WineMaker Magazine

We maintain a vineyard that spans about an acre of our backyard, in which we grow five varieties we make wine from each year. One may think the busiest time in the vineyard is just prior to harvest, but the truth is most of the work is done by then. When asked what we do in the vineyard 30 days prior to harvest, the answer is simple: We wait. Planning for harvest begins at pruning. Throughout the growing season, decisions are all made towards the outcome of the quality of grapes and harvest’s yield.

article The opportunity to make wine from fresh grapes comes just once (or twice) a year. Sure, you can make wines from kits, concentrates, and frozen juices at any time, but the fall harvest (and spring if you get grapes from the Southern Hemisphere) is when the majority of us home winemakers have the most on the line. It’s make or break time, and that means you need to start preparing well before the grapes arrive. Much of the efforts in the winery are best done in a proactive manner.

article From April 24-26, 2026, a total of 1,043 different wines were judged at the Mount Snow Grand Summit Lodge in West Dover, Vermont. This year marks the 23rd year of the event and it continues to be the largest wine competition for home winemakers in the world. The 1,043 entries arrived from hobby winemakers living throughout North America in 40 American states and four Canadian provinces, as well as five different countries.

article If you’ve been making wine for long enough, you know the old joke: Ask four winemakers their opinion and you’ll get five answers. But regardless of our different techniques and ways to get there, the goal is the same: Balance. Our wines may vary in primary aromas, length of finish, and complexity, but behind every glass is a winemaker working to balance each element in the bottle. With the introduction of the wine kit, balance became a pre-packaged promise.

article WineMaker Magazine readers joined former Publisher Brad Ring to explore New Zealand’s world-famous wine regions in March during an eight-day trip coinciding with the Southern Hemisphere grape harvest covering both the North and South Islands filled with lots of great wine, food, people, and lifelong memories. When most North Americans are asked to describe New Zealand wine, almost everyone will respond with two words: Sauvignon Blanc. And that makes perfect sense.

article Like many winemakers, I didn’t begin with a deep understanding of wine chemistry. I learned by doing. Early on, winemaking felt like following a recipe: Clean fruit, careful fermentation, patience, and the hope time would do the rest. Only later — through trial, error, and tasting — did I begin to understand how a handful of decisions quietly but permanently shape a wine. Among them, none proved more consequential than how oak is used.

article We get one chance a year to make good wine. From budbreak to harvest, we pour as much as ten months out of the year into managing our vineyard, managing frost and pests, grooming our canopy for sunlight and air flow, and preparing our winemaking equipment. Through all that work, a few critical errors can sour or even ruin a season we anticipated to be successful. The moment we cut the fruit from the vine is of monumental importance vis a vis timing and discernment.

I’ll never forget the first time I crossed paths with Petit Verdot. I was in my mid-twenties and visited New York’s Long Island wine country. At this point in my fledgling career, I was very interested in biodynamic growing applications in colder growing regions. Amidst the flat stretches of turf farms and potatoes, an organic and biodynamic vineyard quietly lay before me with a modest, charming, repurposed barn open for tastings.

technique Young, richly extracted red wines can be overly astringent and may require years of aging to tame their tannins. If your preference is not to make a super tannic wine for long cellaring, but instead a younger, fruit-forward, more approachable red wine, delestage offers a powerful alternative. This fermentation technique can produce wines with brighter fruit, softer tannins, a rounder mouthfeel, and deeper color.

Q. I have been making dandelion wine the past 15 years. The first three years I entered it in a wine competition and won gold medals and even a Best of Show. My sister and I were complete novices, so we were shocked. For many years afterward, the wine continued to turn out beautifully. Unfortunately, the last two vintages have been disappointing. Two years ago, five of our six carboys turned brown while only one remained perfect.