The Wine Maker's Toy Store®

Bringing family and friends together...One sip at a time!

Welcome to Pressing News, the monthly newsletter published by Fine Vine Wines, LLC, designed exclusively to assist the home vintner in the pursuit of their hobby!

THIS MONTH ON THE VINE!

WELCOME

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to Fine Vine Wines, LLC, "The Wine Maker's Toy Store". Whether you need home wine making or home brewing products or just need information, we are here to serve you. I want to extend my thanks again for making The Wine Maker's Toy Store your home for your wine making and beer brewing needs. It continues to be my hope that every time you visit our web site or retail store, you find something of value.

As a reminder, we continue to add products and content to the web site; therefore, if you have any special requests, please let us know. We like to hear what you have to say about our site, our products and/or our customer service, good or bad. Please send your comments and/or suggestions to winemaster@finevinewines.com.

ANNIVERSARY SALE!

We would like to thank each of you for your continued support of The Wine Maker's Toy Store. As a result, we have survived the first three years of our existence and are now positioned to move forward into our next phase of growth. To express our gratitude for those of you that have stuck with us through our growing pains and helped us to become one of the premier home wine making stores, we have 2 specials this month:

1. For all of you in our FVW Growers Club, we are increasing your normal discount from 5% to 10% during the entire month of June. That's right, you get 10% off the top for every order placed during the month of June.
2. For all of our customers, we are increasing the multi-kit discount for June to 10%. You pay full price for the most expensive kit, then you get 10% off ALL additional kits you purchase on the same order. This also applies if you buy 2 of the same kit. You pay full price for one and get 10% off the second. This is a great opportunity to keep your wine production up during the summer to have plenty of wine to enjoy this winter and have on hand for Christmas gifts.

WINESTOCK - REVISITED!

For those of you that came to our first Winestock, "Thank you very much for helping to make it a huge success." For those that could not make it, "You missed a great time!".

Based on the feedback I have received from our event, the opportunity to listen to Tim Vandergrift and have the opportunity to meet so many other wine makers more than compensated for my inexperience in hosting events. The biggest complaint that I received was from the police officers I had to hire for the wine tasting. They complained that everyone was so well mannered that they had trouble staying awake and were looking forward to the next job with a bunch of young adults!

The festivities started Friday night with a wine tasting. At last count, we had over 150 bottles of home made wine. Some wine makers brought more than one bottle! We had wine from kits and wine from fresh ingredients. The fresh ingredient wines included grapes, lilacs, raspberry, blueberry and honey (Mead), among others. The mistake I made was to not check the bottles in and number them so we could take notes and remember what we drank. Next year, we will do this and provide notebooks to all.

On Saturday, Tim Vandergrift from Winexpert conducted the seminar. He was excellent and I think everyone came away with more knowledge about wine making in general and a better understanding of how much effort Winexpert expends to make sure EVERY Winexpert kit turns into a wonderful bottle of wine. I also think those in attendance understand why I prefer the Winexpert brand!

The filter demonstration on Saturday afternoon was also outstanding and I am now convinced that filtering is the way to make sure you have a beautiful bottle of wine. My thanks to LD Carlson for providing Joe Ohm for this demonstration, as well as, Nancy Ohm, Account Specialist and David Stuart, National Sales Manager.

To both Winexpert and LD Carlson, I would like to extend my most heartfelt thanks. I would also like to thank Kurt and Scott (Masta) for their assistance, as well as, the Polish Wine Princess, who will go unnamed. I would be remiss to not thank my wife, brother Mark and his wife, Sue for their help. I would also like to thank each of you that attended for their support. Without all of you, I would not be able to have so much fun everyday.

I have started on next years event and am open to all ideas. Please send me your comments as to what you would like to see covered and what I do to improve next year's event. Send your comments to geocorn@finevinewines.com.

WINEMAKER MAGAZINE AND HWBTA AWARDS

The annual awards from WineMaker Magazine and HWBTA (Home Wine and Beer Trade Association) are in! Not only did one of our customers win the Best of Show Mead, we also had other customers also receive 4 golds, 5 silvers and 5 bronze medals. Here is the list of winners:

BOTTLING PARTY - FIRST EVENT AT THE RETAIL STORE

Mark your calendars! On June 25, 2006, we will have a bottling party from noon to 5pm. We have 11 carboys begging to be bottled, so we thought we would give you the opportunity to help, see how we bottle our wine and try out some new toys. In exchange for your assistance, you will get to take home one bottle of each type of wine that you help bottle. To make sure we have plenty of room, we are asking that you sign up for this event. Please give us a call at 1-866-417-1114 to let us know you would like to attend.

