"Grow your own, cook your own, make your own wine. Such is the threefold imperative."
— Angelo Pelegrini

Do you enjoy wine? Have you ever thought of making your own wine? Maybe even opening your own winery? Do you think it would be impossible to make wine or start a winery while maintaining a successful legal career? Let me tell you how. I have been the owner/winemaker of Wilridge Winery in Seattle, Wash., for more than 15 years. During those 15 years, I have also practiced law (and made partner) at Heller Ehrman, one of the 50 largest law firms in the United States. If you follow the basic steps outlined in this article, there is no reason you, like me, cannot make excellent wine — and keep your day job.

Step No. 1: Get great grapes. Great wine is made in the vineyard. There is no way that you, as a winemaker, can make a wine that is better than the grapes with which you started. You can certainly help the grapes along on their way to great wine, but the potential of your wine is limited by the potential of your grapes. Fortunately for would be lawyer/winemakers, it has never been easier to acquire great grapes. To make top quality wine that will compete with the best in the world, you have two options: Plant your own vineyard or buy your grapes directly from a commercial vineyard at harvest time.

Growing your own grapes. Like winemaking, tending a vineyard is a worthy avocation that can provide diversion and relief from the pressures of a legal practice. However, growing quality grapes is an option available only to lawyer/winemakers who are lucky enough to live in or near a region where the climate is conducive to fully ripening the classic European "vinifera" grape species.

Fortunately, with advances in viticultural techniques (and global warming), the areas where vinifera grapes can be grown in the United States and even Canada is rapidly expanding. Planting a vineyard is no longer an option reserved to residents of California, Oregon, Washington and New York. Successful vineyards are now found in all but the coldest states. The Midwest is reviving its pre-prohibition wine grape growing industry and even tropical Hawaii has vineyards of European vinifera grapes that are adapted to its unique climate and soils. In the few states where vinifera grapes cannot be grown successfully, enjoyable wines can be made from hybrid crosses with the American "labrusca" grape species.

One acre of vines should provide from two to six tons of quality grapes, which is plenty for a home winery or even a very small commercial winery. To put the figures in rough perspective, one ton of grapes should produce about three 55-gallon barrels of wine, which works out to 75 cases or 900 bottles of finished wine. This may seem like a lot of wine, but once you start sharing it with friends and family, it will disappear quickly! If you don't have an acre or more of property, even a small backyard vineyard can provide a rewarding respite from the practice of law. Figure that a single grape plant will yield from two to four bottles of wine, so a 25-plant backyard vineyard will produce 50 to 100 bottles of wine.

Planting a large vineyard is a major endeavor; planting a small vineyard is a labor of love that can be easily accomplished on weekends. Vine cuttings can be obtained from existing vineyards and simply planted directly in the ground. Better, because it avoids the risk of the dreaded vine root louse Phyloxera, is to purchase grafted vines from a certified nursery.

Lay out your vineyard in a manner to best use the slopes and sun exposure of your site. It's best to plant in the winter or early spring when the plants are dormant, but you can start vines almost year round. Set posts and wires for trellising and pipes for irrigation (if necessary). Tie the vines to your trellis system as they grow. Prune them in the winter to the shape designed for your trellis, spray them as needed to prevent diseases such as powdery mildew, and harvest in the fall. Enlist a group of friends to help with the heavy work of initial planting, and promise to share some of the final product with them.

Buying your grapes. If planting your own vineyard (and becoming a farmer in the process) is not your dream, purchasing grapes directly from established vineyards is your next best option. Buying your grapes not only saves time and investment, but also allows you to more easily experiment with different grape varieties and winegrowing regions.

The best way to get quality grapes for your winery is to make friends with local winegrowers in your region. Many vineyard owners are willing to sell small lots of fruit to local home winemakers. If you like the wines you have tried from a particular vineyard, contact the owners and see if they will sell you some grapes. Some wine regions also feature U-pick vineyards, where you can help harvest the fruit.

Another alternative is banding together with a few other winemakers to purchase larger lots of fruits. This may be your only option to get fruit from some of the more prestigious vineyards. Home winemaking co-ops and clubs are found in many cities and permit home winemakers to pool their resources to purchase grapes, sometimes even bringing in whole refrigerated truck loads of grapes at harvest time.

If your goal is to produce top quality wine, do not be tempted to purchase winemaking "kits" that contain concentrated grape juice. The cooking process used to concentrate and preserve the grape juice detrimentally affects the character and quality of the finished wine.

Most vineyard managers will let you participate in deciding when the grapes should be harvested, but don't be too pushy if you are only buying a small quantity of grapes. From a winemaking perspective, you are looking for grapes with a perfect balance of sugar (measured as specific gravity in units of Brix) and acidity (measured as total acidity (TA) and also considering pH).

