Alison Crowe - The Wine Makers Answer Book: Solutions to Every Problem; Answers to Every Question

THE WINE MAKERS
ANSWER BOOK

Solutions to Every Problem
Answers to Every Question

Alison Crowe

Columnist for
Wine Maker.

The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by
publishing practical information that encourages
personal independence in harmony with the environment.

Edited by Lisa H. Hiley and Margaret Sutherland

Technical editing by Daniel Pambianchi

Art direction and text design by Vicky Vaughn

Cover design by Kent Lew

Text production by Jennifer Jepson Smith

Illustrations by Alison Kolesar

Indexed by Susan Olason, Indexes & Knowledge Maps

2007 by WineMaker magazine

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce illustrations in a review with appropriate credits; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other without written permission from the publisher.

The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are made without guarantee on the part of the author or Storey Publishing. The author and publisher disclaim any liability in connection with the use of this information. For additional information please contact Storey Publishing, 210 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA 01247.

Storey books are available for special premium and promotional uses and for customized editions. For further information, please call 1-800-793-9396.

Printed in China by Regent Publishing Services

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Crowe, Alison.

The Winemakers answer book / by Alison Crowe.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-58017-656-9 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Wine and wine making. I. WineMaker. II. Title.

TP548.C695 2007

641.22dc22

2006102591

DEDICATION

For my grandmothers, Mary Hartley Crowe and Bernice Blythe Michel

Ranch managers, world travelers, master gardeners, expert chefs, and California pioneers, they taught me a womans place is doing whatever she sets her mind to.

I greatly enjoy lending my winemaking knowledge and experience to the readers of WineMaker magazine, but at the end of the day (sometimes at 2:00 A.M. with grapes in my hair), I live and work as a professional winemaker. I owe heartfelt thanks to many who have contributed to my career. I am grateful for the friendship of Dr. Andy Waterhouse, Dr. Jim Lapsley, Dr. Roger Boulton, Dr. Ralph Kunkee, and Dr. Jim Wolpert at the UC-Davis Department of Viticulture & Enology. I also have had the fortune to log long and hard hours with some of the worlds most talented winemakers, including Michael Michaud, Eric Laumann, Don Blackburn, Randall Grahm, Laureano Gomez, and Michel Rolland. Their life lessons, from Mozarts sonatas to Argentine BBQ, go well beyond wine.

I also want to thank my winemaking colleagues and neighbors Jef Stebben, SaDawna McCart-Stebben, Carol Wilson, Sunshine Gladish-Cowgill, Bruce Devlin, Danielle Cyrot, Haydn Wilson, and Nicole Haller-Wilson. Winemakers and wine appreciators, they remind me to stop and smell not just the Cabernet Sauvignon but the roses as well. Elizabeth Hoff, Hope Thrane, Jim Baird, Susan Andersen, and Maureen Foley, as well as editors past and present at the Davis Enterprise, Vineyard & Winery Management, and Wine Business Monthly have all helped me tremendously. Brad Ring of Wine-Maker and Lisa Hiley of Storey Publishing, along with their staffs, have been the real superheroes of this book.

Lastly and most importantly, I thank my husband, photographer Chris Purdy, and the Crowe and Purdy families for their love and support.

When will my fermentation stop? Why did my fermentation stop? The one thing I can count on as publisher of WineMaker magazine is that my e-mail in-box will have questions each day from wine-makers asking for help and looking for answers. Making your own wine is an incredibly fun and fulfilling hobby, but it comes with a host of questions. Some questions are obvious ones we all will face in our winemaking pursuits, while others pop up only when something has gone horribly wrong with our latest batch. And, of course, there are questions that are just plain strange, such as one asking about making wine from Sprite soda. All of these questions are important to ask and answer because they help build a greater base of knowledge among winemakers, which results in a more successful and more satisfying hobby for each of us.

When WineMaker magazine launched in 1998, we realized from the start the value and importance of seeking out reader questions and answering them in each issue. We were lucky to bring Alison Crowe on board as our Wine Wizard right from the premier issue to answer all those questions. Fresh out of the renowned enology program at the University of California-Davis, Alison brought a wealth of wisdom as well as a sense of humor to her answers. Since then, Alison has answered literally hundreds of questions spanning the world of winemaking.

Winemakers cant seem to get enough of Alisons Q&A department. Each year we send out our annual reader survey and each year readers tell us their favorite department in the magazine is the Wine Wizard because of the variety of questions and the depth of answers it provides each issue. The Wine Wizard Question of the Week section of winemakermag.com is among the most visited areas of our Web site. Simply put, winemakers have lots of questions and love reading Alisons answers.

The funny thing is few people knew Alison was the Wine Wizard. Like the identity of most superheroes, we decided it would be fun to keep her true identity as the Wine Wizard a secret. So for eight years, Alison shared her wisdom anonymously with readers on top of her daily duties as a professional winemaker in California. Not even her coworkers and friends in the wine industry knew of her secret double life as winemaker by day and wizard by night. Well, now the secret is out and Alisons best work has been collected here in this book for you.

Eight years worth of the best questions from small-scale wine-makers are in the following pages. These are real questions from real winemakers like you; learn from their mistakes. Alisons answers will expand your understanding of wine and winemaking no matter if you are a first-time winemaker or a knowledgeable veteran with many harvests under your belt.

So enjoy as the Master of Must, the Sultan of Siphon, the Great One of Grapes, the one and only Wine Wizard answers common and some not-so-common winemaking questions. You will definitely learn more about making super wine from this superhero.

Brad Ring, Publisher, WineMaker magazine

Winemaking is equally a science and an art. That is really why I ventured, as a 17-year-old college freshman, into the world of winemaking. I wanted to devote my life to a field that would keep me firmly rooted in the sciences chemistry, biology, agriculture and yet allow me to channel my love of the arts. Pursuing a winemaking career, starting with a degree from the University of California-Davis Department of Viticulture & Enology while working summers at wineries around California, seemed like the perfect choice.