Our next event will be later in the summer and we will make a kit wine. This will be a great opportunity to bring any of your friends and/or relatives that might be interested in wine making. Check next month's newsletter for complete details, including time and date.

CUSTOMER REFERAL PROGRAM

In case you missed it, we have a customer referral program that provides additional discounts to registered users. We will give you a coupon worth 10% of the first order placed by any person that you refer to our web site. The stipulations are as follows:

That's all you have to do to get another discount from finevinewines.com.

CUSTOMER APPRECIATION PROGRAM - FVW GROWERS CLUB

Please check out our FVW Growers Club. You can get all of the details on our web site, but the bottom line is we want to buy your loyalty! Once you spend $500 with us, you get a 5% discount (10% in June 2006) on everything you buy from us. Find out more on the web site.

FORUM

When you have a question or just want to learn more about wine making, don't forget our forum! We have 389 registered users, including some extremely knowledgeable wine makers with loads of valuable information and willing to assist you in your wine making needs. As of the printing of this newsletter, we have over 19,000 posts. We also have 4 moderators and an administrator. Responses to most posts are made within minutes.

Whether you are an expert or a novice, it is an excellent place to ask questions, exchange ideas and meet other home wine makers. If you haven't logged into the forum, try it sometime. I think you will find it most informative and enjoyable, as well as, a great place to meet fellow wine makers. We are also known to have a contest or two only available to forum members.

FEATURED ARTICLE - SULFITES: LOVE EM' HATE EM' NEED EM'?

In home wine making there are as many opinions about the use of sulfites as there are carboys. Some winemakers love em', adding Campden Tablets at every racking to ensure a wine that will age for the next 150 years. Routinely bathing hydrometers, thermometers, carboys and anything else that touch their wine, with sulfites. Other winemakers hate em', taking a more holistic wine making approach and shunning anything foreign, anything man-made. Making wine with off flavors that add "complexity" and are at risk of spoilage if not consumed within just a few months. Between these two extremes lies the reality of sulfites, to make consistent quality wine with a clean balanced taste you NEED EM'. Yes, we need them but with a gentle and balanced hand. This is where science and art mix, where the "love em' " and the "hate em'" crowd can find common ground to both make quality wine. In this article I am going to discuss this common ground. The science in using sulfites is easily defined, but it is up to you, the winemaker, to define the art.

Sulfites are nothing new to mankind. Ancient Egyptians used sulfites for disinfecting wine vessels; monks used sulfite in wine making as a preservative. This strange substance has been responsible for perfect wines and wines that are nothing more than science experiments gone awry. But what exactly is a sulfite and what does it do? For wine making, sulfites are broken into two categories, bound and free. Free sulfites come in the form of sulfurous acid, H2 SO3, or "molecular sulfite." It is this sulfite that has the ability to cross cell walls and destroy unwanted bacteria or bind with oxygen to prevent oxidation of the wine. If your grapes are infected with Botrytis, free sulfite can bind with gluconic acid to minimize its effects. The amount of free sulfites is also completely dependant upon the wine's pH. The higher the wine's pH the lower amount of free sulfite available to protect it. Federal regulations permit a maximum of 350 ppm of total sulfite in wine, but prudent winemakers will add the minimum necessary to achieve its antioxidant and anti microbial effects. What is that level and how do you get there?

Sulfites are commonly added two ways. The first is crushing Campden Tablets; the second is adding a measured amount of Potassium metabisulfite, known as K-meta. For this discussion we will examine the uses of K-meta in home wine making Winemakers who routinely measure their free sulfite levels will say that 40-ppm will protect their wine in the bottle from micro-organisms that can cause off odors and flavors. In the case of primary fermentation, if moldy or damaged fruit is used, this 40-ppm may not get the job done. On the front of LD Carlson's 2 oz. jar of K-meta they recommend .67 grams of k-meta per gallon of must to kill wild yeast. This works out to a sulfite concentration of 100 ppm. During primary fermentation, if making a kit wine, just follow the directions. If making a wine from fruit or juice, then things can be a bit tricky. Still the 40-ppm in the bottle is a great benchmark, but how do we get there?

