Home Wine Making Goes High Tech. with the WinePod

The basic process of making wine is a simple one – grapes or grape juice and yeast. The yeast turns the sugar into alcohol and when done you have wine.

As with anything else, though, the devil is in the details. Having tried my hand at making my own wine I can tell you that there are a lot of details that make the difference between fermented grape juice and a nice bottle of wine. You must test for and possibly adjust the amount of sugar in the juice. You need to test during the fermentation process to see how it is progressing and when it is done. Then there is the process of racking, siphoning wine from one container to another to leave behind the sediment and by-products of the fermentation process. All of this takes a bit of diligence and attention to detail.

Now there is a solution for the home winemaker of means (read it is an expensive soulution). Provina Inc. has created the WinePod – which is a high-tech personal winary. The WinePod integrates fermentation, pressing, and ageing in one self-contained unit. The WinePod also comes with WineCoach software that guides you step-by-step through the wine making process and records wine making data.

The WinePod goes a long way to taking the guess work out of making wine. The only downside is its price tag. At $4,499, not everyone is going to run out and snap up one of these babies…

Another down side for white wine affecianados is that while you can make white wine in the WinePod, the WineCoach software does not currently support the white wine making process.