Su Vino Winery

By SUSAN TAYLOR / Special Contributor
Su Vino, a custom winemaking shop in Grapevine, has everything budding winemakers need to create personalized vintages from a selection of grape varieties.

You choose the type of wine you want to make, and the staff provides everything you need and walks you through the process.

A batch of red or white table wine - 28 to 30 bottles - costs $199. The shop stocks 30 to 40 juice blends and varietals. Some of the more popular blends are cabernet merlot, chardonnay semillon and cabernet shiraz. Popular varietals, which contain only one type of grape juice, include riesling, pinot grigio and merlot. The shop also carries juices to make after-dinner wines ($289).

Mark Murphy of Dallas "thought it would be neat to craft my own wine and labels and give it as gifts." Mr. Murphy doesn't consider himself a wine connoisseur, but "I know what I like when I taste it and I know exceptional value." He was so pleased with his Italian barolo, which he's planning to use at holiday dinner parties, that he recently made a second batch of white wine.

Shop owners Patrick Nelson and Tim Weinheimer make the process fun and easy.

First, stop in for a tasting at the wine bar, which usually has at least a dozen wines on hand. A flight of three wine tastes costs $5.

"We use the ones we have at the wine bar as a benchmark. If a customer wants a heavier black cherry hint, we can guide them to a variety that has that characteristic," Mr. Nelson says. (The tasting samples are also available in bottles for around $11.)

They stock a few natural flavorings such as peach, which is made from real fruit and added after fermentation. Other custom options include exposing the wine to oak by adding oak chips to the fermenting juice and by aging it in oak barrels.

When you decide which type of wine you want, they'll bring out the juice to make your batch. Mr. Nelson encourages customers to try the juice, which he says is surprisingly sweet. It's the sugar in the juice that will turn into alcohol, and your juice into wine, he explains. You'll add the yeast that starts the fermentation process. Next you'll get to browse through label selections and choose a custom label.

During fermentation, the Su Vino staff takes care of degassing, stabilizing and clarifying the wine.

In about six weeks, you can go back to Su Vino to bottle the wine, add corks and labels and take it home. The bottling is only "apron-messy," and you can do it alone or bring a few friends.

Mr. Nelson says the wine is drinkable when bottled, but white wine does best when aged at least two months, and red, three months.

Karen Voorhees of Fort Worth asked her husband for a gift certificate to Su Vino for her birthday.

"It's so much fun to bottle it and cork it and add labels. You do the funneling from a big vat," she says. "We drank a glass right from the vat and it was delicious." Although she only brought her bottles home a few weeks ago, Ms. Voorhees has about 15 of her original 28 bottles of Karen's Finest Peach Chardonnay 2003 left. She plans on going back to make a batch of merlot.

For Mr. Nelson and Mr. Weinheimer, both wine enthusiasts, Su Vino is the perfect vehicle to combine their love of wine with their business ...