To accurately determine the sulfite in your wine you will need a few tools. These tools can be found in George's on-line catalog. The first is Titrets from Chemetrics. You get ten tests to determine the ppm between 10 and 100. This kit is more accurate with white wines then red so your reds will have to be diluted to determine the sulfite level. For reds use a 50% dilution and watch for color change from blue to red, note this point and multiply the results by 2 to get the free sulfite level. To make this test more accurate you will also need the Titrettor accessory pack. This is a holder for the Titrets and allows better control while testing. The second tool is "Precision" pH control paper. This is paper that when dipped in a solution will give its approximate pH. PH levels depend on the style of wine. As a general rule of thumb use 3.2 for sweet, 3.4 for white and 3.6 for reds as a baseline in determining how much K-meta to add. You should target a free sulfite concentration 25% higher for each 0.1 pH increase above this baseline. Also pick up a small scale or medical grade teaspoon measurer for measuring out precise amounts of K-meta. The small scale works best but we are going to use the teaspoon measurer for this exercise. Now that we have all our components ready to go, what do we do with them? Take a moment to get comfortable, maybe pour another glass of your favorite homemade wine because here comes the MATH.

Lets make a couple of assumptions. The first is that you added some K-meta to the must 24 hours before pitching the yeast, lets say 1/4 teaspoon of K-meta for a 5-gallon batch. You've done your first racking from the primary to the carboy; your wine is clearing nicely and its time for another racking. Your first step should be to draw a sample and test with a pH strip. Then test with the Titrets kit. Lets say it's a white wine with a pH of 3.8 and sulfite at 20 ppm. If we are shooting for the 40-ppm sulfite benchmark then we will need to add enough K-meta to bring the sulfite up to 80 ppm. Remember the effect that pH has on sulfite: (3.8pH - 3.4 pH) = .4 pH difference...(.4 x 10) = 4...(4 x 25%) = 100%. So to get the effect of 40 ppm of sulfite in a wine we will need to achieve 100% more then 40 ppm, which is 80 ppm. If the wine had a 3.6 pH then it would look like this (3.6 - 3.4) = .2 pH...(.2 x 10) = 2...(2 x 25%) = 50%. So to get the effect of 40 ppm we would have to achieve 50% more or 60 ppm. Now lets compensate for the 20-ppm of sulfite already contained in the wine.

This is a pretty simple formula if you understand what the values mean. The basic formula is (ppm needed x liters of wine) divided by 0.57, if using K-meta. PPM in the equation is in decimal form, 60 ppm would be .060. To find out how many liters you have take the number of gallons times 3.785 liters per gallon. Five gallons of wine equals 19 liters. K-meta contains approximately 57% sulfite; this is where the 0.57 comes from. So using the first example above we start with 20 ppm. We need to add 60 ppm to get to the recommended 80 ppm based on the pH. Our equation now looks like this (.060 x 19) divided by .57 = 2 grams of K-meta. So if you had a scale you would measure out 2 grams of K-meta, dissolve it in water, add it to your wine then rack. If you are like me and do not have a scale its time to take out the trusty measuring spoon and do some more math.

K-meta averages 5.5 grams to 6.3 grams per teaspoon. I am going to use the lower end of 5.5 grams to do this math. All you do is take the amount of grams needed, in this case 2 grams of K-meta, and divide it by 5.5 grams per teaspoon. You come up with .3636 teaspoon or approximately 1/3 of a teaspoon.

The 40-ppm is a general rule of thumb. Next month we will discuss specific ranges of sulfites for a given wine. We will also determine sulfite levels in various wines, some store bought and some homemade.

I hope you have found this useful and informative.

Matt Secor

My references are:

Fine Vine Wines web site

Home Wine making Step by Step by Jon Iverson

WineMaker Magazine

A study conducted by Alan T. Bakalinsky :  Why are wine yeasts resistant to sulfite?

For writing this featured article, Matt will receive a $100 gift certificate from The Wine Maker's Toy Store. I am always looking for people to write featured articles and I will give you a $100 gift certificate from The Wine Maker's Toy Store if you summit an article that I use in my newsletter. Just send me your article and when it appears in Pressing News, the gift certificate is yours.

