NOVEMBER 12, 2000: New York, NY-- Having recently embarked on the exciting journey of home winemaking, I've discovered some useful tips and created a few contraptions that can make the home production of wine easier and more enjoyable. But before I discuss the these items, let's briefly discuss the WineMaking hobby:

If you've never thought you could make great quality wine at home, think again. Unlike homebrewing, winemaking requires no cooking (or brewing). The bare essentials are grape juice and yeasts. For the first timers, I recommend using quality wine concentrates (such as the Vintners products by Brewking) because they are easy to use and reasonably fool-proof. If you're an apartment dweller, then you'll appreciate the minial space requirements. Also, you'll appreciate them because they are available everywhere year-round, as opposed to fresh fruits and grapes which have their growing areas and only seasonal availablity.




The Basics:

All of the kits come with thiet own instructions which are very easy to follow, however here is the process in a nutshell (please note procedures can vary damatically, this quick overview is simply to famliarize you with the first and most basic steps in home winemakling):

How to make an easy process even easier


This simple tool gives you two advantages:

• Holds the bottles firm in place so you have both hands available to operate the hand corker.

• Allows you to keep the bottles in order; this way you will know which one you filled first and which one last.

To facilitate this, after taking the above picture, we put big numbers on the sides of the holder with a black marker, numbering the positions.

Making this holder is very easy. You need one of the boxes received with new empty bottles.

With a sharp utility knife, make vertical cuts along the edges, from the top and then fold down the sides to expose the necks of the bottles allowing for the corker to reach them.

With duct tape, hold the fold down sides, reinforcing the holder in the process.




Tracking you wine

As a way to keep track of our wine and to answer the inevitable questions we get when we give our wine out, we put small labels on each bottle showing the bottling date and the bottle's serial number




Resolve the Racking Riddle

This contraption allows us to:

• Concentrate on the other end of the tube, operating the bottle filler and moving the bottles around while keeping them in order.

• Reduce to a minimum the solids picked up while racking by holding the autosyphon always in the correct position without accidental stirring of the solids at the bottom.

• To hold the auto syphon at two differnt heights: While on the higher position we fill the first 19 bottles; then we lower the autosyphon as shown on the next picture by removing the two small pieces of wood and fill the rest of the bottles.

We have made some minor adjustments and of course, you should make the necessary changes to adapt the holder to the size of your carboy.

This system combined with the Bottle Holder you just saw and the numbered labels, allow us to remember which ones are the best bottles to use as gifts or to serve to guests and which ones might have some solids so we can reserve them for our own consumption.

This next picture shows the syphon at its lower position, this is touching the carboy's bottom.




Filling the (Bottle) Void

Problem resolved by this device:

You are ready to get the wine flowing from the carboy to the bottles. The whole setup is in place. You are standing up to reach the autosyphon. With one hand you hold firm; with the other you pump and... nothing happens. The bottle filler's valve is closed.

But the bottle filler is down on the floor inside the empty bottle. This device grabs the bottle filler at the point where it connects with the flexible tube, above the bottle and just with its own weight, pushes the bottle filler down to open the valve and keep it open. Now when you pump the autosyphon, the wine will flow.

Soon after this happens, you pull out the rubber band.

The two pieces of wood will open and you can put it aside and finish bottling.

This next picture shows this device open with the bottle filler and flexible tube in the correct position.