make wine at home enjoy it on many occasions. It can be as simple as a glass of rosé on a summer evening or a bold red with a weekend barbecue. Sometimes, though, you would really like to showcase one or more of your wines for friends and family. It is easy to do that and today’s column can help you explore some of the ways.
Using Outside Labs to Run Analysis Tests on your Wine
There is lots of information out there about how to run various juice and wine analytical procedures at home if you want to do that. If you do not want to run the tests but you are interested in the answers, you may live in an area that has a commercial or university laboratory that does testing on wine. Here is some advice on when, why, or even whether you might want to take advantage of such resources and have testing done.
Crushing Grapes - WineMakerMag.com
Article You can never be too prepared in your winery when the grapes come in from harvest. Follow our guidelines for crush and press success. Article Supposedly there are many ways to skin a cat, but we’re not familiar with any of them. Luckily for winemakers, Bob Peak knows many ways to crush a grape, and is willing to explain. Already a member? Log In
Using Yeast Nutrients
In his classic text Knowing and Making Wine, eminent French scientist Emile Peynaud remarked that the conditions for development of yeasts are the very conditions for fermentation itself. This is a way of looking at winemaking that has tremendous value for us as home winemakers. If we grow a healthy, thriving yeast population, conditions will be very favorable toward making a good wine as well.
Cleaning & Sanitizing Techniques
“They can make the difference between sound wine and spoiled wine.” Daniel Pambianchi Daniel Pambianchi was talking about cleaning and sanitizing when he put that maxim in Techniques in Home Winemaking. Home winemakers take serious risks if they do not pay attention to these critical areas. Cleaning means to remove soil, grease, and other residues from the surface of utensils or equipment.
Home Glycol Cooling Systems
Article Glycol cooling systems have been fixtures in commercial wineries for many years. Often using large, permanently mounted refrigeration compressors, they circulate a chilled solution of propylene glycol through pipes arranged throughout the cellar. At each cooled tank, connections allow for the circulation of the chilled glycol through a jacket surrounding the wine or must.
Using Enzymes in Country Wines
Beyond basic pectic enzymes to increase juice yield and improve clarity, I have not seen much mention of enzyme use in country fruit wines. To be sure, most of the commercial enzyme preparations available to the home winemaker are isolated and purified for use in grape wine. That does not mean, however, that they will not find excellent applications in wines made from other fruits and herbs. Enzymes are essential actors in biological systems.
Super Blends - WineMakerMag.com
One group of internationally famous wines — the Super Tuscans — has come to represent revolutionary change in the wine world in the last few decades. After long-held traditional principles and practices controlled European winemaking for decades (or centuries), some Italian winemakers in the Tuscany region deliberately broke from tradition and began making new blends.
Maximizing Wine Aroma
Many wine writers draw a distinction between “aroma” and “bouquet.” Typical is the discussion by Yair Margalit in his excellent book Concepts in Wine Chemistry. He says aroma “is the term for smell derived from the grape . . .
Aperitifs - WineMakerMag.com
Aperitif: More a culinary term than a specific beverage. We use the word in English in almost exactly the same way as its original in French — they differ by only an accent mark, with the French spelling apéritif. The Concise Oxford Dictionary says it is an “alcoholic drink as appetizer,” reflecting the word’s ultimate Latin origin in aperire, to open. In European use such a beverage was thought to “open” the digestive system and stimulate the appetite for an imminent meal.
Choosing the Right Fermenter
When setting out to make wine from grapes, one of the first major decisions is what you will use as a fermentation container. For most winemaking, you will need a primary fermenter and an aging container. Vessels for both purposes are available in a variety of materials and in many sizes. Frequently used choices include plastic buckets and bins, carboys of glass or plastic, stainless steel tanks and kegs, and the traditional oak barrel.
Proper Equipment Storage
When done using your winemaking equipment, make sure it is properly cleaned and stored so it will be ready to use next harvest season. Already a member? Log In
Better White Blends
Article There are lots of reasons to try blending white wines, such as adding complexity, correcting a deficiency, or simply making something fun and new. Find out more about which white grapes work well together, and how to plan the perfect blend. Already a member? Log In Article There are lots of reasons to try blending white wines, such as adding complexity, correcting a deficiency, or simply making something fun and new.
