Meritage Wine Kit with Fresh Skins Option - Finer Wine Kits Tavola Series

Experience the joy of home winemaking with the Meritage Wine Kit with Fresh Skins Option - Finer Wine Kits Tavola Series. This high-quality wine kit offers you the opportunity to create your own Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot blend, right from the comfort of your home. Sourced from premium California grapes, this kit is inspired by the Meritage blend, a California alternative to the French Bordeaux, developed in the 1980s.

The Meritage Wine Kit - Finer Wine Kits Tavola Series is designed to produce a medium-bodied red wine, bursting with dark berry fruit flavors, floral aromas, and hints of vanilla. This wine kit is sure to impress your friends and keep them asking for more.

As part of the versatile Tavola Series, this winemaking kit allows you to customize your wine to your preferences. Depending on whether you choose to use no skins, a single, or double skin pack, you can create a range of wines from lighter to medium-bodied.

The fresh, unprocessed double skin packs offer a richer tannin profile, akin to a Forte Series kit, but with a more subtle flavor due to a lower ABV. Wines made with double skin packs exhibit a deeper color and heavier body, but require longer aging (6 - 12 months).

Opting for a single skin pack will also enhance the tannins and body of your wine, but with less aging required (4-6 months). If you prefer a light to medium-bodied wine that's ready to drink faster, using no skins will achieve this in just 6 - 12 weeks.

For an added twist, the double skin packs come with oak cubes, which impart more vanilla qualities to your wine. You also have the unique option to add grape seeds, an exclusive innovation from Finer Wine Kits, to increase tannins and round out the tannin profile.

If you're new to winemaking, don't worry. The Meritage Wine Kit - Finer Wine Kits Tavola Series comes with the best instructions around, ensuring a smooth and successful winemaking process. Choose Finer Wine Kits for your home winemaking journey and enjoy the satisfaction of creating your own high-quality wine.

Label Peelers is the exclusive retailer of this unique product. Due to its freshness and perishable nature, this wine kit can't sit on any shelf. It must go directly from the freezer to your doorstep, ensuring its quality and freshness are uncompromised. This direct-to-door service is the only way a wine kit of this quality is possible. It guarantees you're receiving the best possible wine kit, offering the utmost value for your money. You're not subjected to any additional distributor or wholesale markups, but instead, you're procuring top-grade ingredients at the most affordable price.

A Finer Wine Kit is an exceptional product that yields results akin to wine produced from fresh grapes, setting it apart from other kits in the market. The kit includes perishable, unpasteurized juice concentrate, which is shipped in refrigerated packaging to maintain the grape's intrinsic quality. This method effectively eliminates the common cooked juice flavor found in other brands so their pasteurized wine kits that can be stored at room temperature. If you're unable to begin your Finer Wine Kit immediately upon arrival, it's crucial that the juice is refrigerated and the skins are stored in your freezer. The highly concentrated juice, vacuum evaporated at low temperatures, is compact enough to fit in any standard household refrigerator. This means you're not incurring costs for shipping gallons of water to your home.

Finer Wine Kits were developed by home winemakers like you, adapting years of experiential knowledge into a surefooted process that gives fabulous results.

The instruction manual not only explains what to do, but also why you are doing it. Watch the video tutorials for additional instruction. You can view and download the complete instruction booklet here. Advanced users can now download an abbreviated version of the instructions here. 

• ABV: 12 - 13%
• Makes 28-30 bottles  (6 gallons) of wine.
• Character: Dry
• Region: Lodi California

*This kit is an agricultural product and must be fermented or cooked before being consumed.

OTHER PRODUCTS YOU MIGHT NEED 

Equipment Kits

If your Meritage Wine Kit - Finer Wine Kits Tavola Series is your first, equipment kits are a very easy and cost effective way to obtain what you need to get started. Wine kits provide ingredients and instructions but do not provide equipment. The Vintner's Best Deluxe Wine Equipment Kit pictured here has everything you need to make a six gallon batch of wine. Each batch yields approx. 28 to 30 - 750ml bottles of wine. This kit is the top of the line and there are other equipment kits you can choose from for your kit. 

Equipment Kit includes
- 7.9 Gallon Fermenting Bucket 
- Lid with Grommet
- 6 Gallon Glass Carboy
- Bottle Filler
- Double Level Corker
- Triple Scale Hydrometer
- Easy Clean Cleanser
- Auto Siphon w/ siphon hose
- Carboy Bung w/ Airlock
- Corks 30 count
- Plastic Mix Stir that attaches to drill 

Fermenters

A 7.9 Gallon Fermenter with a grommeted lid is the right vessel to use for your Meritage Wine Kit because you need extra headspace to account for active fermentation. It is good to replace buckets from time because plastic harbors bacteria. Here's a link to our fermenter equipment.

Hoses

Many people reuse their hoses for far too long. Replacing your hoses often is highly recommended with winemaking. Even if you have good sanitation practices, hoses are particularly difficult to keep clean. You do not want to risk a bacterial contamination in your Meritage Wine Kit over something that costs very little to replace. 

Siphons

Auto-siphons are a great luxury item to have in your winemaking equipment. Once you have one you will never go without one again. Don't forget to use a heavy duty sanitizer to clean it since you don't want to replace it often as hoses. A good sanitizer for that job is Five Star San. Like hoses, Siphons are also difficult to keep clean so it is advisable to replace them. 

Corkers

Corking can be a big job especially if you make a lot of wine. Also bigger corkers give you the option to use longer corks which are beneficial if you want to age your Meritage longer. The Italian Floor Corker pictured here is easy to use and makes corking easy and fun.

Airlocks

Airlocks are another inexpensive product that should be periodically replaced. Though it might be easy to assume bacteria is not a concern with airlocks because they do not actually touch your wine, this is not the case. A small increase in temperature could cause your wine to swell and back up into the airlock. It happens often. You don't want to risk losing your Meritage over a potentially unsanitary and cheap piece of plastic. 

Carboys 

Your Meritage Kit is designed to fit a 6 gallon carboy pictured here. Though glass carboys are one of the safest sanitary options for secondary fermentation and bulk aging your wine, they are fragile and break from time to time. If you use glass carboys, a carboy handle or carrier is very advisable. They should not be moved when full without carrying equipment. 

Stoppers and Bungs 

Your Meritage will need to sit in a carboy during secondary fermentation and like airlocks, bungs and stoppers should also be periodically replaced, especially if you make a lot of wine. Stoppers are available drilled for use with airlocks or solid for bulk aging after your wine has fully gassed out. The size 6.5 stopper pictured is made for a 6 or 5 gallon carboy. If you have many different sized vessels, universal bungs might be a more economical option. 

Hydrometers

Hydrometers can last a lifetime, if they don't break. If you have suffered the disappointment of breaking your favorite hydrometer you can view them here.  

Corks

Winemakers always need more corks. Be sure to read the corker requirements of different corks before you make your selection because some cork sizes do not work with all corkers. If you want to age your Meritage longer corks are preferable. 

 Mix Stir

You may be using the back of your stirring spoon to Degas your wine but a mix stir is the best way to remove unwanted gasses from your wine. 

 DID YOU KNOW

To be considered a Mertitage, it must contain at least two varietals that originate from the Bordeaux region.