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10 Best Wine Making Kits [Recommended Equipment + Recipe Kits]
We've got homemade wine making covered in our guide. Below, we recommend the ultimate wine making kits for equipment and instructions, and also the best homemade wine ingredients kits.
I guess you've made the decision to make your own wine at home.
You're in for a really fun and rewarding experience, but a lot of your success depends on getting the right wine making kit.
There are wine kits for beginners that hold your hand from start to finish and also wine making kits that allow you a bit more creative expression in your role as a vintner.
We've narrowed down the choice to ten kits, that in our opinion, are the best winemaking kits available in 2023.
Wine making beginner or veteran vintner, we've got the right kit for you below!
Our Recommended Wine Making Kits
These are the homemade wine kits that we recommend over all others.
You can read about our recommendations in more detail in the following reviews.
Our Top Picks at a Glance
Best Overall
Master Vintner Wine Starter Kit
Best for Beginners
Craft a Brew Home Wine Making Kit
Best of the Rest
North Mountain One Gallon Kit
Best Overall Wine Making Kit
Master Vintner Wine Starter Kit
In our opinion, this is the most complete, comprehensive, and well instructed wine making kit available.
It's compatible with any wine ingredient kit and can be used to ferment with fresh fruit juice or fruit concentrate.
This kit contains all of the necessary equipment except from the wine bottles (which is standard among these kits). The equipment is high quality too and is designed to make your life easier when it comes to taking measurements and transferring wine from vessel to vessel.
But maybe the most important component of a 'make your own wine kit' is the instructions. It's no good having good equipment if you don't ensure your processes are faultless.
Thankfully, the instructions here are clear, precise, and well thought out. You aren't presented with walls of text and there are plenty of visual aids and diagrams that are easy to follow.
If you're making your first batch of wine at home you might enjoy the safety net of having 7-day a week text, telephone, and e-mail support on offer. This is a key selling point with the Master Vintner kit and something that makes the more expensive pricing more palatable.
This Master Vintner kit isn't small either. With a 6 gallon glass secondary carboy (no unsightly plastic fermenting buckets here!), you can make as many as 30 x 750ml bottles of wine at a time.
Now, you don't need to make as much as this, and if it's your first time I recommend you stick to making a 1 gallon batch, but it's great to have the option for expansion once you become more experienced in winemaking.
Master Vintner Starter Kit
Quality equipment with detailed instructions and amazing support.
Pros
Cons
Conclusion:
It's hard to fault this complete wine making equipment kit.
The individual components are top quality and they are tied together with detailed instructions that detail the wine making process in a simple manner.
It's the kit we'd choose over all others.
Best Wine Making Kit for Beginners
Craft a Brew Home Wine Making Kit
If you're just getting started on your wine making journey then this kit from Craft a Brew is worth your attention.
It's as complete a wine kit as you can get and contains all the equipment and ingredients you need to make your first batch of homemade wine. It's really good value for money too!
Again, you'll need your own bottles but why not just recycle some old ones?
Actually, it doesn't include a hydrometer either which might be a sticking point for some (a hydrometer allows you to track the amount of sugar and stage of fermentation by measuring liquid density).
But, if you follow the instructions perfectly then you shouldn't really need it. You'll just need to trust the process and hope that you've checked all the boxes. If you'd like the reassurance of a a hydrometer, you can pick one up for less than $20.
This one gallon kit can make up to 5 bottles of your favorite wine. It comes in a variety of wine types, which include:
It's pitched very much at the novice wine maker and includes really nicely illustrated instructions that clear up some of the confusion that can be had when making wine for the first time. Wine making is full off technical jargon and they do a great job of explaining everything for the first timer.
Craft a Brew Complete Kit
Ideal for beginners this complete kit contains equipment & ingredients
Pros
Cons
Conclusion:
Complete wine kits that come with both equipment and ingredients are actually not all that common.
This is one of our favorites that's ideal for the beginner. Clearly illustrated and available in white or red varieties, it's a great starter kit.
Best of the Rest
North Mountain Brewing One Gallon Kit
If a 6-gallon kit like the Master Vintner one is too much or if you need something with more comprehensive equipment than our recommended beginner's wine making kit, then this kit from North Mountain Brewing deserves your attention.
It's the perfect middle ground that come with an impressive wine recipe book containing over 100 different recipes to try at home.
The big reason to go for this kit over our recommended beginner's wine kit is the inclusion of an auto-siphon and hydrometer.
Once you've used an auto-siphon you'll wonder how you ever got by without one. As for the hydrometer, it will allow you accurately measure your levels of sweetness and the stage of fermentation instead of blindly trusting a recipe.
This kit contains all you need to start making wine at home except from the fruit and bottles.
North Mountain Brewing One Gallon Kit
An awesome kit that's a great starting point for smaller wine making operations
Pros
Cons
Conclusion:
This is the perfect wine kit for those with limited space or that just don't want to make huge amounts of wine each time.
The recipe book and instructions are great resources that are great for novices too.
Master Vintner Fresh Harvest Kit
This Master Vintner Fresh Harvest Fruit Winemaking Kit is excellent for both beginners and experienced wine makers alike.
It comes with almost all the supplies needed to make 15 wine batches of one gallon each.
This kit is ideal for making wine with any type of fruit, not just from grapes. To inspire you, the kit is supplied with a useful recipe handbook.
Although of an excellent overall quality, the kit lacks a few important elements. Among them, the corker and corks, not to mention the bottles.
Nevertheless, all these supplies are easy to find and relatively inexpensive, so this isn’t a major inconvenience.
A thing we really like is the high-quality multi-purpose yeast that is suitable for all types of wines.
Pros
Cons
Conclusion:
This is the perfect wine kit for those with limited space or that just don't want to make huge amounts of wine each time.
