Winemaking is an essential process for obtaining quality wines. You’ll find out on this blog how to make wine from grapes. Oenologists always say that from a good grape can come out two types of wine, good or bad, but from a lousy grape is very difficult to make good wine, but you can get the correct one.
Harvest – The Starting Point To How To Make Wine From Grapes.
The harvest is the first critical point where we can already make a selection, separating damaged and rotten clusters. Only healthy grapes are O.K. So here is the starting point for how to make wine from grapes.
Transport To the Cellar
The transportation to the cellar is no less critical. You can get more information on the post dedicated to this subject.
Reception In the Cellar
The acceptance of the grapes takes place on the receiving hopper, which will lead directly to the crusher or the stalk separator.
Stripping
Crushing without destemming is conditionally good enough for white wines. Destemming is the process of removing stalks. It’s essential for red grapes. There are different techniques, some scrabble before treading, and some do it afterward.
Molding
After the destemming, we go to the grape crushing. This operation consists in breaking the grains for the extraction of the must, with the pressure but not to crush the seeds, which bring undesirable flavors.
Pressing
The resulting juice of the grapes can macerate for a while before being pressed, but the most common is to squeeze and pump the must into the fermentation tanks. It is important not to carry out too aggressive pressing because, with a softer pressing, you will avoid unwanted flavors.
Settling Grape Juice
It consists of letting the wort rest for a few hours so that the suspended solid particles are deposited little by little, by decantation or gravity, at the bottom of the tank.
Fermentation
How to make wine from grapes? Without a doubt, the most delicate part of the way to make white wine. Fermentation is the process by which the sugars contained in the must become alcohol. For this to happen, the yeasts must intervene, whether they exist naturally in the grapes or we can add them artificially to facilitate fermentation. Yeasts will metabolize sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
During this process, it is essential to control the density of the must to determine the amount of sugar that remains in the must. On the other hand, the temperature is critical because an excess can cause the fermentation to stop or ferment too slowly, and problems can occur.
The end of the fermentation happens spontaneously when the sugar is exhausted. In this way, we will have obtained a dry wine. When the intention is to produce semi-dry or sweet wines, it is necessary to stop the fermentation by chemical means (addition of sulfur dioxide) or physical (cooling or reheating) at the moment when the residual sugar content is adapted for the wine that we want to obtain.
Fermentation without contact with the skin, specific to the white must, produces light and very clean wines. In spite of everything today, some tendencies opt for a little maceration of the must with the skin by stopping the fermentation using cold treatments.
This technique gives the wine more body, enriches the feelings in the mouth, increases its aromatic power, allows a better evolution of the bottle, and gives it a longer life.
Racking
Once the fermentation is over, the wine is subjected to two or three withdrawals (passage from one tank to another by letting the solid particles settle by gravity) to remove the solid remains. This operation is carried out between November and January so that low temperatures prevent contamination by microorganisms. Each tank evolves differently, which contributes to the selection of qualities and mixtures (blends) to achieve the desired result.
Clarification
Finally, we make a definitive clarification. It is a question of adding chemical substances which are clarifying, which bring about the possible remains in suspension which could have escaped from the racking. Traditionally, egg white has been used as the more natural.
Filtering
Before bottling, the final filtering is done. There are different types of filters, more or less dense, that can leave wine completely clean and transparent.
Bottling
And here is the last point of how to make wine from grapes. The wine is the result of a natural process, so we can say that the wine is made alone!