Differences between Commercial and Homemade Wine
I am an artist and a lover of wine. A known contrarian. And after years of creating scores of wines of different varietals, an award-winning home winemaker. Let us get the foundation of my experience straight, right off the bat. Establish my perspective so to speak. I’ve been asked by many what I think makes a great wine and I’m happy to share that with you. Grab a glass and here we go.
In 2014, I attended my first organized, official wine competition as a volunteer. I had been interested in wine for decades and “googled” how to get involved locally. The OC Fair Commercial Wine Competition came up on the OCWS website. This event would introduce my first exposure to the difference between commercial and home winemaking.
After a quick race of tasting (and mostly spitting out) commercial wines, I stumbled upon a table separated from the rest. After sampling a few glasses, I asked a gentleman manning the table which winery they represented as they were clearly the best wines I had ever tasted. The wine was extraordinary. Clean, delicious and authentic – ‘living’ was the description that came to mind. His reply surprised me. “We are the OC Home Winemakers Club.” Up until that point in my life, I had never heard of home winemaking. This was the moment that my life truly changed.
That day my first revelation on wine budded. I discovered most commercial wines have a similar dull, meh aroma and an adulterated, unnatural taste of additives when compared with good homemade wine’s fresh clean taste. I determined this came from its youth and purity. This is similar to the difference between frozen processed food that has depleted most of its fresh flavors and living nutrients versus home grown, fresh-picked, organic fruit, vegetables, herbs and freshly baked bread. Many of us can remember, and the lucky ones still have access to, real fresh food. The non-GMO fruit with seeds and vibrant fruit flavors, vegetables with imperfections tasting as God intended, the authenticity of artisan breads. What a difference when we taste the true essence of the earth. I had sadly become accustomed to the processed food flavor of simile of added cherry, grape, plum and blueberry, which behaved as an afterthought
rather than an integral part of the food product. The dried herbs that have lost most of their essence. Imitation vanilla, blueberry flavored syrup. I do know the smell and taste of real Belgian chocolate!
My second wine revelation happened when I came home after judging a wine competition a couple of years later. After a long day I went into my backyard where my wife had planted a blueberry bush years before. I picked a couple organic ripe tiny blueberries off of our bush and popped them into my mouth where they exploded with intense sweet, sour and juicy flavors. I realized the strong aromatic, pungent quality was the same smell/flavor I had struggled to pinpoint just a couple hours earlier when debating with the wine judges about one of the submission’s flavors. It had eluded us at the time. Now it was clear. This is what a real blueberry tastes like. The flavor that escaped me just hours before was almost identical to the fresh-from- the-earth blueberry I had just eaten! I realized I had not tasted this authentic flavor for a very long time. It brought to mind picking and eating wild blueberries in Rhode Island 50 years ago. My grandmother’s fresh picked blueberry pies I ate as a child tasted remarkably different than the blueberry pie filling we had been buying in a can.
Up until this time, my understanding of the history of wine consumption was that most wine had been local and affordable, grown and produced in rural areas. This was before the industrial revolution when large populations moved to the city and food and drinks began being mass- produced with cold shipping. Food and wine had to be produced at a much larger scale. When most people lived rurally, good food and wine was local, affordable and natural. This was especially true in wine countries where it is ubiquitous or locally grown, as was the case of my immigrant grandfather who made his wine at home from Concord grapes he grew.
To find affordable natural, unadulterated (no filtering, pumping, blending or additives) single vineyard organic wine, I realized I would have to make it. I also discovered the natural
commercial wines currently available on the market too often used the natural wild yeasts, giving it undesirable, uncontrollable aromas and flavors I did not appreciate.
I contemplated; How would the most delicious wine be made? If one did not need to make a profit or sell the wine, and all the finest grapes and materials were available to use, allowing no compromise, would it not become the best wine, the most delicious wine? I believed it would be handcrafted home wine using only gravity and lab grown yeast strains within a temperature-controlled environment, aged in the best oak barrels in the world and using California’s premium grapes. One can now choose the varietals and the appropriate yeasts strains, enhancing certain flavors or mouthfeel profiles to make the preferred style of wines with some of the worlds’ finest fresh grapes picked only hours ago, shipped to its destination within the same day. How wonderful is that. This is what I set out to do.
My hypothesis is most wine consumers would prefer good homemade wine, however, they never have a chance to compare them to good commercial wine. My bar for judging good wine is this… Do I want a second glass of this one or would I rather taste other wines available? Or expressed another way; Would a non-wine drinker say “yyuummm” about the mouth feel and flavor? Or does this taste like Water+Fruit+Sunshine+Earth+Weather+Time should taste like?
I understand everyone has their preferred style of wine that they find delicious. However, in my eyes, when encountering a new experience in which you taste a wine so well-balanced with acid, tannins and fruit that you salivate and drool involuntarily… all while your cheeks stick to your teeth and your tongue to the roof of your mouth and your tastebuds are exuberant with complex layers of living aromas and flavors with a long finish… That your senses demand another sip or you will not be as happy ever again… that is a great wine. I have been fortunate to have tasted a few of them in my life so now have an opinion on what I find exceptional. However, I am still a student of great wine and know very little about it besides 40 years of consumption and 12 years of winemaking experience with no academic studies. After all, these are just my musings while tending my wine in the cellar.
However, it would be exciting to create an opportunity to compare good commercial wine to good home wine with a seasoned judge, perhaps a sommelier, chef or collectors and avid consumers who drink three or four bottles a week.
Join me as I share some more of my revelations. I look forward to it and I hope you do too! If you have a description of good and great wine, I would like to hear it. Barrel tastings for the two favorite submissions.
Cheers,
Jim Kerins is an artist and has been making wine for 12 years receiving dozens of Gold and Double Gold Awards including Best of Show Award at the OC Wine Home Winemaking Competition. His passion is sharing his knowledge and expanding the minds of wine lovers.