As the grapes ripen, sugar generally increases and acidity generally decreases. The trick is to pick when the two are in perfect balance. Not too sweet and not too tart. Anyone who has ever picked raspberries will recognize this perfect point. A pink raspberry does not have enough sugar and tastes too tart; a purple raspberry has lost its acid and tastes flabby; a bright red raspberry tastes just right. It's the same with grapes. The better the balance in the grapes, the better your wine will taste, and the fewer "adjustments" you will have to make to the juice in the winery.

Turning your grapes into wine. Now that you have your grapes, it's time to get your feet wet and start making wine. Your winery can be in your driveway, basement, backyard, garage, kitchen or anywhere else you have space to make a mess and easily clean up afterward. The necessary equipment for winemaking — destemmer/crusher, press, pump, tanks, barrels and bottler — is available for purchase in various configurations suitable for any size winery. You may also be able to borrow equipment from a local co-op or club. Sharing equipment with other winemakers is a great way to keep down the start-up expenses of opening your winery.

Inspect the grapes when they arrive and discard any bunches that are rotten, moldy or under ripe. Also discard any MOG (matter other than grapes) including leaves, sticks, rocks, spiders, etc. Run the sorted bunches through your destemmer/crusher machine to remove the stems and gently puncture the grapes. (For some delicate grapes, such as pinot noir, consider just destemming the grapes and leaving the berries whole to help preserve precious aromas.)

If you are making red wine, transfer the crushed grapes (now called "must") into your fermentation vessel. Almost any vessel that can be thoroughly cleaned will do — from a five-gallon pot, a food-grade plastic trashcan, or a bathtub, to a specially designed stainless steel tank. If you are making white wine, the crushed grapes go straight into your press, where the juice is squeezed from the grape skins before the skins have time to color the juice. In this manner, you may make white wine from red grapes. If you want rose, leave the juice "on the skins" for a few hours before pressing.

After you have crushed your red wine or crushed and pressed your white wine, it's time to put that chemistry class you took in high school to use and test the juice to see if any adjustments need to be made. For testing purposes, you will need to buy a hydrometer (for measuring sugar in "degrees Brix") and an acid titration kit (for measuring total acidity or "TA"). Based on the test results, you may choose to add sugar to help out under-ripe grapes or add grape acid (tartaric acid) to balance over-ripe grapes. In colder regions, you may also need to consider de-acidifying under-ripe grapes.

Sulfites should also be added to the must to protect it from spoilage. Contrary to popular belief, sulfites do not cause headaches (the warning label is on bottles of wine because a small percentage of asthmatics may have an allergic reaction to sulfites) and are absolutely essential to quality winemaking. If you don't add sulfites, your wine will not taste as good, and may turn to vinegar (or worse).

Add yeast to your vessel to get the fermentation process started. Some winemakers advocate so-called "natural fermentations" using native yeasts allegedly found naturally on the grapes (but more likely found in the nooks and crannies of their established winery). If you leave the grapes alone, they will eventually ferment on their own, but for your first attempts, I highly recommend using a commercial wine yeast.

Scrupulously follow the manufacturer's instructions for re-hydrating the dried yeast, especially the temperature recommendation, because you are waking up a living organism. You don't want to kill the yeast before it can ferment your grape juice into wine. If there are not visible signs of fermentation within 24 hours, pitch again with fresh yeast.

For red wines, you are now ready for my favorite part of the winemaking process: punching down the cap. As the fermentation progresses, the yeast converts the sugar in the grapes to alcohol and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide will stick to the grape skins and cause them to rise to the top of the tank, forming a thick cap. Several times a day (at least twice) you need to punch down this cap so that the full flavor and color of the skins can be extracted into the wine. Punching down the cap frequently is especially important during the early stages of fermentation when most of the color is extracted from the skins.

While you are having fun punching down the cap, pay attention to how the fermentation is progressing. If you smell any off-odors, it may be a sign that you need to add nutrients to help the yeast complete the fermentation. Also monitor the progress of the fermentation with your hydrometer and your taste buds to make sure the wine ferments to complete dryness (all sugar consumed by the yeast). If any sugar is left in the wine, it could be food for spoilage yeast or bacteria later in the process, which would be a disaster after the wine is bottled. Once the fermentation is complete, the red must is ready to be pressed, as described for white wines.

Before I leave the topic of crushing and pressing, I should mention the most important aspect of winemaking: sanitation. I like to say that winemaking is 2 percent inspiration and 98 percent sanitation. If you don't like keeping things clean, you should probably consider another hobby. Personally, I don't find that the hard work of scrubbing tanks, machinery, floors and barrels detracts from the romance of the wine business. I get real satisfaction from a shiny tank — or at least more satisfaction than I get from answering e-mails and going to meetings all day.

