Frequently Asked Questions

Updated December 22, 2022

An 11.5L batch will make 15bottles, a 23L batch will make 30 bottles. Essentially, every 11.5L increment is equivalent to 15 bottles, ie. 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, and so on. We have the ability to produce virtually any amount that you desire!

The cost of the juice, our service charge for producing the wine, the corks, and all taxes are included in the price. We do not include bottles, labels or shinktops as those are optional items that you can decide to purchase at the bottling stage.

We have it right here. The first page is for wines made on site by us, and the second half is for just our juices that will be made at home by home winemakers.

We try to make the winemaking process as simple as possible. We take care of all fermentation, racking, stabilization, and filtration. 

We do need a bit of assistance from you during the bottling stage, but this is as simple as putting a cork in a bottle with our fancy corking machine. 

We assist you with removing and placing your bottles in your car, and we'll be there every step of the way. It is a fun, easy process!

All of our wines take 6 weeks to produce in store. We consider a wine ready to be bottled once we have properly fermented, stabilized, and filtered it. We will contact you on the day that it has been filtered (typically a Monday or Tuesday) and we can arrange a bottling appointment that fits your schedule.

We have tried in the past to speed up the process and we have found that it just does not work. We take great pride in our wines, and we have chosen not to sacrifice that for speed of production.

Yes! By default we make all of our wines without oak. We do offer complimentary oaking upon request. We are able to produce a light, medium, or heavy oaking in all of our wines. We use American oak chips to provide the oaking for our wines.

Some wines are better suited for oaking than others. Please feel free to ask us for advice, we've tried just about everything!

We wish! Unfortunately by law, we require either you, a friend or family member to be in store to pour the yeast to start your new batch.

We do offer our juice for sale on our website, but that is for home winemakers who intend to produce it at home. To place an order for winemaking our customers must visit us in-store. 

We wish! There would be nothing more that we would like to do than have our customers try a sample of wine before ordering, unfortunately it is not legal for us to offer that. It all comes down to how our ferment on premise license works.

We are able to have our customers try the juice that is used to make the wine. While this tastes nothing like wine, our customers can appreciate the quality of the juice and see that the wine has a very strong foundation to build upon.

Absolutely not! We ferment all of our wines to be bone dry unless specified otherwise. The reason our juice is so sweet is that the yeast we add to the juice converts the sugar into alcohol. The sweeter the juice, the higher the potential alcohol %.

The alcohol % of our wines differs between all of the varietals. They also change year to year depending on the growing season. Typically our whites range from 11-13.5% alcohol, and ours reds 12.8-14.5% alcohol. Feel free to contact us for further details about each varietals expected alcohol %

Under ideal circumstances, some of our wines can last as long as most commercial wines, typically from 0-10 years. We typically find they peak after 2-3 years depending on the wine.

Absolutely! It is almost unbelievable how much our wine can change with proper aging. We always like to compare our wines to LCBO wines, and one of the biggest differences is that you don’t purchase LCBO wine that are only 6 weeks old. We believe that if you give our wine a proper aging you will be amazed.

The best way to age your wine is to have it on its side in a temperature controlled environment. We find keeping the wine at a constant 10-16°C, with humidity around 70-80% in a dark room is ideal. That being said, our wine will age in most conditions. A basement is a great place to store wine. The biggest factor is you don’t want to let the wine change temperatures rapidly, keeping it at a constant temperature is your best bet.

Just as a precaution, we like our customers to keep their bottles upright from 1 day to 1 week before placing them on their side. This just ensures that the cork remains in the bottle.

We’re sorry to hear that! In the rare case that this does happen, we can either make you something else, or return your money. We understand that it can be hard to order something without trying it, the least we can do is guarantee the quality of our product, which we do 100%.

Those are wine crystals, also known as wine diamonds. They are essentially a sign that your wine has been aging well. They do no harm to your wine and are perfectly normal. A lot of high end wines bought in vintages will have significant amount of crystals in them too, it is just part of winemaking. Cosmetically they are not the nicest thing to look at, and if it something you would like removed we are more than happy to re-filter your wine at no cost.

We have noticed that crystals are a little more prevalent in our 2017 & 2018 Riesling and Pinot Grigio. We have refined our filtration system to limit crystals going forward, but please get in touch with us if you are finding significant deposits of crystals in your wine.

We do. We add less than the majority of wines in the LCBO. Sulphites are an extremely important part of ensuring that wine stays in good condition. Customers have the option at bottling to add less sulphites, or even none at all, but we will warn you that it could lead to a dramatically shorter lifespan for your wine.

Typically headaches from wine come from drinking red wines that were fermented on the skins of the fruit. Most red wines bought in the LCBO have been fermented in this way. This gives the wine a stronger tannin base, but the skins of the fruit have a histamine that can give people headaches. Often these headaches are blamed on sulphites in wine, but actually sulphite allergies are quite rare.

Our wines do have tannin in them, but because we ferment juice instead of grape skins, there is significantly less danger of having a headache from our wines. The only headaches from our wines come if you drink a bit too much!

Yes! We encourage our clients to bring in their own bottles to use. We are happy to bottle wine into any vessel, whether it be 750ml, 1L, 1.5L wine bottles. Or even gallon jugs, carboys, wine bags, etc etc.

No problem! Our corking machine can handle screw topped bottles with ease. A lot of our clients use screw cap bottles.

We have a wide selection of wine bottles here for sale. We charge $1.25/bottle. As an example, if you bring 10 of your own bottles for a 14 bottle batch, then we can top you up with 4 new bottles.

You could, but we would not recommend it. The reason is, wines that are sealed with screw caps do not age very well. They tend to stay pretty much the way they were when they went into the bottle. This is fine for most LCBO wines, but it is not ideal for our wines that are fairly young. We want the wines to age, and cork is the best way to do that.

Absolutely! We sell 5L wine bags. Typically our customers get two bags plus a bottle per 11L batch of wine. Let us know in advance if you would like to bag your wine and we can work out the details!

Yes, we have an industrial washing machine here that will sterilize wine bottles with very hot water. However, it does not scrub or remove anything physically in a bottle. We recommend giving your bottles a quick once over before coming into bottle.

That is absolutely no problem. We don’t mind holding wine here for a little bit after we have prepared it. We typically do not want to have wines here any longer than 2 months after filtration. We are also not able to store bottled wine.

Absolutely! We carry a wide selection of pre-made labels that range in price from $2.95-4.95. We also have a custom label program where we can either design a label for you, or you can design one at home. 

We love to make wine for weddings here at KJ. We do a lot of weddings every year and always have a great time doing it. Feel free to contact us for a quote for your wedding, the one piece of advice we always offer is to get the wine started sooner than later. It just means more time for your wine to age.

Although we do deal with vineyards that practice sustainable and organic farming methods, because of the vast difference in Organic certification from place to place and country to country, we can not say ethically say that our wines are “organic”.