Saturday, Sept. 6th: 6-7:30 p.m.
Instructors: Cody Shive and Paul Bauer
Registration: $25
This is an introductory class for those interested in learning how to make wine at home using a pre-packaged wine kit. Anyone can attend this class. Class members will learn the terminology and have a chance to handle some of the equipment that is used to make wine.
We’ll cover the following major topics:
- The winemaking process
- Tools and their use
- Best practices for cleaning and sanitizing
- How to start the wine
- How to “rack” the wine (and why you do it)
- How to bottle and cork
As a class member, you will get a chance to see the equipment you’ll need for making wine. We’ll demonstrate:
- Transferring the wine from the kit to the fermenter
- The Racking process using an auto siphon
- Filling and corking bottles
Class members will be able to sample the following:
- An oxidized wine (it won’t taste good!)
- A wine recently bottled (it will taste young)
- A wine bottled a year ago (ready to drink now)
The wine kit boom, which actually started in the 1970’s, has come a long way. Kits today submit to a high standard for quality and consistency. Making a kit wine today is both easy and fun to do. And the results might surprise you.
About the Instructors:
Paul Bauer has been enjoying the richness of the various wine regions from around the world having traveled across France, Spain, Germany and Italy. His favorite wine books include the early Frank Schoonmaker classic, Encyclopedia of Wine and Hugh Johnson’s The World Atlas of Wine, to the recent Karen MacNeil’s The Wine Bible. Paul’s enjoyment of wine, and all things associated with wine, lead to helping bottle and label wines in several wineries while participating in various grape harvest activities. Considering how he could produce quality wines, yet live in an area not known for its wine production, lead Paul to investigate making wines from kits.
Cody Shive began his wine education when he joined Paul on a trip to Lyon, France where he drove the Burgundy Wine Route (Route des Grands Crus) tasting wines from 9 in the morning until 9 at night. A follower of Andrea (Immer) Robinson, the sommelier well-known for her book Great Wine Made Simple, and Distributor Neal Rosenthal, known for his book Reflections of a Wine Merchant, Cody works to combine aspects of high-quality wine and a value base. Making wine from kits was a logical progression, as it allowed Cody to manipulate certain aspects of the process to produce custom wines that were either equivalent to or better than commercial wines at a fraction of the cost.
After Cody and Paul made a few kits, they decided to take a “wine-making from kits” class (just to make sure they were covering all the bases). Afterward, they combined what they’d learned first-hand with some tips gleaned from the class to create a more comprehensive “How-To” seminar.
To date, Cody and Paul have produced over 15 kit wines ranging from bold Malbec/Shiraz to Sauvignon Blanc. At this writing, Paul just completed his most recent kit, a Viognier — Pinot Gris blend from Australia, and Cody has a Stag’s Leap District Merlot and a South African Shiraz in various stages of production.