TOYS OF THE MONTH

Due to numerous "suggestions", we now include the bag de-capper in every wine ingredients starter package. These are like "church keys" for your wine juice bag and reduces the wear and tear on your hands and nerves. We are going to lower the price to $2.50 for those of you that did not get one with your starter package or a free one at Winestock. At the end of the month, this handy little gadget's price will go up to $3.99. If you make many wine kits, this is a "must have" item.

Part Number	Image	Description	Regular Price	Current Price	Order
9989		Bag De-Capper Great tool for removing the cap from the bag of concentrate.	$3.99	$2.50	Order

NEW PRODUCTS

Winexpert has released its fourth Crushendo, the Catellina Supertuscan Di Siena. This kit will be in the store on Friday, June 2, 2006. See the Wine of the Month section in this newsletter for more information.

To see these new products, as well as, all of the new products added last month, go to our New Products Page.

If you are looking for a product that I do not carry, my primary distributor is LD Carlson and you can see their complete product list at their public catalog. If you find anything you would like me to add, please let me know.

CALL US!

If you have any questions about our products, our service and/or wine making, please call us. We are not Corporate America! We are here to serve you. I bring this up, because a number of my callers apologize for bothering me or using my toll-free line. You are definitely not bothering me and I have a toll-free line so you WILL call me.

Sometimes, I am unable to answer the phone. If you get the voice mail, please leave your name, number, brief message and a best time to call. I will return your call as soon as I can. I now have the Company Line forwarded to my cell phone when I am not in the store. As a result, I am now available almost 24-7. I do need to sleep!

If you don't want to call, just send me an email. I usually answer my email daily. In addition, your emails and/or calls do not have to relate to wine. I will discuss any topic you like, so please remember, I am your resource and I am here for you.

WINE OF THE MONTH

Anyone who has considered a Crushendo, but needed a little encourage, Winexpert has created a special offer for you. Any Crushendo purchased during the month of June will receive 4-glass set of 18 ounce oversized stemware (retail value $19.99). In addition, this offer is on top of our anniversary sale, so not only do you get the additional discounts, you get a free set of stemware.

The Crushendo kits include a 2.5 liter grape pack that adds additional body, flavor and tannins. These kits produce outstanding wines in as little as 3 months, but will improve in quality for up to 5 years. This is as close as you can get to a fresh grape wine without the fuss of dealing with de-stemming, crushing and pressing your grapes. All I can add is, "if you have not tried one of these kits, you definitely don't know what you are missing.

Part Number	Image	Description	Brand	Regular Price	Current Price	Order
3117		Castellina Supertuscan Di Siena A bold, yet supple wine, expansive enough to be consumed with great pleasure, the big, smoky, earthy nose of ultra-ripe cherry and currant fruit is followed by a richly tannic finish.	Winexpert Selection Estate	$129.99	$129.99 Plus 4 Wine Glasses	Order
3112		Crushendo Santa Ynez Valley Syrah This wine has room-filling aromas of blackberry, smoke, plum, "jammy" fruit and even a hint of black pepper spiciness lurking in the intense velvety tannins.	Winexpert Selection Estate	$129.99	$129.99 Plus 4 Wine Glasses	Order
3114		Crushendo Corvina Classico di Veneto Corvina Classico has lush, intriguing aromas of ripe red cherries and raspberries, delicate hints of almond, toast and spice and a richly tannic finish that leaves the fruit lingering on your palate.	Winexpert Selection Estate	$129.99	$129.99 Plus 4 Wine Glasses	Order
3116		Crushendo Montagnac Vieux Chateau d’Oc. This is a bold wine, ruby red in color with a deep, dark plum and blackberry bouquet showing subtle accents of chocolate with a hint of spiciness that follows through with a firm, tannic finish on the palate.	Winexpert Selection Estate	$129.99	$129.99 Plus 4 Wine Glasses	Order

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

We appreciate all of your comments, whether good or bad. To demonstrate our commitment to outstanding customer service, I have created a web page with your feedback. As we receive emails that comment about our service, I will post them on this page.

NEWSLETTER SPECIALS

To reward those of you that take the time to read our newsletter every month, we are adding a newsletter special. We promise to offer an outstanding value each month via this feature and this special pricing will only be available through a link from the current month's newsletter. A link to the newsletter special will appear somewhere in the newsletter.

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