Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Wine Making Step By Step

By Pierre Duponte

When it comes down to making wine, common knowledge plays a big part in the process. If you combine the basic elements of wine making with your innate instinct and taste, the result should, surely, be a positive one.

Crushing and Pressing In general, about 50 pounds of grape will yield five gallons of wine. Once your grapes are harvested, they must be placed in a plastic vat (available at you local wine supply shop) and crushed. While the age-old method of smashing grapes by foot is proved to be the most efficient "even compared to modern technologies " smaller batches of grapes can be crushed using your hands or a potato masher. In order to ensure homogeneous crushing of the grapes, make sure the vat is not more than 2/3 full before you begin smashing them. After crushing the grapes, add the recommended amount of Campden tablets (potassium metabisulfite) into the mixture "now called must- in order to prevent any unwanted yeast growth. Cover with a cloth and let it sit for 24 hours.

Fermentation Process The next day, the wine fermenting yeast must be added. Wine yeast must not be confused with bread yeast, since these two are not interchangeable. After adding the yeast, work it in the mixture using your hands to increase the temperature for the yeast to be activated. Comb out most or all stems, cover, and leave to rest. You will notice that the mixture will begin to fizz, and will look like its almost boiling by the peak fermenting time (72 hours).

Within a week the fizzing will subside and it is time to separate the wine from the leftover seeds, grape skins, and pulp. The mixture can be poured into mesh bags or cheese clothes. It then needs to be squeezed, strained and poured into a glass carboy, also available at winemaking shops, or poured into an empty wine barrel. From this moment on the wine should no longer come into contact with the air. An airlock can be used with a carboy or a barrel. An airlock prevents air from getting into the container but allows gas to escape.

It only takes about two to three weeks in the container for all of the fizzing to subside. At this point, you will need to rack the wine. Racking is the process that removes the wine from the lees which is the spent yeast and grape bits that have fallen to the bottom of the barrel. You can use a hose to siphon the clear wine into a carboy and clean out the lees from the old container. Then pour the wine back into the original container. After about two to three months the wine is ready for a second racking. Three to four months after that, do a third and final racking.

Once the third racking is completed, the wine is ready to be aged. Aging must be done in a very dark, cool place, with just one rule of thumb that is easy to remember: the longer the aging, the better the wine.

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