Everyone has heard that California has been in a drought. It seems like we are always in a drought. Even when it rains, we are in a drought. In fact, according to water.ca.gov California seems to be in a drought
You probably have heard of a wine being corked. I was out with some friends the other night, and they were in a heated battle about whether you should return a corked bottle or not. How do you know it
Before we can get into what pump overs and punch downs are, we need to discuss why they are necessary. During fermentation, the yeast are consuming the sugar in the fruit. The result is the production of alcohol YEAH! and
You may have heard of the term lees when it comes to wine. The discussion of lees is much more prevalent in white and sparkling wine production. Lees play a very important role in wine aromatics, flavor and mouthfeel. If
In the very organic chemistry sense.. Which I hate.. A pyrazine is a heterocyclic aromatic organic compound with the chemical formula C4H4N2 . So what does that mean?! It is a very long term that means that the compound has at
Tannins play an important role in wine. Along with acid, they provide the backbone to the wine. They are an contributing factor to determining if a wine can be aged or should be consumed young. But before we get into
Cold stabilization is a term you may have heard about but may not completely understand. It is somewhat down the science geekiness rabbit hole of winemaking. If a wine is not cold stabilized, when it is put into cold temperatures,
lI have discussed the concept of fermentation on several occasions. It is the process by which the yeast consumes the sugar within the grape and converts it to alcohol. There are over 1,000 types of yeast, but in the case
In a previous Get Live I discussed the concept of Chaptalization. If you missed that post I explained that chaptalization is the adding a sugar to a fermenting wine in order to help raise the alcohol level and to increase
This is one of my favorite topics. There are so many things that are true marketing ploys in the wine world and unfortunately, many people take them as truth. Depending on what country you are in, there are specific regulations
