A Complete Guide to Wine Making
August 10, 2009
Every true fanatic for wines will realize the ecstasy of preparing their own wine at home and savoring it. While the process may seem to be complicated, wine making at home is quite enjoyable. So, before embarking on your adventure of making wine, you must educate yourself on the main steps involved.
Grape concentrate or grapes is the main ingredient you need to make domestic wine. If you have a sufficient growing area, you may choose to grow your own grapes and make wine from that. If you are using grape concentrate, nothing but the best quality will do. This can be purchased online as well as in wine and home brewing stores. Now you will have to get home brewing equipment and some yeast. For first time wine makers, investing in a wine kit is a much better idea than getting all the things one by one. Once you have made your wine and assured yourself that this is a hobby you would like to involve yourself in, you can buy upgraded your wine making equipment for making larger quantities.
Depending on what you use – grapes or concentrate – there can be anything from 5 to 8 steps in wine making. If you are using grapes then the fruit will obviously need to be harvested first. Make sure you remove all the stems from the grapes you harvested. Stems contain bitter tannins.
With the stems removed, you will now have to puncture the skins of the grapes in order to extricate their juices. There are several methods to do this. Expert wine makers would like to crush the grapes to get the juices. The taste you get from the wine will depend on the extent to which you crush the grapes. Would you like to know how they get those almost fruit flavored wines?
This is followed by the step known as primary fermentation. During this step the yeast cells contained in the wine will feed on the sugars. The byproducts are alcohol and CO2 - sometimes you may need to add more yeast. If you rely only on the yeast that is present on the fruit, you are not going to get a regular conversion, that is why you have to add some more.
After the primary fermentation, more juice will need to be extracted from the fruit. It should be noted that the juice that is extracted in this step is typically not as high of a quality as the juice that is extracted during the crushing phase. There’s a reason behind that: The juice that you got in the first crushing was the free run juice that was devoid of stem and skin of the grapes. But the press juice is not worthless. Press juice is used in the large wineries to increase the total output.
After the pressing, the wine undergoes a secondary fermentation and an aging process simultaneously. You can decide how long you want your wine to be fermented.
Bottling is the concluding process of wine making. Wine is poured straightaway into the bottles but some people add sulfites too, because they stop the fermentative process and can keep the wines well-preserved. Finally, the bottle of wine is sealed with a cork.
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