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January 2003
Dan’s Cellar Notes
Are Wine Kits
Any Good?
I began making wines about 20 years ago. My first few dozen batches were made the old fashioned way. I made arrangements with a man who grew wine grapes. He would call me when he thought the grapes were ready to be picked, and I usually had no more than 24 hours to get up to his vineyard and pick them—otherwise he would have sold them to someone else, or the birds would have gotten them. I would arrive at the vineyard early in the morning, along with others who had ordered the variety that was being picked that day, and we would pick until we had filled our orders. Then we all lined up at the crusher and helped each other with the crushing and de-stemming—all the while sampling the previous year’s wines. If the grapes were for white wines, we next lined up at the press. If we were making reds, then we would be back in a week to ten days, following primary fermentation, to press the grapes.
After pressing, we helped clean up all the equipment, hauled the grape skins back to the vineyard to be scattered among the rows, and then went home to work into the late hours testing and correcting the must, sanitizing our fermenters, and pitching the yeast. Within the week, the call would come: another variety had reached critical ripeness, and I’d be off to do it all again. In the spring, the winegrower would call on his customers to come out to the vineyard to prune, or to help set new grafts, etc. There is always work to do in a vineyard, and that was the price and, to some extent, the joy of making wine. But I had a profession that was becoming increasingly demanding. My grape supplier told me he was going to tear out the vines, because tending the vineyard was getting to be too much work for his advancing years. I was heartsick, but, at the same time, relieved, It was becoming harder and harder for me to devote the time and attention that winemaking requires during certain times of the year.
When shopping at The Weekend Brewer for brewing supplies, I couldn’t help but notice the numerous wine kits in the store. I often asked about them, but I was convinced they would be a waste of my time. After all, I had made plenty of real wine. Nonetheless, a few years ago, I began reading and surfing the web to learn more about making wine from kits. I really wanted to get back into the hobby, but I could find nobody willing to sell good quality wine grapes locally. From what I could tell, the general feeling “out there” about kit wines was mixed. Some folks were convinced that very good wines could be made from kits. Others thought that while decent ordinary wine could be made cheaply from kits, the good stuff still had to be made “from scratch.” Others, less charitable, had nothing good to say about kits. I got on several “chat groups” to discuss wines from kits, and I found some pretty knowledgeable folks speaking quite highly of them. Maybe the critics were just plain wrong!
To be fare, the wine kit industry has changed amazingly in the past few years. While Canadians have had access to good kits somewhat longer, there were few or no premium or super-premium kits generally available here in the States until recently. Most “kits” were really just cans of concentrate, often made from the cheapest Sacramento Valley hot-country grapes. These were concentrated by a high-temperature process that baked the juice and drove off all the volatile flavor and aroma compounds. New technologies have led to low temperature, high-vacuum concentration processes. Higher-end kits now employ quantities of non-concentrate juice to improve aromatics. Extensive testing has gone into more recent products, with kit designs oriented to a much more sophisticated wine-drinking public. Or so says all the advertising and industry PR.
I decided to try it. I picked up a four-week kit from The Weekend Brewer, and I made it. It was good; much better than I expected. But it wasn’t great by a long shot. It was, however, good enough to convince me to try some of the middle-or high-end products. At that time The Weekend Brewer also had access to pure, pressed, frozen juice from Italy. I ordered and received a six-gallon bucket of “Barolo” from the Canadian Company Mosti Mondiale. I really don’t know if the juice came from Barolo, but I assumed, at least, it was principally Nebbiolo from the Italian Piedmont region. After it had thawed, I tested and corrected Brix and Ph, and pitched yeast and some nutrient. It made some very good wine! But that was real juice, not a kit. To compare, I also bought a kit labeled “Barbaresco” from Brew King’s Selection International Series. Presumably, this wine contained juice (and concentrate) also from Italian Piedmont Nebbiolo grapes. While I didn’t follow Brew King’s instructions precisely, the kit made a very, very nice wine that was true to style. In fact, I liked it better than the Barolo made from pure juice, though each had nice characteristics. Eventually, I blended these wines, and a bottle recently won a Silver medal in an international competition.
Success breeds success, and so I began to make lots of wines from high-end kits. As you can no doubt guess, my answer to the question that is at the head of this column, is a qualified and exuberant “Yes!” The exuberance comes from my ever-growing cellar of really enjoyable wines made from kits. The “qualified” comes from a bit less enthusiasm for most of the cheaper kits, and for wines made by strictly following instructions provided by the manufacture. I have made a few more so-called four-week kits, and some of them have made decent wines. Many of my friends actually prefer those wines, because they tend to be designed to produce styles similar to many mass-market, general appeal wines…wines I often don’t really care for. Yes. I am a bit of a wine snob, I’ll admit. The so-called six-week kits, especially the 16-liter top-of-the-line kits, make wine as good as or better than any I could make from most Virginia grapes.
My assessment is bolstered by the results of Winemaker Magazine’s first-ever International Amateur Winemaking Competition, results of which should appear in their next issue. There was a total of 807 entries from throughout North America, judged by 27 experts, in 162 individual flights. Wines were judged by points against standards, rather than by competing for rankings. The judges awarded over 400 medals. Of these, approximately one-quarter of the awards went to wines made from kits, concentrates, or proprietary stabilized musts. This number is even more impressive when one considers the large number of categories for which there are no kits available to compete, including many Native American and French-American Hybrid varietals, meads, etc.
Kits shined in many of the big varietals and blends categories, such as Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling, Pinot Noir, Bordeaux-style, Late Harvest and Ice Wine, etc. A few medals went to some of the long-established canned concentrates, such as Alexander’s Sun Country, and a few were awarded to some 4-week kit wines. The really big winners, though, were the premium and super-premium offerings from a handful of kit makers; such as Brew King. In fact, Brew King really swept the field with winners from its entire line, but especially from their top-of-the-line selections. By my count, R.J. Spagnols placed a distant, but nonetheless impressive, second, with small numbers of showings by a field including Wine Art, Alexander's, and Vineco (which generally available in Canada only).
Are kits any good? You bet! And I have 2 Gold's, a Silver, and 2 Bronzes to prove it!
Next month: Do I have to follow the directions in my wine kit?