Too many wineries cling to “the way we’ve always done it,” and it is obviously not working for many winery operations right now. Traditional winemaking has its place, but tradition alone won’t help you stand out among thousands of competing brands in today’s challenging market. The opportunities I see across my winery clients are massive, […]
Wine Style
The Low-Alcohol Wine Boom: Don’t Get Left Behind
Low- and no-alcohol wines are certainly having a moment, which Virginia and I previously discussed in the Voices of the Vine podcast episode, “The Quest for Producing Good Low Alcohol Wine” (S.1, Ep.1). Luckily, most producers across the U.S. can take advantage of low-alcohol wine production. This includes you! While non-alcohol wines require sophisticated technology […]
Winemaking Success Stories from Vintage 2025
While everyone else is talking about what’s broken in the wine industry, I’m going to show you what’s working. The 2025 vintage brought immediate breakthroughs for DGW Clients who made small strategic shifts. With some winemakers we solved problems they’d been fighting for years, and for others we saved entire crops by making quick-thinking decisions. […]
From Hope to Despair: Recouping Soured Vintages
It may take one moment – one large rainstorm, a hurricane, a few hours of gusty wind – to complete turn a crop from hopeful to despair. Let’s review a few tactics that have high impact value in saving the wine’s quality from lower quality fruit. For All Ferments: Harvest Actions For any variety, red […]
Maximize Beauty in White Wine Making
Tips for Improving White Winemaking Processes I can tell a lot about the quality of a winery’s wines by tasting three white wines on their tasting menu. Why? While there are some exceptions to this generalization, most white wines are straightforward in whether they taste “good” or “bad.” If a winery has issues selling their […]
5 Things To Learn About Oak Barrels
Can we talk about oak for a minute? And by talk, I mean literally. If you haven’t been listening to our “Voices of the Vine” podcast, Virginia and I just took several episodes to cover all-things-oak. From oak history to how oak is manufactured for wine barrels, we looked at it ALL. Here are some […]
