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Articles & Books From Tim Patterson
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
If you’re a home winemaker anywhere in the world, at some point you’ll probably need to convert metric measures to U.S. measures and vice versa. The following table shows some of the key conversions winemakers need:
Quantity
U.S. Measures
Metric Measures
Vineyard yield (premium grapes)
3 to 5 U.S. tons per acre
6 to 9 metric tons per hectare
Grape weight to wine volume (commercial)
1 U.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
As a first-time winemaker, you want to set yourself up for success from the start. The grapes in the following table give you a great shot at overcoming beginner’s jitters over style, taste, and technique:
Reds
Whites:
Zinfandel: The All-American red (originally from Croatia), full
of fruit and spice, good in every style from rosé to
blockbuster.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Winemaking is too much of an art to have real laws, like the laws of physics, but home winemakers are well advised to keep these four principles in mind at all times:
Useful obsessions: You cannot worry too much about sanitation, temperature, and oxygen.
Buckets: You cannot possibly have too many buckets available in your winery.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
As a home winemaker, you ferment grapes to produce your own wine. Along the way, you use some unique tools and techniques, as well as some words that have distinct meaning for winemakers. Brush up on your wine-speak with these essential terms:
Brix: Measure of sugar percentage by weight in a liquid — in this case, grape juice.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
As a home winemaker, you need to know certain properties of your grapes and wine, whether you ever took a chemistry class or not. The following list offers the key chemical components and how to measure them:
Acidity: The key to how refreshing your wine is in the glass, and the way to control problem pH is in acidity.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Good home winemaking involves careful temperature control — your wine wants to be warm sometimes (and generates a bit of heat itself during fermentation), but then things need to cool down, especially for storage. The following table shows some key temperature targets for making and storing wine in Fahrenheit
An informative, fun guide to making your own wineIt's estimated that one million North Americans make their own wine. Relatively inexpensive to make (a homemade bottle costs from $2 to $4), a bottle with your own label (and grapes) is a fantasy even someone with modest aspirations can fulfill. Author Tim Patterson, an award-winning home winemaker, shows how it's possible for anyone to create a great wine.