Winemaking FAQ
Here at Winemaking FAQ, answers to your most common questions about wine-making at Your Own Winery.
1. Why would I want to make my own wine?
There are several very good reasons.
> For anyone that loves wine, personally making your own personal batch of wine is lots of fun and educational. Then there’s the pride and satisfaction that you made it yourself – “Your Own Wine” (hence our name). This of course only applies if the final product is good wine. Our wine-making process starts with wine grape juice, not grapes. Our wine juice suppliers have chosen only the best wine grapes available, and then prepares the juice in massive volume to eliminate the risk of a bad bunch of grapes spoiling the entire batch of juice. This eliminates 99% of the starting risk that your own wine will turn out bad.
> This leads to the second reason to make your own wine. Your finished wine from Your Own Winery will not be just good, it will be great. We guarantee it. But don’t take our word for it – come in and taste some of our wines at our free tasting bar. Because our samples have been made from the same wine juice as your wine will be – your finished wine will be virtually identical to the sample wine you tasted and loved. We are so sure you will love your finished wine, we proudly offer a 100% hassle free money back guarantee. If you are not completely satisfied with your finished wine – we’ll give you a 100% refund, no questions asked. See all our 5-star Google Reviews.
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> Add a custom bottle label, which we’ll help you design, and you’ll take home a wine you will be very proud to serve family and friends.
> And lastly, because you personally make the wine in a “small batch” (6 gallons) in our ultra clean shop, where every piece of equipment has been carefully sterilized, Your Own Wine will have only 10% of the sulfites of commercial wines. A great benefit for anyone who suffers reactions from sulfites.
2. How does the process work?
Day 1 – Taste, Select & Start.
The first step is to decide which wine you would like to make. This is where the fun begins. At our free tasting bar, sample from over 50 different wines to help you decide. We even do blind taste tests so you are not influenced by the name or type of wine. Once you have a selected a wine, you can start your wine that same day, all done with our hands-on instruction. Starting your wine means starting Fermentation, where you mix several ingredients. Most importantly the wine juice and wine yeast where the wine yeast goes to work converting the sugar in the wine juice to alcohol.
About 2 weeks later, our staff handles a technical wine making step by adding several ingredients. First to stop Fermentation and second to help your wine “clear”. Meaning force all the suspended wine sediments to drop to the bottom of the container. So your clear wine can be siphoned-off the sediment, so your finished wine will be clear of any sediment. (We also filter your wine – a step we handle – to ensure your wine is sediment free).
Day 56 – Bottling.
About 6 weeks later, you will come in to bottle, cork and label your finished wine. We’ll help you design a custom bottle label in advance of your bottling day. We’ll decant some of you finished red wine, or chill-down some of your finished white wine. BYO snacks and even some outside wine to enjoy while bottling. Make it a bottling party.
All of the above steps are completed in our beautiful ultra clean Tuscany decor shop. We handle all the sterilizing of tools and equipment and the clean-up – you just have fun. Steps 1 and 2 take 30-45 minutes. Step 3, the bottling, can be completed in about 1 hour. But can also be 2 hours if you do a little partying while bottling (BYO snacks and enjoy some of your finished wine).
Oak Barrel Aging. As you can see in the photo above, we have lots of authentic oak wine barrels. So you have the option of aging your wine in one of these Hungarian Oak Wine Barrels. If you are a red wine lover, your finished wine will be extraordinary after just 6-8 weeks in one of our Hungarian Oak Barrels. Our customers tell us repeatedly that our barrel aged Stag’s Leap Merlot, Lodi Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon, Italian Brunello, Amarone, Barolo, Super Tuscan, Argentine Malbec and Australian Shiraz are better than $50 store wines – at a price of only $17 per bottle. Also Less Sulfites. This also has a good deal to do with the 1/3 sulfites our wines contain vs. store wines. Less sulfites mean more of the true character and flavors of the wine are able to come through in its taste.
3. I have never made wine. What happens if my wine doesn’t turn out right?
First, don’t worry, while you will be performing each of the steps to make your wine. We will be right there giving you personal hands-on instruction through each step. Also, wine-making at Your Own Winery starts directly with your wine-specific juice. As opposed to starting with grape-crushing, which adds lots of risk that your wine will not turn out as expected. And also adds over 1 year to the wine-making process. Starting with juice, pre-measured ingredients, and step by step instructions perfected over 30 years – essentially all the risk of your wine not coming out right is eliminated. However, if for some extremely rare and unforeseeable reason your wine does not turn out as expected – we will gladly issue you a full refund – no hassle.
4. How much does it cost?
Wines at Your Own Winery are made in “small batches” of 6 gallons. Small as compared to 60 gallon batches when starting with grapes. Six gallon batch yields 28 full sized bottles (750ml) of wine. Our small batch wine-making packages range in price from $180 to $450 per half (14 bottles) to full batch (28 bottles) – excluding a $15 annual NJ winemakers license and NJ sales tax. These prices are all inclusive – including the bottles, your custom bottle labels and our personalized instruction. Plus these prices are per batch of wine – so there’s no extra charge for sharing a batch with friends. Thus splitting the cost and the finished wine. Share a wine-making batch with friends at the same batch price – so share the cost and the 28 bottles of finished wine.
5. Why aren’t you Open Friday night, Saturday night, or Sunday?
This is a question we get quite often. There is a different answer to each of these cases.
As for staying open late Friday night. We have found this to be a time when most people are just interested in wine-tasting (more accurately drinking wine) for purposes of starting-off their Friday night outings. We are not a Bar. Our ABC license only permits limited wine-tasting for the purpose of marketing our wine-making product.
As for Saturday night. While we do get the occasional inquiry for wine-making on a Saturday night, our experience was that 9 out of 10 Saturday nights it was dead quiet – so just not worthwhile from a business standpoint.
Sunday. First, Sunday is the weekend day we host essentially all the Bridal Showers we do each year, which is 20-25. Second, Sunday (except for the Summer) is the day most Wedding and Bridal Expos are held – so we are attending these events in the Winter, Spring and Fall. And Sundays in the Summer were also extremely quiet, so again just not worthwhile from a business standpoint.
Call us at 862-200-5808 or email to YourOwnWinery@gmail.com if you have any questions about wine-making at Your Own Winery.
