Techniques in Home Winemaking: The Comprehensive Guide to Making Chateau-Style Wines [Paperback]

Daniel Pambianchi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2008

From crushing grapes to bottling wine, this essential handbook enables the home winemaker to make informed decisions about ingredients, equipment, and the winemaking process. Precise step-by-step instructions lead both novice and advanced winemakers through all of the important procedures, including selecting and working with new equipment, determining the best material for specific styles, analyzing the product, monitoring acidity levels, and common troubleshooting problems. Using accessible charts and tables to offer detailed instructions for making Pinot noir, port, and sparkling wines, this newly updated edition also covers often overlooked topics, such as ice wines and blending varieties.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Flow charts and clearly organized chapters make for an in-depth reference work."  —Time Magazine

"There's in-depth detail here that I have previously seen only in professional texts . . .  I just wish Daniel Pambianchi's book was available when I was just starting out as a winemaker . . . it could have saved me a lot of trial and error along the way!"  —Thomas Bachelder, winemaker, Lemelson Winery

About the Author

Daniel Pambianchi is the founder and CEO of Cadenza Wines Inc., a small commercial winery in Ontario that produces a wide range of premium wines. He is a regular columnist and the technical editor for WineMaker magazine. He lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Vehicule Press; Revised edition (April 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1550652362
• ISBN-13: 978-1550652369
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #82,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #77 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Drinks & Beverages > Wine > Wine & Winemaking

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So, you want to know more..., April 18, 2009

By 

R. Frush (Fort Collins, CO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Techniques in Home Winemaking: The Comprehensive Guide to Making Chateau-Style Wines (Paperback)

I've been brewing beer and mead since the (late) 1980's and recently switched to kit wine making. With a background in engineering, I'm always looking to learn more, and improve my brewing. This review is limited by my current level of winemaking, so keep that in mind.

Daniel's book does an excellent job covering home winemaking, especially for those folks making wine from grapes, while acknowledging throughout the book that winemaking is done from a variety of juice sources, including concentrates and kits. Winemakers of most levels, except the most advanced, who are probably making wine semi-professionally will find something in this book to explain, and improve their wine making techniques.

Especially useful are Daniel's descriptions of TA (Acid), pH and Sulphite (SO2) testing and management. Even for a novice winemaker, using kits, the descriptions of these techniques go a long way to helping the winemaker understand the chemistry behind the fermentation, and why these parameters are important. In the long run, I expect to use these testing techniques to help me understand why I like particular wines, and help me replicate them in my wine making efforts.

Daniel's book is thorough, and for a novice like myself, frequently delves into topics that are beyond my need while making kits. Daniel does conveniently provide a guide to the "basic" sections vs. the advanced sections to help the novice navigate through this, which is quite helpful.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about winemaking, and it will serve as a good investment if the reader advances their technique with the depth of its coverage.

For kit winemakers, who don't need or want the tech-heavy version, Daniel has a new book, "Kit Winemaking: The Illustrated Beginner's Guide to Making Wine from Concentrate" which will be available soon. After browsing the Table of Contents of that book, I'm happy I have the more technical version, but expect that either book will be valuable to the kit winemaker.

Cheers.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent second book on small-scale winemaking, January 6, 2010

By 

Michael A. Duvernois (Minneapolis, MN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Techniques in Home Winemaking: The Comprehensive Guide to Making Chateau-Style Wines (Paperback)

I'd recommend The Way to Make Wine: How to Craft Superb Table Wines at Home as a starting point. It is clear, has good graphics and isn't overwhelming. Then, as you gain experience, this is the book to own and use for variations, clear problem-solving on difficulties faced, and as a reference book. If the topic comes up in home winemaking, the information is here in this book. Recommended bung sizes for common containers? Yep, table 2-3 on page 90. Measuring volatile acidity? Page 134 with the caution that this is an advanced technique requiring lab gear.

Though it's a great book, let me say that some of what is presented in the book is not consistent with what I would consider reasonable home winemaking. Though measuring the sugars, alcohol, and acid is all fine with me, there's a bit too much (for my taste) adding of modifiers to the wine (gum arabic and tannisol for example to alter the wine). That seems like something that's acceptable in a product that must turn out "correctly" each time, like a McDonald hamburger, but dodgier in a product like wine that we assume will be grapes, yeast, residual sulfur, and fining agent only. I mean, the loaf of bread I buy at the grocery store has ten ingredients, but the one I make at home has five (flour, yeast, salt, sugar, and water). Mine doesn't turn out perfectly (and reproducibly) the same each time, but that's part of the game.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Home Winemaking, December 16, 2008

By 

Mark Bequette "winemaker" (Washington) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Techniques in Home Winemaking: The Comprehensive Guide to Making Chateau-Style Wines (Paperback)

This is a great book for the experienced winemaker. It is well organized, has easy to find resources and goes beyond basis skills. It is especially valuable to home winemakers who make large quantities from grapes. The troubleshooting section is good when things start to go wrong. It also has a very good discussion on the use of sulfites.