If you are an authority of wine, you will understand the joy that comes with making and appreciating a wine you have prepared yourself. Wine making may be an art to many but for most of us it isn’t that difficult to produce a half reasonable bottle from our own efforts. Take some time to learn the step to produce your own wine.
Make sure you have either grapes or their concentrate to start with your wine production. Grow some grapes if you have a piece of land and use them whenever you make your wine. If you choose to use grape concentrate, keep in mind that you will need to use high quality grape concentrate. You can get such high quality concentrate online and in domestic supply stores. In addition, you will need yeast and brewing equipment. If this is your first time making wine, do not buy things individually, try to find a whole wine kit that contains everything you need. Start with a wine kit and practice your hand at wine making and then you are sure this is something you would like to continue, start investing in individual bits of equipment.
There are five to eight basic steps involved in the process of wine making, depending on whether you are using grapes or concentrate. Harvest the fruits first if you are beginning with them. You will need to manually pluck out all stems from the grapes that you have harvested. Stems contain bitter tannins.
Check that all stems have been removed and then break the grapes’ skins so that the juice can be released from them. There are certainly many different ways in which to do this. Most wine makers prefer the crushing method. The degree to which the fruit is crushed will have an impact on the resulting wine. Leaving the berries almost whole will get you a wine that has a fruit like aroma.
The next process you have to carry out is known as primary fermentation. This step is the step of fermentation of the sugars in the juice by the yeast cells. The byproducts are alcohol and CO2 - sometimes you may need to add more yeast. Depending only on the yeast naturally present in the grapes won’t give you the kind of transformation you want, hence more yeast is needed.
More juice can be squeezed out of the grapes after the primary fermentation is over. The juice that you will get after the primary fermentation is over will be typically of a low grade. This is because the juice that is obtained during crushing, known as free run juice, has had less contact with the stems and skins. But the press juice is not worthless. Large scale wineries always make use of the press juice to increase their total product volume.
A secondary fermentation occurs in the wine following the pressing process as it is aging. Here, you are wine maker, so you can decide for yourself how long you will want the wine to ferment.
You will have to add the finishing touch to your wine making with bottling. 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. The last step will be to cork the bottle.