CLICK HERE for all the Details

One of our members, Tom, just sent me these pictures and said it was AOK to share them with you.

He created his own ‘Bearkat Red’ - a Feb 2009 vintage. Here’s Tom showing it off:

If you look closely, you can see the image of the Bearkat scooter on the bottle…

Besides the wine being great, notice that he made an awesome label, and topped the bottle off with a capsule to give it a finished look.
Here’s what Tom sent me in an email…

My son in law Jeff is a graphic designer.I have restored a couple 60’s vintage off road scooters and he thought it would be fun to make the label with the Bearkat.The bottom of the label says “It takes you there and brings you back”,which was a sales pitch for the Bearkat. The wine came out as a rose’ with just a little fizz.
My wife says it tastes like rose’ champagne.
Thanks again for all the help.
I couldn’t have done it with out your input.
Regards,Tom

So - what are YOU waiting for? Hop on over to www.How-To-Make-Wine.net and get started on your own private vinatge today!

CONCERN: If we publish our Home Wine Making Course for everybody, then YOU Mike, won’t have the time to answer my specific questions.

BACKGROUND: A couple of months ago we let it slip to our readers that we were getting ready to release an Home Winemaking course that detailed all of the steps and techniques that anyone could use to get a near perfect wine made at home.

The little note in our update set off a bit of a firestorm of email from our readers. And surprisingly enough, the biggest concern was one that we just hadn’t anticipated. Our readers told us that they were worried that once we published our training course, it would “let the cat out of the bag”… and and there would be no way I could answer questions from everyone who was taking the course.

And to tell the truth, that is something I have struggled with… and one of the reasons we took so long to publish this training course.

But about a year ago, I came to terms with this concern and decided to move forward. We didn’t want to kill the goose that was laying the golden eggs, but since our techniques are based on exploiting basic wine making techniques, we really didn’t think that my time would be compromised by releasing the course (and the course is really complete).

However, hearing our readers concerns got us a littel bit worried all over again. After all, we have to worry about our wine making techniques AND our publishing business.

SOLUTION: So, given that background, we decided to take a rather unusual step. We are going to severely restrict the number of training courses we release… at least initially.

The number that we finally decided on was 250.   In addition, they will only be available for 1 week.

Once the 250 courses are gone OR once the week is up, we will stop selling the course.

At that point, we will take a break of 4 weeks to see if we see any negative impact on the amount of time I have to answer and respond to questions. We will be watching our email and checking to see if our students end up getting the attention they need and deserve.

What I personally believe (and hope) is that we will not see any effect at all. One of the main reasons I fervently hope there is no impact is that I would rather sell a whole bunch of these courses to pay us back for the years of work we have put into it. HOWEVER, if we see anyone being neglected, we will put it on the shelf immediately.

If (and I hope when) we do open the Home Winemaking Training Course back up for sale, we will be raising the price drastically – eventually to $199. This training course is just not something we are looking to sell thousands of… we would rather keep the distribution low and make sure that everyone gets the attention they deserve. Raising the price will have 2 effects – it will limit the number we sell just by virtue of the price, and it will help pay us back for the enormous effort that we spent creating the course. 

BOTTOM LINE: We are going to act to maintain the integrity of our work in the Home Wine Making course. We don’t think that releasing this course will negatively impact our publication or the attention our customers deserve… but if it does, we will stop selling it.  I believe I can help about 250 people at a time and do it well.

Initial sales will be limited to 250 copies or 1 week from when we start selling the course. In addition, we are not allowing ANY outside promotion. The only people who will know about this course are the people on our internal mailing lists.

Stay tuned for more details. Our anticipated release date is this coming Friday. The best way to stay informed about the release of Real Estate Rocket Fuel is by joining our announcement list…see the details immediately below…

Home Winemaking Training Course announcement List

If you haven’t already joined our Home Wine Making Training Course announcement list and gotten your sneak preview of the course, just enter your name and email address and press the button that says “Submit”

and don’t worry – we respect your privacy – we won’t share your email address with anyone for any reason

best regards,

Mike

(We already addressed the #1 concern (that we were going to “let the secrets out of the bag” and they would stop working at this link)

CONCERN: The course is so big ( 4 hours of video instruction, 5 ebooks, trouble shooting articles, software, and more) that it will take a Phd or wine “geek” and it will only work for “savy” home winemakers.

