Welcome to my new Video Blog about making wine from Brehm Vineyards Frozen Must. You've probably seen all the hubub on our site about the Brehm must and how much we love it - I wanted to take that a step further and chronicle the process of working with Brehm must from start to finish. Really, its about the same as working from fresh fruit except for the very beginning - since there's no crushing involved.

This fruit is Brehm's 2009 State Lane Cabernet Sauvignon from the valley floor in Napa. I… Continue

Ordering a pair of barrels. Delivery to Chelan/Manson. Anyone want to piggy back and share freight.Four barrels per pallet, so two more and freight probably$75. Buying refurbed/rebuilt/toasted red barrels. Barrels are $150 or so plus freight.
Let me know.
Anyone barrel fermenting reds? Can you walk me through the process a bit? Treat it just like placing it in stainless with a air lok bung?
How about racking and lees?

Looking for some help (info) on making white wines at home. I've downloaded and read the MorWine PDF (which is very useful) but I was also wondering about personal experiences from other winemakers. I grow my own Viognier and this year harvested about 475 lbs of fruit. We crushed and pressed immediately and it is now in a SS variable volume tank and a 6 gallon carboy. Fermentation is going well and I want to be ready for the next phase.
Your comments are all most welcome.

Thanks,
Dave Stephens

The cab and merlot mix in ready for the press. I'm requesting Cab Franc from any of my friends in Livermore. I have secured the "second" pick of Merlot and if I help harvest, I can have some Zin grapes from a grower for Wente. I'm really excited about this year as it all seems to be coming together.

This is my first year with a real harvest from my grapes. I've been making wine from kits and then from must. This is very exciting.

I scored on some beautiful heavy glass wine bottles recently and used them to bottle my '08 syrah/grenache blend yesterday. Of course, the standard home winemaking shrink capsules are too small to fit the bottle. Anyone know where I could find larger capsules for a home winemaker? The only ones I could find are designed for professional wineries with a corking/foil machine.
I know I can use bottling wax, but just trying to see if I can find nice capsules that fit. Any ideas would be great!

Than… Continue

I live in Southern Califirnia and I'm planning to bottle some red this weekend. However, it's hot as heck right now and the wine has expanded quite a bit in the carboys. My garage is not temp controlled. So my question is, if I bottle now will the wine be too expanded and then retract in the bottles creating to much ullage in the neck? Anyone?

So my home beer making experience has slowly crept into my winemaking passion... After all the years of spiced ales and fruit flavored wheat beers and Chambord spiked dunkles to honey-oatmeal imperial bocks, I'll be producing a Chocolate Raspberry Merlot this week! I can't say the concept is unique because Selection wine kits makes a chocolate raspberry port. I'm just taking the idea a step further by creating my own blend.

I'll use a Selection International 'Chilean Merlot' wine kit as the bas… Continue

I ran into a customer the other day that uses a USB pen to keep track of his notes on the vineyard and in the winery. When he gets home he plugs in the pen to a usb hub and it uploads the documents as a pdf.

The pen even records audio!

Check it out!… Continue

Does anybody have a homemade recipe for a wine conditioner? I've used a product from Wine Art in the past to sweeten wines and give them a little body. It works fine but I feel like I could make something at home for much cheaper. Any suggestions? Thanks, Shawn

Greetings. I have a question reg. the trellis system for my Chelois and Chambourcin grapes: I have been training them according the Scott Henry (one cordon going up, one cordon going down), but the Hybrid plants don't seem to take naturally to this like my Vinifera do. Does anyone else out there have either of these varieties, and if so, what system do you use? Just VSP? The nursery where I bought my Chambourcin vines suggest TWC (top wire cordon) which is hard to imagine... Comments, thoughts?… Continue