Creating Wine Styles
We believe learning to make the best wine is a three step process:
- Learn the rules
- Learn how to break the rules
- Make your own rules
Learning the rules of modern enology normally involves a degree program at a university in a 2-4 year program. Clark instead teaches a six part online class that boils down the basics into 16 hours called Fundamentals of Modern Wine Chemistry that has received rave reviews from over 4,500 winemakers since 1984. In addition, you will need to make smart choices about lab equipment and someone on your team needs to get trained on the many nuances how to perform analytical methods repeatably.
Postmodern Winemaking, Wine & Spirits Magazines 2013 Book of the Year, is Clark’s introduction to departures from the modern view, which is designed to make clean, mediocre wine, presenting in practical language a suite of useful skills through which great wines can be made. Once your house is in order, plan on a few years for the acquisition and full implementation of these skills.
As this process takes place, an experienced winemaker will notice connections behaviors of her grapes, her wines, the microbiome of her cellar and the desires of her customers relevant to her unique situation. In the end, the goal is a coherent vision that a single winery alone owns and for which there is no competition.
WINEMAKING SUPPORT
WineSmith is highly experienced in developing and supporting your unique winemaking needs:
- Winery design
- Equipment selection
- Winemaking protocols
- Crush consulting packages
- Micro-oxygenation
- Troubleshooting and problem solving
(VA, smoke taints, stuck fermentations, etc.)
Failure to keep good records imperils your enterprise in many ways:
- Incompetent winemaking
- Government non-compliance
- Injured grower relations
- Unpredictable profitability
Tracking winemaking can be a nightmare. Paper systems are tedious and error-prone. Most software is costly, unintuitive and clumsy.
After decades of struggle, WineSmith has compiled a matrix of softwares that integrate tracking of bulk wine, raw materials and bottled inventory with cost analysis, invoice tracking, wine project plans and histories, sales fulfillment, CRM and market campaigns. The system we devised easily saves us $20,000 over our previous system, not counting its labor savings through automation.
We do not sell software. We study your needs and make recommendations tailored to your unique requirements and preferences. We help you set up your software, provide training and are there to troubleshoot your problems. We are not software designers, but we are experienced users in a business similar to yours.