The art of wine making is a secret that many vintners and wine connoisseurs have been looking for during the past thousands of years that wine has been around. Recently, the bigger vintners have been using technology to try to improve their wines. This is a controversial move, and some people are calling foul.

These people claim that the art of wine making isn't related to technology at all, but the result of a lot of attention; the best ingredients; having perfect weather; the right amount of rainfall; having hot days and cool nights; the vine's health; and being spared from one of the diseases that hits grapes every so often. They say that the art of wine making is magic, and can't be replicated in a lab or with fancy computers.

So what are these computers doing, and is it helping them to make a special bottle of wine? With the help of technology, you can easily measure sugar levels, the amount of different trace elements and chemicals that occur naturally in grapes. Compare that to a classically good wine, and you can see where your wine is falling short.

Most vineyards won't change a wine by adding stuff to it. That doesn't mean that they can't use this information. In fact, some vineyards are using this technology to influence how they fertilize their grapes, when they pick them, how long the wine is aged (and how they age it), or when to give up and throw the whole batch away.

As a beginning home wine maker, you will probably not use a lot of technology to make your wine. That's ok, because the secret of the art of making wine is to have patience and to know that every batch won't turn out like you want it to, but that one rare batch that dances in your mouth is the reason why you make wine yourself.