letsmake.wine
Home winemaking and wine appreciation.
6-Gallon Merlot Kit
Wine kits are the easiest entry point into home winemaking. A pre-balanced juice concentrate plus yeast and ad…
Blackberry Country Wine
Country wines made from non-grape fruit are the home-winemaking tradition that predates modern kits. Blackberr…
Simple Grape Red (Juice Pail)
Pre-pressed varietal juice pails are the natural next step after kit wines. You get the structure and aromatic…
Traditional Mead
Mead — fermented honey water — is the oldest fermented beverage on record, predating both grape wine and beer.…
Still Hard Cider
Cider sits between wine and beer: fermented fruit juice with low ABV and no malt. A still farmhouse cider is o…
Blackberry Melomel (Fruit Mead)
Melomel is mead fermented with fruit. Blackberry is a classic combination — the dark fruit balances the honey'…
Metheglin (Spiced Mead)
Metheglin is the historic name for spiced mead — the word likely shares roots with the Welsh medicinal mead me…
Bochet (Caramelized Mead)
Bochet is medieval mead made by caramelizing the honey before fermentation. Cooking the honey for 30-90 minute…
Strawberry Country Wine
Strawberry wine is a classic country wine that punches above its weight at festivals and farmers' markets. The…
Peach Country Wine
Peach wine is one of the trickier fruit wines — peaches are pectin-heavy and slow to clear, and the delicate s…
Plum Country Wine
Plum wine sits between fruit wine and country red — the ripe stone fruit gives plenty of color, body, and tann…
Raspberry Country Wine
Raspberry country wine is bright, fragrant, and one of the easier soft-fruit projects. Don't over-press the fr…
Dandelion Country Wine
Dandelion wine is the classic American country-wine project — Ray Bradbury wrote a novella about it. Pick the …
Elderberry Country Wine
Elderberry wine is the British country-winemaking benchmark — deep, tannic, age-worthy, and the closest thing …
Rhubarb Country Wine
Rhubarb wine is a midwestern classic with one critical safety rule: rhubarb leaves are toxic and must be disca…
Ginger Country Wine
Ginger wine has a long English country-wine tradition; Stone's Original Green Ginger is the commercial benchma…
Hibiscus Country Wine
Hibiscus wine — also called sorrel wine in the Caribbean and bissap in West Africa — is a vivid magenta countr…
Dry English Cider
Traditional dry English cider uses tannic bittersweet and bittersharp apples (Kingston Black, Yarlington Mill,…
Sweet New England Cider
New England cider — traditional applejack base — bumps ABV into wine territory by adding brown sugar and raisi…
Hopped Cider
Hopped cider is a modern American cross — dry-hop a finished cider with aromatic hop varieties (Citra, Mosaic,…
6-Gallon Cabernet Sauvignon Kit
Cabernet Sauvignon kits demand a bit more patience than Merlot kits — the structured tannin and oak character …
6-Gallon Pinot Noir Kit
Pinot Noir kit wine is harder to nail than Cabernet — the grape's delicacy doesn't survive the concentration-a…
6-Gallon Chardonnay Kit
Chardonnay kits take to oak handling well — most premium kits include oak chips for a buttery, vanilla-tinged …
6-Gallon Sauvignon Blanc Kit
Sauvignon Blanc kits need cool fermentation more than any other common kit. Aromatics — gooseberry, grapefruit…
Small-Batch Hand-Crushed Grape (5 gal)
The traditional foot-stomp small-batch grape harvest — closer to medieval winemaking than to anything you do w…
Pyment (Grape-Juice Mead)
Pyment is the historical name for mead made with grape juice — recorded as far back as the medieval period. Mo…
White Grape Pét-Nat (Méthode Ancestrale)
Pétillant naturel — pet-nat — is the simplest sparkling method and the riskiest. You bottle live wine before p…
6-Gallon Red Blend (GSM-style Kit)
Red-blend kits — typically marketed as GSM-style, Bordeaux-style, or super-Tuscan-style — combine multiple gra…