Home Winemaking For Dummies

Enjoy making (and drinking) your own first–class wines Making high–quality wines is fun and easy. This must–have guide gives you easy–to–follow instructions in everything from selecting the right grapes and the proper equipment, to the crush and fermentation, to aging and bottling your wine. Award–winning home winemaker Tim Patterson provides tips on how to make every style of wine — red, white, dry, sweet, and bubbly. Soon, your family and friends will be toasting your delectable creations! Equip yourself — get the tools you need and design a functional winery, no matter how small your space Choose great grapes — explore your options, from fresh to frozen, and figure out the quantity you need Make reds that impress — learn proven techniques for red wines, including bold Bordeaux and ravishing Rhone wines Create delicious whites — make Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blancs like the professionals, thanks to expert advice Explore other styles of wine — think pink with refreshing rosé wines and indulge your sweet tooth with delicious dessert wines Age your wine to perfection — weigh the merits of storing your wine in glass or barrels, and calculate the ideal aging time Open the book and find: Winemaking hints and secrets from professional vintners Affordable grape varieties that make tasty wine How to test and tweak your juice before fermentation The yeast strain that′s right for your wine Mistakes to avoid and troubleshooting tips Minor wines with major appeal Whether to use American or French oak — or any oak at all "Tim Patterson is one of the best contemporary writers on wine in the United States. Reading Home Winemaking For Dummies is the absolute best way to tackle the very satisfying process of making your own wine." — Karen MacNeil , author of The Wine Bible Learn to: Master every step of the winemaking process Select the perfect grapes for your wines Craft a delicious range of red and white varietals Create sparkling, rosé, and dessert wines

Introduction. Part I: Motivations, Materials, and Methods. Chapter 1: Making Great Wine at Home. Chapter 2: Finding Good Grapes. Chapter 3: Provisioning Your Home Winery. Chapter 4: Obsessing over Temperature, Oxygen, and Sanitation. Part II: Phases and Stages. Chapter 5: Sorting, Crushing, and Pressing. Chapter 6: Letting Yeast Do Its Thing: Fermentation. Chapter 7: Doing the Post–Fermentation Tango. Chapter 8: Aging and Blending. Chapter 9: Finishing and Bottling. Chapter 10: Storing, Serving, and Starting Over. Part III: Deeper Into Reds. Chapter 11: What′s Special about Red Wines? Chapter 12: Bold Bordeaux Reds. Chapter 13: Ravishing Rhône Reds. Chapter 14: Handling the Hard Cases. Chapter 15: Up–and–Comers and Off–the–Radars. Part IV: Deeper Into Whites. Chapter 16: What′s Special about White Wines? Chapter 17: Fruity, Herbal Whites. Chapter 18: Aromatic Whites. Part V: Beyond Red and White. Chapter 19: Thinking and Drinking Pink. Chapter 20: Dessert, Fortifi ed, and Sparkling Wines. Part VI: The Part of Tens. Chapter 21: Ten Mistakes Most Home Winemakers Make at Least Once. Chapter 22: Ten Ways To Save Money (and Make Better Wine). Chapter 23: Ten Differences between Wine(makers) and Beer(brewers). Part VII: Appendixes. Appendix A: Glossary. Appendix B: Conversions. Appendix C: Resources. Appendix D: Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) and pH. Index.

Tim Patterson writes about wine and makes some of his own in Berkeley, California. He contributes the monthly "Inquiring Winemaker" column for the industry trade magazine Wines & Vines , digging into winemaking theories and techniques, and he covered home winemaking for several years in the pages of WineMaker . He has won dozens of Gold medals, Double Golds, and Best of Shows from amateur winemaking competitions in California.