Making Wine

Wine is relaxing, cultured, and absolutely interesting. The process that goes into creating this fine beverage takes time with planning, knowledge, and skill that is involved. The process of making and bottling wine has basic steps that are always universal no matter what type of wine is being made, but each kind of wine does have some variations to make sure the intended wine type comes out as a quality product.

Red Wine

Having a grape that is picked at its prime at the correct time of day is the first step to making great wine. The fruit is then cleaned and the juice is gently extracted from the grapes with the skins left in the mix during the fermentation process. This provides the red color and the tannic flavor that makes a red wine so memorable. This mix is then placed in a stainless steel fermentation vat or an oak barrel. When a stainless steel vat is used, a crisper red wine is the result, and when an oak barrel is used, a mellower flavor is achieved. During this process, yeast is used to change the natural sugars into alcohol. Some wineries use naturally occurring yeast, whereas others add in cultured yeast. As fermentation occurs, any skins and stems in the mix floats to the top, and they are pushed back into the mixture regularly but are removed when the liquid has gotten just the right amount of color and flavor from them. Temperature is crucial at this stage of the process, so some kind of cooling system is used to keep the temperature consistent. When 3-4 weeks have passed, the mixture is pressed so that only the liquid comes out, and is then placed into oak barrels or stainless steel vats that have oak chips placed in the bottom. This step is known as aging, and takes anywhere from 9 months to 2 ½ years. Many wineries choose to add special bacteria into the wine to help it to acquire the correct kind of acidic qualities. Once the wine has aged and acquired some flavors from the wood, it is then bottled and is then allowed to age even further by the winery and even by the consumer.

White Wine

White wine removes all stems and skins of the grapes during the fermentation process since tannic flavor and color both should not be a part of a white wine. A stainless steel vat is traditionally used as the natural yeast or the added cultured yeast is allowed to turn the grape's sugar into alcohol for the next 3-4 weeks. Cold stabilization is next in the process of making white wine. This process drops the temperature of the wine to almost freezing so that any tartaric crystals can easily be removed from the product. Aging takes place in either oak barrels or in stainless steel vats that have oak chips placed in the bottom and special bacteria is added to make the acid become mild instead of sharp. White wine takes only about 1 year to age, and it is even possible to go straight to bottling the liquid and letting it entirely age there. Most white wines are even ready for instant consumption when a bottle is purchased, but keep in mind that some white wines do taste even better after a few years of aging.