Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

I am a professional winemaker. I saw this book on a shelf and thought it would serve as a quick referance guide. it seemed to be the best amateur offering I had seen. Upon reading it furthur, I began to note some gross incorrect temperatures, techniques etc. Authors that began by making kit wines themselves have some really strange techniques left over from that. Also, many ideas have been passed down from book to book, few of which have roots in the professional world. This is a book written by a techno-type winemaker who is also an amateur. Much of it is accurate, but it may be difficult for the hobbiest to discern. As you-all may know, fine wines are not necessarily made by the highly technical winemakers. Beginners may find all of the charts and data daunting, and choose not to even try to make a batch. Here is a tip: Acquire good, healthy, ripe wine grapes. Making a good wine with them need not be difficult.

I have purchased just about every home winemakers book out there looking for the one that's just right. I even bought some UC Davis college textbooks. This one's not too technical, but technical enough to be able to understand the science behind the scenes.

This is now my go to winemaking book. It's got an easy to understand process for yeast hydration, fermentation and a nice section on troubleshooting. He also has a detailed discussion about equipment.

If you are going to purchase just one book, this one will do it for you.

The book is well written and contains numerous photos, illustrations, charts, tables and graphs. The author covers every conceivable aspect of winemaking in a clear and in-depth manor. Even though the target audience is the home winemaker, commercial applications are also covered and there are sections on how the pros do it. Every piece of equipment, technique, chemical, method and product used in wine making is covered. There is an excellent chapter on analyzing and adjusting the must. I've learned a lot and continue learning from this book. If you are at all interested in learning about winemaking then you will love this book.

Would recommend this book to anyone wanting to make wine. Many in depth details about wine making. Talks about every aspect of making wine.