If you enjoy wine but have shied away from making your own I recommend that you try the Winexpert Selection Spéciale Series. The Riesling Ice Wine Style won a gold medal and although costlier than other wine kits, the results are good. It took us about two months to make the wine. This is a bit longer than normal. The room where the wine fermented and clarified was in the lower 60’s. So after being bottled for only a week how did this wine fare at a dinner?

We had six people for dinner last night and I decided to pair the Riesling dessert wine with the appetizer, baked brie with walnuts and honey. The wine was sweeter than the brie and matched well. The brie cut some of the sweetness and helped to bring out the peach and apricot flavors in the wine. Everyone loved the wine, especially the “I don’t care for reds” wine drinkers. The red wine drinkers in the group enjoyed the Riesling dessert wine with the brie although switched to a Zin for dinner.

There are different price levels for wine kits. It seems like the old maxim “you get what you pay for” rings true for wine kits. Spend the extra money and buy the better kits. One of the differences in this kit and a lower cost kit was the added juice pack. Generally for clarifying the wine, you need to fill the carboy up to the neck. Lower cost kits instruct you to ad water to fill up to the neck, thus diluting the wine’s alcohol, sugar, and flavors. In a higher cost kit, you are given a juice pack to add. Although this will also reduce the alcohol it may increase the sugar and doesn’t dilute the flavors. In the case of the Riesling dessert wine, the 15% alcohol before the addition of the juice pack needed to be reduced a bit.

In addition to the wine, making wine from a kit is an education. Whenever directed to add an envelope such as potassium metabisulphite, research and find out what this does to the wine. You’ll learn a lot. Although making wine from a kit is not the same as making it at a winery, it is an enjoyable experience that you can also drink.