The Science of Food and Wine Pairing
“Carignane and goat cheese,” said Tony Ross, wine educator at Passalacqua Winery near Healdsburg, California. During a judging session for a local home wine competition, Tony and I were on the same panel. Between entries, I mentioned working on this “Techniques” column on pairing and he gave me his favorite recommendation. I went on to try out his suggestion on my coworkers (more on that later) and I set out to see if I could bring some scientific principles to bear on this complex subject.
Creating Balanced Wine
For as long as I have been making wine, balance has been a paramount goal. Even when wines seem extreme in style, balance is still in there making it right. An extremely sweet Icewine? High acid brings it around. High alcohol California Zinfandel? High pH and low acidity drape it with fruit to keep the alcohol impression in check. As these examples illustrate, “balance” is not just one set of figures that applies to all winemaking.
20 Home Winemaking Troubleshooting Tips
Technique In a notebook of fermentation hobby records, I have a lab report dated November 3, 1998. That soil pre-plant analysis from Fruit Growers Laboratory marked my start 20 years ago in becoming a home grape grower and vintner. Along the way, I have seen and addressed pitfalls and trouble spots that can come up on the way to producing a delicious adult beverage.
Perfecting and Protecting Wine Color
Better color. It’s a goal for just about anyone who makes wine, especially red wine — and most home winemakers make red wine at some time. Although not always directly related, wine color is often taken as a clue for wine flavor. A pale, watery-looking wine is expected to have light or mild flavor. Very often the relationship holds, so much so that home winemakers may feel the need to explain a light-colored wine as they serve it.
Using Inert Gases in Winemaking
Blanket, flush, sparge, transfer, dispense. To exclude air while doing any of these things to your wine, your best bet is the use of an inert gas. Just about everyone has seen or heard of an inert gas system at a winery, but most home winemakers don’t have one yet. This article presents the basics of the major winemaking gases, along with tips on why they are used, the pros and cons of one gas over another, and how it’s done.
Make Fresh Chèvre at Home
Nancy Vineyard and Bob Peak | March 15, 2010 At our store in Sonoma County, California, we’ve been selling cheesemaking supplies since 2006, the year we expanded our 25-year-old business that provides wine- and beer-making equipment to consumers. Offering the tools to make cheese seemed a natural extension of our work—and it’s become really fun! All of us behind the counter have learned, hands on, about making cheese, as well as about our dairy-loving community.
Star Trek
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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Regular price From £39.99 Regular price -% "Awesome prints! Just received the 24" x 36" inch Andrew Swainson Jaws poster and can't believe how good it looks. Arrived really well packaged and was in perfect condition. Looking forward to my An American Werewolf in London print coming next month." “Superb printing. It’s soo shiny!! Awesome artwork! Love Matt Ferguson’s style and choices.” "Great prints, excellent prices, always responsive to any questions.
Star Trek III: The Search For Spock
Regular price From £39.99 Regular price -% "Awesome prints! Just received the 24" x 36" inch Andrew Swainson Jaws poster and can't believe how good it looks. Arrived really well packaged and was in perfect condition. Looking forward to my An American Werewolf in London print coming next month." “Superb printing. It’s soo shiny!! Awesome artwork! Love Matt Ferguson’s style and choices.” "Great prints, excellent prices, always responsive to any questions.
Star Trek: First Contact
Regular price From £39.99 Regular price -% "Awesome prints! Just received the 24" x 36" inch Andrew Swainson Jaws poster and can't believe how good it looks. Arrived really well packaged and was in perfect condition. Looking forward to my An American Werewolf in London print coming next month." “Superb printing. It’s soo shiny!! Awesome artwork! Love Matt Ferguson’s style and choices.” "Great prints, excellent prices, always responsive to any questions.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Japanese) - By Bob Peak
By Bob Peak Regular price From £49.99 Regular price -% "Awesome prints! Just received the 24" x 36" inch Andrew Swainson Jaws poster and can't believe how good it looks. Arrived really well packaged and was in perfect condition. Looking forward to my An American Werewolf in London print coming next month." “Superb printing. It’s soo shiny!! Awesome artwork! Love Matt Ferguson’s style and choices.” "Great prints, excellent prices, always responsive to any questions.
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