Cellar Dwellers - Home Winemaking

In this episode, we're starting down the home stretch for this year's wine production. Talk turns to final SO2 adjustment, bottling, and labeling. As usual, there's some wine history and more cliches and idioms.

In this episode, Dave Nelsen and The Other Guy (TOG) talk about and actually demonstrate racking. For the record, this show was actually recorded a few months ago when the 2005 vintage required more frequent racking.

Home winemaking step 8 - All about barrels, oak chips and glass. New idioms, malo-lactic fermentation, and more wine history, too.

Home winemaking step 6 - pressing the grapes!!! And plenty of new idioms, as usual.

Dave Nelsen and The Other Guy (TOG) talk for an hour about varieties of yeast, inoculation, and fermentation, which together comprise step 5 of their home winemaking process. They also get deeper into the history of grapes and wine and how they came to the New World (initially via Mexico). As usual, Dave and TOG stumble into a number of idioms.

Dave Nelsen and The Other Guy talk for an hour (unbelievable because it hardly takes that long to actually do it) about the fourth step in home winemaking ? adjusting the must. Topics include making a 10% stock solution of potassium metabisulfate, killing stray yeasts, adding or subtracting acid and sugar, and using yeast nutrients and fruit pectin. The two discuss the origins of more idioms including blackmail, mums the word, and close but no cigar.

Dave Nelsen and The Other Guy discuss the third of fourteen steps for making award-winning wine at home - crushing and destemming your grapes. They also wax eloquent on the evolution of grapes, the discovery of wine, the use of wood and resins in wine, and the ideal temperature for drinking red wine (it is colder than you likely imagine).

Dave Nelsen and The Other Guy dive into the second of fourteen steps for making award-winning wine at home - finding good grapes. They discuss everything from acidity and sugar content, to weights and prices. Dave explains the origins of the expressions (to) toast and the whole nine yards, while The Other Guy talks about in the can.

Dave and The Other Guy dive into the first of fourteen steps for making award-winning wine at home. They discuss everything from the crusher/destemmer to bung hole plugs. Dave talks about his three favorite pieces of equipment, while The Other Guy drinks Pinot Noir.

Dave Nelsen and The Other Guy (TOG) provide a beginning-to-end overview of the home winemaking process. As various reviewers have said: "laugh and learn".