Crush Your Red Wine Competition: How to Make Award-Winning Wine at Home

Epic Halls of Vinehalla © 2017 WineGrapesDirect All Rights Reserved, Artist Contact: jsbeaird@gmail.com

Many winemakers can be frustrated by competitions and befuddled why their much beloved wines did not bring home those elusive shiny gold discs to proudly display. We are going to set aside Winemaking 101 and dive right into the strategies needed to help you achieve your gilded dreams of winemaking glory, and finally set you on the path to the epic Halls of Vinehalla.

1. Make Big Wines

2. Extract as Much as Possible

3. Buy the Best Wine Grapes and Juice Available Online at WineGrapesDirect.com

4. Make Lots of Wine and Blend Up

5. Enter them All

6. Taste Award Winning Wine

Big Wines Win Big and Don’t You Forget it!

That’s right my friends, you might love your low-alcohol/nuanced wine that is a treasure when given careful attention, but the judge’s attention is limited and you need to punch them in the face with your wine just to get the time of day. Your wine needs to leave a giant flavor filled mark they will remember. What sort of wine leaves such a mark? For starters, the wine should be at 14% to 15% alcohol, dark in color, with the tannin, acid, and flavor to back it up. Essentially, if you’re going to have high alcohol, you need to balance that attention-getting facet against other structural supports for your wine to stand on. Now, how do you achieve big flavor and dark color?

Extract, Extract, Extract!….Oh One More Thing, Extract!

Don’t be cautious when it comes to extracting flavor and color from the grapes. You’re looking to make a huge wine, so kick your extraction into fifth gear and throw the cupboard of tools and tricks at your wine. Lucky for you, you purchased frozen grape must from WineGrapesDirect, so your frozen wine grapes get a safe and effective cold soak. Traditional cold soaks can be risky and offer debatable benefits, but it is well demonstrated that freezing grapes actually breaks down some of the skin cell walls, releasing beneficial phenolics into the wine. You were also provided extra tannin, Opti-Red, and nutrients to produce a clean wine with more stable color. But there is more if you ask for it. We can provide you with the enzyme Lallzyme EX upon request! This ingredient breaks down the skin walls of the grapes even further, opening them up and allowing more color and the flavors within to infuse in your wine. Lallzyme EX is powerful, can’t be mixed immediately after certain additives like tannin, and instructions must be followed carefully. The enzyme will also lower your final yield, as it increases the amount of sediment. Be sure your fermentation achieves a temperature at least in the 80s F, as the heat will extract color and flavor just like with a tea bag in warm water. Finally, really draw out the fermentation as long as the wine is protected by a cap of skins and gas. The longer your wine sits on the skins, the more extraction you achieve! Towards the final stages of your fermentation, you need to be a gentle Zen master at slowly tapping down the must cap without breaking through. However, before you extract, you must pick the right grapes for extraction.

Where are the Best Wine Grapes, Must, and Juice Available for Sale to Home Winemakers Online to Make Wine That Will Win Competitions?

Right here at WineGrapesDirect.com of course! Flavor-driven grape must and juice is our forte, our passion, and our requirement in every pail. Buying wine grapes, juice, must or other products like concentrate online can be a shot in the dark with much of the who, how, when, where and other important information left unanswered. Alas, these unanswered questions can often create disappointing wines with lackluster everything. At WineGrapesDirect.com, you can view the vineyards via video, see the grapes close up with pictures, and have all the facts including approximate chemistry, date and year picked, soil type, and viticultural region. You can rest assured knowing that the grapes were carefully selected and not picked until they were drenching in flavor and ripe for extraction. Now, what wine grape varietals should you pick?

Buy and Make as Much Wine as Possible

When it comes time to blend and polish your award-winning wine, you will need options and lots of them. Most competitions only require that your wine be 80% of a single varietal to qualify for each competition category. So that’s 20% of space for you to blend in additional flavors, color, and aroma to elevate your wine above the rest. The plain and simple truth is that having lots of wine to blend with allows you to make a better wine. If you have carboys of our WA Rattlesnake Hills Cabernet Sauvignon, Mourvedre, Tempranillo,  CA Napa Merlot, Suisun Valley Merlot, and Lodi Zinfandel to work with, you can leverage the strength of each; be it color, rich fruit flavor, or body to refine a wine that will be sure to impress the judges. Now, if buying them all is not an option, you should consider a varietal that won’t be blended up by your competitors like Pinot Noir. Our Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is a fruit bomb of aromatics and flavor that will explode on the palate and finish with great acid to back it up.

Carefully Select and Enter Only Your Favorite Wine

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, and Wrong! If you’re serious about winning, you should enter the maximum number of wines allowed and as many competitions as your inventory can stand to increase your odds at taking home the Gold. Just because you love a wine, doesn’t mean everyone else will. Many winemakers are often shocked that their darling red took home nothing and their neglected vintage scored so highly. That being said, have a blind tasting with friends (even ones who don’t know anything about wine, as the judges tasting your wine may have quite a lot in common with said friend) and score the wines. Doing so should direct you to the vintages that stand to be contenders.

Find and Taste Wine That has Won Awards

Remember, if you’re looking to win a competition, it’s not about what you like, it’s about what the judges like. So familiarize yourself with award-winning wines and their respective flavors. This is easy to do if you attend the award ceremonies, as many of the award winners will have bottles open and are often happy to share. You can also seek out a taste from your local winemaking community, as the wine is often flowing at winemaking club meetings. If none of these are options, simply source and treat yourself to a very high-scoring commercial wine in the name of research. Then strive to emulate these award-winning qualities in your own wine.

Competitions to Enter in no Specific Order

Winemaker Magazine – http://winemakermag.com/competition
American Wine Society Amateur Competition: http://www.americanwinesociety.org/page/competitionamateur
The Bottle Shock Open: http://bottleshockopen.com/

Your Local State Fair or Even the State Where Your Wine Grapes and Juice are From:

Califorina: http://www.castatefair.org/california-home-wine/
Oregon: http://oregonstatefair.org/competitions/amateur-wine/
Washington: http://www.thefair.com/_assets/7d7e302fe7e8d71766136d91edca444b/StateFair_2016_AmateurWine&BeerPremiumBook.pdf

Final Tip:

Don’t stress if you don’t win, as we’ve been told by reliable sources that your reward is the special joy waiting for you at the bottom of each glass, each bottle, and each carboy proudly made into a unique wine by your own two hands.

Let us know about anything that you win. A special gift from us awaits you.