by Carlos Rabassa


As recently as the mid 60s, grape wine was only served in the United States in very fine restaurants and in very few homes, mostly in the homes of immigrants coming from Europe, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. It was the time of the 3-martini business lunches; you can still see them in the old movies but very seldom in the real world.

Let’s talk about this revolution that happened in just about 30 years. Home winemaking is completely up to date with all the changes. We now have a wide choice of better and better wines from all over the world whether we buy them at the liquor store or we make them at home from a kit.

Commercial wine production changed drastically since the 1960s. Until then the only wines accepted internationally came from Europe and South America. The way they were produced had never changed much.

Then California started to compete, Soon many other areas such as Australia, South America and Eastern Europe, collectively known, together with California, as the New World wine regions, became world-class contenders.

The New World producers were open minded and had no problems using their best scientific knowledge and industrial practices to create constantly better products of more reliable quality, year after year.


Home Winemaking

Making wine at home, a very popular hobby in our area, underwent a parallel process of evolution. It went from the original process of buying whatever grapes one could get, pressing them and letting them ferment while praying for the best results, to today’s process which can guarantee the same results time after time.

We are new to making wine at home (75 cases under our belt). As an Engineer, I don’t like activities in which I have little or no control, such as putting grapes to ferment and hoping for the best.

The first secret of good wines is good grapes. The second secret is to harvest them when they are ripe; not a day too early; not a day too late. Since ripe grapes don’t travel well, these first two conditions create a serious challenge for the home winemaker who doesn’t also own a vineyard. Most grapes traditionally available in a large metropolitan area like New York City, were harvested far away, quite before reaching the optimum ripeness, in order to keep them strong for the long trip from the vineyard.

Today, there is an easy solution for the wine maker. We buy grape juices from around the world. The grapes are harvested at the proper time and immediately crushed. The juice is vacuum packed. Now we can choose the variety we want from the region we want, worldwide. Now we can buy a small amount, typically 23 liters. So we don’t have the tremendous job of handling all the grapes needed for a year’s supply of wine. This also means we can buy different types of wine each time.

Today, after finishing bottling our latest batch, we can offer, from our cellar, ten different wines.

There are companies dedicated to the production of yeast to let the home winemaker have full control of the process just as commercial winemakers do. Instead of counting on the traditional process of natural yeasts collecting on the skins of grapes (in addition to all of the other foreign matters deposited), we use the yeast most suitable for the type of wine being produced. This has a great deal to do with the end result.

Since wooden barrels are expensive and difficult to handle, the character given by the wood is introduced using a glass container and adding, for a measured amount of time, a measured quantity of wood chips of the most suitable type of wood.

No more talk; let’s make some wine! We will be glad to pass all our not so secret secrets. After all, most of our knowledge comes from the internet.