A couple of words of practical advice: 1) Caustic soda works great for removing wine stains and tartrates from tanks and equipment, but you need to wear gloves and eye protection; 2) Never use chlorine bleach in a winery; it can react with naturally occurring molds that are found in corks (and elsewhere in wineries) and result in cork taint, a nasty flavor that has ruined many an otherwise good bottle or wine (chemical name: Trichloroanisol). Proxyclean is a good bleach substitute.

Cellar operations. After pressing for reds or after the completion of fermentation for whites, the wine may be transferred ("racked") to tanks or oak barrels for aging. (Some whites, such as chardonnay, may benefit from fermentation in oak barrels.) The cellaring or aging process (referred to as "elevage" by the French) is critical for all wines, but especially for big red wines such as cabernet sauvignon, merlot and syrah. If the wine is aged in oak barrels, a controlled oxygenation of the wine will occur as air seeps through the wood staves and bung hole, permitting slow chemical reactions that will increase the flavor and aroma complexity of the finished wine.

For white wines, the oxygenation is generally not encouraged because it can cause the wines to "brown" and lose flavor and aroma too quickly; that's why most whites are aged in stainless steel tanks or glass containers (a five-gallon glass water cooler "carboy" works great for small batches). For home white winemaking, I recommend renting a small tank of carbon dioxide (or better yet, argon) from a local gas supply shop and using it to "inert" all tanks and hoses to remove the oxygen before the wine is transferred or bottled.

For most red wines and some white wines, the barrel aging process is also used to impart oak flavors into the wine. French oak is widely considered the best because it imparts the most delicate and refined flavors. American oak is more bold and forward, but it is also usually less than half the price of French (about $400 a barrel compared to about $800).

Over the years, the 55-gallon oak barrel has become the standard size barrel. It seems to impart just the right amount of oak flavor during the aging process: a larger barrel does not have enough wood surface area and a smaller barrel has too much. But if the thought of using a 55 gallon barrel for your first batch (which will produce 25 cases) is just too much, you can use a smaller barrel — you just won't be able to age the wine as long before the oak flavor becomes overpowering. However, as a barrel is used, it loses its oak flavor, eventually becoming neutral, so a small barrel may be a reasonable option. If buying any size barrel is too big a first step, consider adding oak chips or cubes to your glass carboy, but remember that you are losing the important oxygenation effect of barrel aging.

Once your wine is safely in barrels or tanks, it needs to be monitored every month or so to make sure it's developing properly. This is your excuse to sample your wine and show it off to your friends while it is still aging! As the wine ages, some will evaporate through the staves and bunghole of the barrel, creating headspace at the top of the barrel. Vinegar and other bacteria like to grow in this headspace, so it is very important to periodically "top up" the barrel with fresh wine. I recommend setting aside one five-gallon glass carboy per 55-gallon barrel of wine to use for topping up, or you may have to buy a similar wine at retail to fill up your barrels.

Equally if not more important, additional sulfites must be periodically added to the wine to keep it from spoiling because, as the wine ages and oxidizes, the sulfites become chemically bound and are no longer effective.

The final step before bottling is racking and filtering. Most reds benefit from two or three "rackings" where the wine is carefully siphoned or pumped off of the "lees" (dead yeast, tartrates and other debris) that have settled to the bottom of the barrel. Racking is usually minimized for white wines to avoid the risk of exposing the wine to too much oxygen. Racking is the most natural and traditional way to clarify a red wine and get it ready for bottling. If you don't plan to purchase or borrow a pump, you should store your barrels on an elevated stand so that racking by siphon and gravity is possible.

Bottling. Bottling is the last step in the process and always a good excuse for a party. You will need a bottle filler and corker, plus the requisite bottles, corks, capsules and labels. Bottling presents a perfect opportunity to share equipment with other winemakers. Unlike harvest, which occurs all at once in the fall, bottling dates can be scheduled and coordinated to make equipment sharing more convenient. Bottling is also a great time to get your whole neighborhood, family, or office involved with your winery. Set up a production line with your finished wine (racked or filtered, sulfited, blended and ready to go) at one end with stations for bottle filling, corking, labeling, capsuling, case filling and stacking.

And that's really all there is to it: a little agriculture, a little basic chemistry, a lot of sanitation, and some help from your friends.

Everything in balance. So how do you make wine and keep your day job? It's all about balance, just like a good wine. I have been able to balance my two careers because winemaking is a seasonal endeavor. We are very busy at Wilridge Winery during the fall harvest season, but most of the work of crushing and pressing the grapes can be done on the weekends. During the rest of the year, the pace of work slows, with barrel maintenance and sampling (solely for quality control purposes, of course) being the major activities.

As my experience attests, any busy lawyer should have the time to make some wine on the side, and creating wine provides a refreshing counterpoint to the daily rigors of practicing law full time. There's something satisfying about stomping grapes that you just don't get shuffling paper from pile A to pile B all day. So I hope you will try your hand (and feet) at winemaking this fall. Salute!