BACKGROUND: When we released our “spy photo” of the course, lots of people were stunned by the sheer volume of material and size of the course. I got all kinds of email from people worried they wouldn’t be able to take it all in, or they wouldn’t be able to understand it. And lots of other folks thought you would have to be a “chemistry student” to understand it.

ANSWER: While the concern is understandable, this is one of those “no worries” situations. The course is easy to understand and it will be immediately useful to seasoned winemakers and beginners alike.

YES – the course is big

YES – there is a lot of material

HOWEVER, it is EXTREMELY understandable

I will give you an example. We offered this course as a “live class” and one of the students, Patty, (a self admittedly 67 year old winemaking “newbie”) with zero winemaking experience. Patty had been in the business world for 17 years and was also worried that this stuff would be too “technical”.

Patty is one of those unfortunate souls who has no interest in technology or chemistry.

In her own words she was “dreading” the course. She thought it would be WAY over her head and she would leave without understanding or getting anything out of the course.

Here’s what she had to say after the course was over:

“Mike,
I really enjoyed the class and knowing you were a normal hard working guy like the rest of us and it wasn’t just a theory of how it works but real hands on knowledge of what works and doesn’t.
I felt like I came away with some great in site without feeling lost since I am not “chemistry” savvy like others in the class.
I don’t feel intimidated at all and will work harder the next few weeks getting it done!
I felt like we had a fun class and a great instructor!
Thanks!” Patty – Birmingham, AL

And she didn’t even get the additional bonus instruction. She just sat through the live class one time.

Both the case study and the additional bonus instructions do a great job of building on and reinforcing the material in the video course.

Of course, we do spend a lot of time teaching specific uses of tools and strategies to use those tools, and we show how all of the tools work together, step by step, so you can quickly set up your own home wine making system.

That might sound unbelieveable – but what we are going to teach you in the course is how to take advantage of free tools and materials, and how to make excellent wine from them.

BOTTOM LINE: While the Home Winemaking Course is very thorough and has a huge amount of material, it is very easy to understand. And it will work for wine savy folks and beginners alike.

Stay tuned for more details. Our anticipated release date is this coming Friday. The best way to stay informed about the release of the Home Winemaking Course is by joining our announcement list…see the details immediately below…

Home Winemaking Training Course announcement List

If you haven’t already joined our Home Winemaking Training announcement list and gotten your sneak preview of the course, just enter your name and email address and press the button that says “Submit”

and don’t worry – we respect your privacy – we won’t share your email address with anyone for any reason

best regards,

Mike

If you want to learn how to make wine, one of the essential things you have to do is invert your sugar before you add it to your juice.

What is sugar inversion?

Before I get to that, let’s start with what yeast has to do to begin fermenting your juice, or more accurately, the sugar in your juice.

Yeast has to first break up household table sugar into two parts: glucose and sucrose. Once the yeast has used some energy doing the breakdown, then and only then can it start actually consuming the sugar and turning it into alcohol.

Inverting your sugar means that you are going to give your yeast a “head start” by breaking down the sugar in advance. This is an important step in learning how to make wine.

How do you do this?

Use about a cup of water and dissolve as much sugar as you can in a saucepan on the stove. Turn on the heat and get the solution close to boiling and add sugar until you can’t add any more - in other words, no more sugar will dissolve.

Now add the juice of 1 lemon. The acid in the lemon will “crack” the sugar molecules and break it down into sucrose and glucose, exactly what our yeast would have to do. Let your sugar mixture cook for about 15 minutes close to boiling (watch it carefully or it could boil over).

Now let it cool to room temperature and use this mixture to add sugar to your juice. You want to add enough to get the specific gravity up to about 1.1 before you put your yeast in.

If you want to learn how to make wine, first learn to invert your sugar. You will be surprised at the difference in flavor!

I just finished posting 5 more parts of the 12 part winemaking video course inside the Winemaker’s Inner Circle Library. (if you are not an Inner Circle member, join us now at www.how-to-make-wine.net)

If you really want to know how to make wine, this course has it all. 

There are a few things I have left:  bottling, labeling, and aging, but for the most part, it’s close to being finished.

If you are an Inner Circle Member, please post your comments below!