The recipe book and instructions are great resources that are great for novices too.
Winemakers Depot 6 Gallon Kit
This is a really detailed equipment kit that leaves no stone unturned. It's actually an upgrade on their starter kit with notable additions being an auto-siphon and huge 8-gallon glass fermenting carboy (among other things).
This is definitely a step up from the beginner's kits. If you've found your wine making skills have progressed after a few batches then this is the type of kit you should be looking at.
The quality of the wine making equipment is really high, and you'll be impressed by the standard of the individual components having used a starter kit previously.
It should be noted that this is a wine making equipment only kit. You'll need to purchase an additional wine ingredients kit like those we recommend in the following section.
Pros
Cons
Conclusion:
A great upgrade on the starter kits in both size and the quality of the equipment.
This kit is for winemakers that have a few batches under their belts already.
Our Recommended Wine Recipe Kits
Once you're kitted out with new wine making equipment the next step before getting your hands dirty is collecting the ingredients.
Like with getting the necessary equipment, the components can all be bought separately for a cheaper price.
But, if you want to save time and ensure that no mistakes have been made, we'd recommend getting an all in one wine ingredients kit.
Simply select the type of wine you'd like to make and the kit comes with everything you need to get started. The only things you need to add are sugar and water.
These DIY wine kits typically contain:
If you'd like to take the hassle out of sourcing all of your wine making ingredients then we recommend getting one of these awesome wine recipe kits.
Just remember to match the size of the recipe kit with the capacity of your wine making equipment.
They both typically come in 1 gallon or 6 gallon sizes.
Master Vintner Winemaker's Reserve
These premium wine recipe kits come in almost any wine variety you can think of. That makes them incredibly popular and quite expensive too.
They come in 6 gallon sizes only and the feedback on the quality of wine produced is generally really good. I've heard great things about the Cabernet Sauvignon and Riesling kits in particular.
These are the different kits on offer:
This kit is one of the more expensive so maybe it's best not suited to the first time winemaker.
However, it probably produces the best tasting wine from an 'all in one' ingredients kit.
It comes thoroughly recommended from the team at Wine Turtle.
Winexpert Classic Ingredients Kit
Complete Guide to Pinot Noir Wine | Wine 101Another really popular recipe kit is the Winexpert range. Like the Master Vintner kits, they come in almost every wine variety you can think of and produce some really good tasting wine.
The 6-gallon kits generally take around 4-8 weeks to make and produce 28-30 bottles. But, if you need something a bit smaller (and cheaper) they do 1-gallon kits too.
A nice touch with the Winexpert kits is the limited edition (LE Collection) and Private Reserve releases. I'd wait until you have a bit of experience under your belt before splashing out on these though.
They come in common wine varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Shiraz, Moscato, White Zinfandel, Malbec, Amarone, Pinot Grigio, and even some exciting blends.
Wine Lovers DIY Beginners Kit
This range of wine recipe kits is a great place to start for the beginner.
There's a wide a range of wines on offer with the usual suspects like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Pinot Grigio, but the price point is much more enticing than our previous two recommendations.
They actually do a great Zinfandel Blush Rosé too.
This is a 6-gallon kit too, so make sure you have the capacity to manage what will be around 30 bottles of wine.
Wine Buddy Wine Making Ingredients Kit
The Wine Buddy range of ingredients kit are amazing value for money.
Fermenting in just 7 days and producing around 30 bottles of wine (for the Sauvignon Blanc anyway) it's a great starter kit that's perfect for the first timer.
Fontana Wine Making Ingredients Packs
The Fontana ingredients packs have actually won numerous awards for the quality of wines that they can produce.
There's a huge range of wines available but there's a real focus on US varietals.
These 6-gallon kits produce around 30 bottles of great tasting wine and come with detailed instructions that explain each step carefully.
Buyer's Guide
If you're looking at purchasing your first wine kit you might have a few questions that need answered first.
Hopefully, we can fill in the gaps down below.
Is a Wine Making Kit Really Necessary?
It really depends on your level of experience and the equipment that you already own.
A complete beginners wine making kit includes everything that you need to get started.
The equipment and ingredients (and sometimes yes even the fruit concentrate) are supplied and you're ready to go.
Of course, you can buy everything separately and save some money in the process, but in my opinion it's just not worth the hassle.
The list of ingredients and equipment is quite a long one and by buying a complete kit, you are assured that everything is compatible together and in the right sizes that you need.
If you've made wine at home (or even beer) you might already have some of the necessary equipment and don't want to waste money on extras.
In this case, a kit containing just ingredients and instructions can might be useful.
Different Types of Wine Making Kits
There are a few different options available with wine kits so be careful what you're getting. They all tend to be marketed as the same but include different things.
The truth is none of them are the "complete" kits that they say they are.
You'll likely need to get your own fruit, corker, and wine bottles.
Here's what's available:
For the most authentic wine making experience you should really start from scratch. That means starting with grapes (or other fruit) instead of a fruit concentrate.
However, for first timers it's definitely easier (and quicker) to use a wine base instead.
What Equipment and Ingredients are Included in a Wine Kit?
Winemaking kits are so useful because they include specialist equipment that can otherwise be hard to source.
Here's a quick run-through of the equipment you'll generally find inside.
Equipment
Different kits may have their own names for things but to make wine at home you'll need the following:
Ingredients
The ingredients are a little bit harder to predict, but generally you'll get the following when getting a wine recipe kit (or at least something that performs these roles):
3 Essential Tips for Making Wine From Grapes
Making wine from grapes isn't as complicated as you might think, provided the instructions are clear.
However, there are a few important steps you should follow to ensure the success of your first attempt.
