Food and Beverage Blog

Have you visited wineries and been able to observe the activities that occur in the wine making process? Anyone who has visited many wineries and seen firsthand the many steps that occur in the process has a pretty good idea of the intricacies involved. They may not be aware that those same intricate steps in the wine making process also translate into the label that becomes affixed to the bottle holding the finished product.

The label on a bottle of wine really does tell a story about the product inside. Consumers can know many details about a wine blend, the grapes that made it, where it was made, what specific vineyard it came from, and much more simply by reading and understanding the terminology used on wine labels.

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If you have never made your own wine, you are going to need some simple wine making instructions to get you going.

Whether you are going to make wine from freshly pressed grapes or from a commercially prepared concentrate, the process is basically the same.

The essential elements needed for wine

Apart from grapes, you need water, sugar (some of which will come from the grapes) and yeast to make wine. Basically what happens is that the sugar and yeast react to one another and they start to ferment. The same thing happens when you brew beer or when you prepare the dough for baking bread.

A wine making recipe will tell you how much of each ingredient to add, depending on the type of grapes or grape concentrate you are using.

The wine making process

The first step in the wine making process will depend on whether you are using grapes or a concentrate. If you are using grapes then these will need to be crushed. Then you will need to activate the wine yeast in a bottle of tepid water.

Once all the ingredients have been mixed together in a suitable container, they should be left to bubble and ferment. The instructions in the recipe will specify for how long. They will also state when the wine should be racked, which entails siphoning the wine out of the fermentation bucket into a clean container, so that the sediment that has sunk to the bottom is left behind.

The racking process is quite simple, although you have to be careful not to disturb the sediment, otherwise the wine will become cloudy and you’ll have to keep on racking it.

Bottling your wine

While good instructions will explain exactly when and how to bottle your homemade wine, it isn’t always possible for them to determine exact timing. This is because conditions will be different for you and for me and for anyone else who is making and bottling their own wine. An invaluable rule of thumb is to only bottle your wine when it is really clear. When it’s in the bottle it will continue fermenting gently and the taste will continue to develop.

A final tip is fills the bottle as much as possible, because any air left between the wine and the cork can change the color of the wine.