A fine vintage
By Amy Brown-Bowers • Bankrate.com

Burton McClelland, of Peterborough, Ont., was drawn to home winemaking 20 years ago by the potential savings. A college instructor at the time, McClelland had a lot of students coming to his house to socialize. "They'd drink me out of house and home, so I was looking for a less expensive way to keep the cellar supplied," he says.

Over time, McClelland's palate and winemaking skills grew in sophistication, and today he is an award-winning winemaker and member of the Kawartha Krushers winemaking club.

Long suffering from the stigma of bad taste, the industry of home winemaking has also been quietly growing in sophistication. "A lot of people have grown up drinking homemade wine from parents and grandparents (that) used to taste like vinegar, but now we've got new technology that helps us make very good wine," says Daniel Pambianchi, author of Techniques in Home Winemaking and owner of Maleta Estate Winery in Niagara-on-the Lake, Ont.

So, whether you're looking to stock your cellar cheaply, experiment with winemaking technology and chemistry or deepen your appreciation for wine, here are some of the basics to help you get started with home winemaking.

Common misconceptions
Probably the biggest misconception about homemade wine is that it tastes terrible. "It used to be that there were some pretty poor amateur wines, and so most people when they heard it was homemade wine, they were expecting something that was vinegary or really high (in) alcohol," McClelland says. While this was probably the norm in the past, increasingly, home winemakers have access to the same quality ingredients as commercial winemakers and are producing wines on par with what is sold in stores.

Home winemakers tend to make their wine either from all-inclusive kits or from fresh grapes and juices. In both cases, better technology and raw materials are vastly improved.

"People think that if it's a homemade wine it will be inferior to what they can buy in the liquor stores," says Tony Strickland, an amateur winemaker of 12 years from Calgary. "Now, in many cases it may be true, but it doesn't have to be. I'm not saying a kit wine will ever be as good as some of the best of the wines they could buy, but it will certainly be on par with the regular ones."

Joining a club
There are dozens of amateur winemaking clubs and guilds across the country, which provide a social and informational network for would-be winemakers.

"There's quite a big social element about it as there always is when you're drinking wine," says Strickland, a member of Alberta's Canmore guild. "But also it's a source of information."

Carole Frankow, a member of Wine Judges of Canada, and her husband Gary, an award-winning winemaker, are founding members of Kitchener, Ont.'s The Corkscrew Society. They have been making wine since 1978 and value the camaraderie and "the honesty that comes with critiquing each other's products," Carole says.

Franco Sartor, an amateur winemaker of 15 years, says it wasn't until he joined the Nanaimo Winemakers guild in British Columbia two and a half year ago that he began to make really good wine. He recounts his first ever meeting and club critique. Having brought a bottle of his best homemade wine, he offered it up for tasting.

"The members tasted the wine and made their comments: ethyl acetate. I had to go home that evening to look it up in the dictionary. I had been crushed," he says.