Thanks a million,

Mike

p.s. Fonz won the Chemical pack!  My wife liked his post the most (plus he kept me on the phone for 30 minutes asking questions)

First a sincere and happy holidays to every single one of
you. I’ve written a special holiday blog post with one aim
in mind…

To help you get what YOU want in 2009 and to share
some of the secrets that have helped me make the best wine possible…

I’ve broken this down into the five golden rules for making your own wine

As we enter 2009 I will have been making wine at home for 22 years.

WHERE I’VE COME FROM AND WHAT MAKES MY
POINT OF VIEW WORTH LISTENING TO?

Turning 49 years old (in 4 days) I’ve achieved what many people would
typically classify as unattainable at this “young” age - a respected maker of fine wines…

- Produced 3 Award Winning wines in 2006 and 2007

- Conducted not one but six home made winetasting events.

- Bottled my first “Bordeaux” in 2007 (had to import the grapes from France).

- Traveled throughout Europe and sampled homemade wines in Italy, Turkey, Greece and France. I was given “back room” tours in many restaurants and shown exactly how these restaurants made their own wine and then served it to their customers.

- Toured and examined 20+ vineyards and wineries in Sonoma and Napa Valley in California

In March of this year I hosted and Set up the first live conference call with some of the top names in Home Winemaking from around the world. (I’ll share this with you later!)

I guess you could say I’ve done a little “Homework”.

Here we are in Greece (this was just after 2 restaurant tours and a lot of “tasting”):

 

 ———————————————————————————
GOLDEN RULE OF MAKING WINE #1 - Getting Your

Mind in the ”Giving” Mode - the cornerstone of it all
———————————————————————————

Now here is the *KEY* difference between me and the
majority of people out there.

The way people’s brains are traditionally engineered
is as follows..

“If I give you money/my time what are you going to
do for me”

And this mindset goes deep into everything we do in
our daily lives from..

Getting a  job - what are my benefits, my perks, my
salary

Dating - I’ll take you out for dinner if you spend time
with me, if I gain favour with you

Now think about this for a moment…

What happens if you were to do the opposite?

When I take people out to eat I don’t say
“Please give me money for the food”

When I had a great bunch of people round for
a wine tasting event after I didn’t say “Please give
me $50 a head”

I focused solely on ONE thing only..

To make sure people enjoyed the day and to
give back to everyone.

To have fun, to network and to chill out.

And taste some amazing wines…

So if we revert back to the question..

After the event I had people asking “Well
was it worth it - do you think you will
get anything out of it?”

I can safely say now that if I ever need advice, 
have a question on a chemical, or just want some
new ideas to make a new variety of wine, those
who attended my event would bend over backwards to help.

You gotta program your mind to GIVE!

Help people get more out of life, and trust me
it will come back 100 times over.

————————————————————————-
GOLDEN RULE OF MAKING WINE #2-  Break
the rules, decide what you want to make and set
a date to bottle it.
————————————————————————

The trap that most people fall into is the  “Next week
I’m gonna do this, next month…”

Everyone is guilty of this.

Including myself!

For the last few months I’ve been meaning to add
2 more videos and 4 more books to our Inner Circle
Winemaker’s Library…

But I’m just been darn lazy!

However I will have done this by the end of January
1, 2009 at the latest.

I’ve been reading a lot about
‘incremental’ steps to success.

To lose 10 llbs you must lose the first lb first.

To make a million dollars it all starts with the first
$1.

To make 1,000 gallons of wine, first you have to make one gallon.

It’s a very simple philosophy but incredibly
powerful!

For example if you want a to make wine from fresh grapes,  you can start
smaller.  Just get enough for a gallon to start.  Later - get more.

You see the point.

We all have to start somewhere, so aim and PLAN
to start your own first batch and set a starting date.

Stick to it as closely as you can.

—————————————————————
GOLDEN RULE OF MAKING WINE #3- 
Follow the ‘right’ people and learn from real
life mentors
—————————————————————

I’ve always had a very simple philosophy in life.

“Follow the people that are successful in what you
want to achieve”

For example if you want to learn how to invest
in property, listen to someone who has done it
over YEARS the hard way, made mistakes and
learn from their advice. I only listen to
people I trust 110%.

There nothing more I hate than ‘fly by nighters’
who try to claim they are an expert in wine making
but really don’t have a clue and are just trying to
empty your wallet.

In wine making, one of the best guys who has
generated so many success stories is Jack Keller.
A great man and a guy who has a terrif site with some VERY
high quality winemaking information.

