Best White Wine Kits (30 bts)?

[InSadly]

Hi everyone,
I think I've been making wine from kits (and hedgerow) for about 40 years and from imported grapes for about 12. But it's difficult to scan the market for kits: things are expensive and (imho) take at least 9-months to get to best quality. Can you help on pointing me in the direction of your recent discoveries?

I have got to the place where the only white kit I buy is Winexpert NZ Sauvignon Blanc, but it's not perfect - it's too sweet - (sorry, off-dry) - is there artificial sweetener in it for the US market? Would it ferment to dry if I used Lalvin QA23 instead of the K1V-1116 that I think comes in the kit? I don't understand why it doesn't ferment out to dry. We like the flavours & fruit, but not the sweet. Which brings me to the main part of the question.

What white kits are there that really compete with a £10 shop-bought bottle, and as you can guess from the above, I'm looking for fruitful, dry?

I've had several attempts to experiment with other brands and tiers within brands, but they have all taken me back to 1970s 'homebrew', e.g:
* Vine Co California SauvBl - sweet rubbish, I couldn't tell if it had ever seen a grape - I do make vinegar out of failures and the whole lot went to vinegar
* Winexpert Classic California Viognier - sweet rubbish, some grape, but too sweet - vinegar again

My efforts with grapes have been really successful, more work though, and this year I tried a new supplier; Uva d'Italia - I recommend you never use them, the quality of the grapes was worse than appalling, rotten, diseased, mouldy - we threw away 20% and the fruit flies (aka vinegar flies) took 2-weeks to get out of the house using fruit-fly traps, though if you can find a good supplier it's worth the bother, particularly with reds. Red kits always have that 'jammy' background, because they have to cook or enzyme the colour out of the skins. It's not the same as fermenting on the skins.

So I have a big-headed hunch that it's not my winemaking process that makes kits rate poorly against shop-bought. Are there folks out there who have tried a variety of the longer maturing kits and stumbled onto a winner? Do please make a recommendation. Things are going to get very expensive in the shops soon, we may as well get the kit going!

All best wishes to those who toil in the must.

InSadly

 

[buddsy]

Im just doing the WEinExprt Sauvignon Blanc.

I done their Pinto Grigio which was the best wine Ive made.

I thought it was good but am wondering if it will also be too sweet for you? I didnt notice it was so sweet so maybe our tastes differ a bit there.


Id be very interested in your process of making wine from gapes. There seems very little content on this forum about doing it this way.

All the best

buddsy

 

[Chippy_Tea]

This thread has a lot of reviews you may find something worth trying -

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/wine-and-cider-kit-reviews-a-z.57680/

 

[ChrisT]

I haven't found a kit that ferments out dry enough to make an exceptional wine, and very good non the less. Still better than many supermarket wines though in my opinion. I've tried leaving to ferment for longer but it makes precious little difference in sweetness, so as you suggested I'm wondering if there's an artificial sweetener in there somewhere? I've not made anything that we've not drunk, we just think of it as cheap supermarket wine.

Could be worthwhile trying a different yeast but the 1116 yeast usually ferments out to dry with all the fruit wines I've made previously, we come back to the suspition of atrificial sweetener?

 

[buddsy]

Ive not noticed the wines being too sweet or that the £30.00 bottles of wine Ive had at tastings are drier. I just notice the reds Ive brewed seem very much thinner than a decent shop bought wine.

I do wonder about the yeast. The yeast that came with my kit was a little tiny packet (compared with the beer yeast for the same volume of beer) of pizza yeast. It seems to be doing a good job as far as I an tell bubbling away.

The range of beer yeasts is huge but seem much less choice and discussion with wine.

buddsy

 

[InSadly]

Thanks for comments. Here, attached, are my notes on making white wine from grapes, this was from an old homebrew forum that is no longer active, so acknowledgments to the original author (Lockwood1956). The reference to big funnel & concertina colander will have you foxed... it's just a note to remind me to pass the pressing through a double muslin jelly-bag to try and reduce the solids (it doesn't work very well).

Shame about the artificial sweetener, but that looks likely...

Thanks for link to reviews, I'll have a decent explore of what folks say.

---

 

[buddsy]

Thanks for the info!

I don't think my WinExpert kit has sweeteners. I just fished the box from the bin and the juice bag seems to be sugar water & grape juice.

 

[ChrisT]

My label off "reserve" kit says the same.

I say "sweeteners" in the sense that despite getting the SG down to 990 (or so) I think there's something in there that contributes a sweetness without being fermentable. Happy to be proved wrong, but I'd like to get mine drier if I could.

 

[InSadly]

Ive not noticed the wines being too sweet or that the £30.00 bottles of wine Ive had at tastings are drier. I just notice the reds Ive brewed seem very much thinner than a decent shop bought wine.

I do wonder about the yeast. The yeast that came with my kit was a little tiny packet (compared with the beer yeast for the same volume of beer) of pizza yeast. It seems to be doing a good job as far as I an tell bubbling away.

The range of beer yeasts is huge but seem much less choice and discussion with wine.

buddsy

I've got "Techniques in Home Winemaking" by Daniel Pambianchi (there's one on eBay as I write for £6.49). It's a brilliant reference and his coverage of wine yeasts (about 75 varieties, their uses, alcohol tolerance, etc) is without equal.

PS those notes on making white wine, I just noticed that it doesn't specify de-gassing, I'll attempt to edit it. But de-gas just as you would for a Winexpert kit.