  ———————————————————————————
GOLDEN RULE OF  MAKING WINE #4 - Be
willing to invest in yourself and take action
on what you learn.
———————————————————————————

Over the recent months I have  purchased..

 - The Way to Make Wine -About how to make excellent table wines

 - Windows on the World Complete Wine Course

 - The Wine Bible - Just a pile
of rubbish but very entertaining  (Just kidding
Karen macNeil’s stuff is really on the cutting edge and worth
every penny)

Here’s the most important lesson to
take away..

Even if I put the material in my computer
watch it and think “Whoah that’s cool Karen how you used that crusher to process 400 lbs of grapes″.

IT WILL NOT MAKE ME A SINGLE GLASS OF WINE!

You need to take action on what you learn
and implement it in your winemaking.

If you buy an ebook on how to make wine
with different fruits then take action on it
and try it out!

Which leads me on to the ULTIMATE lesson..

  ————————————————————————-
GOLDEN RULE OF MAKING WINE #5 - Take
responsibility for your actions and answer
to yourself
————————————————————————–

This is one thing that REALLY bugs me.

And it’s probably the #1 difference between
people who are successfully making wine and those that seem
to get no where and never even start.

When you buy a new product or guide…

You need to take action and use/read/watch the
item you have just purchased to get a
result.

It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work.

In fact the scary thing is nearly all
home winemakers try things that DONT work!

But they take responsibility say “Ok cool -
I’ve tried that it didn’t work so well so lets move
on”

Rather than the attitude “Nothing ever
works for me - I can’t do this”

Even at 15 years old I always told my
school teachers “I am going to be really good at something”.

They laughed and thought I was crazy.

But I took responsibility for myself and what
many thought was nothing more than a
pipe dream turned into reality.

Because I accepted the consequences of my
actions and when things don’t work out,
I held my head high and kept going.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the
Five Golden Rules of making wine and got
something good out of it

COMPETITION TIME TO WIN a Complete Home Winemaker’s Chemical Pack and a FREE copy of the Complete Home Winemaking Video Course (Genuine $197 Value)

I’ll be releasing my new Video Course in  January
of 2009. (Inner Circle Members will get it free)

It’s a very space limited ‘Complete Winemaking Course’
and I’m sure you will love it!

If you’ve enjoyed my blog post then
comment below and let me know…

1) What you liked most about it…

2) What action YOU are going to take in
2009 to achieve your personal winemaking goals?

I will select someone in my next blog post
as the lucky winner

Happy Holidays to you and your family
and talk to you all soon!

Take Care,

Mike

(Enter Comments Below)

It’s thin, it’s acidic, and really just tastes like grape juice with a little alcohol in it. Not exactly what you would call a quality wine.

But, there IS a way to improve upon this flavor significantly. How do you do it?

First of all, find a wine from a wine shop that you really like. Many of these wines will list the subtle flavors that the wine has on the label. Examples of this are “hints of pepper”, and “blackberry overtones”. Concord juice concentrate has none of these.

So here’s the secret: Add these things to your grape juice before you start the fermentation, i.e., before you put your yeast in.

If you want “Blackberry overtones”, either buy fresh blackberries at the store, or you can even use canned blackberries in water. Be sure and crush them up to extract the juice or you can even use a juicer to get the juice out. You may want to thin the juice out a little by adding some water and then boiling on the stove to sterilize.

Another thing to add is regular raisans. Get a box of raisans, chop them up, and then boil them in water on the stove to extract the natural grape flavor and the tannins. Tannins are a big ingredient in finer wines and if there aren’t enough, your wine won’t have the right amount of “bite”.

One thing to watch out for: preservatives. If you buy juice or canned fruits, be sure and read the label to make sure there are NO preservatives. Preservatives will keep the juice from fermenting.

What about the “hint of pepper”? Simple, get some black peppercorns and put them in water and boil them to extract that peppery flavor.

You can even put everything above into one pot on the stove, boil it, let it cool, strain it, and then put it into the concord grape juice. Once you have done all of this, you are ready to throw in the yeast and let it ferment.

You will be amazed at the difference in flavor you’ll get. Try it and feel free to experiement by adding other fruits to the concord grape juice. Be sure and keep good notes just in case you hit on the “perfect” recipe so you can reproduce it later.