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Few would argue that home-made wine is in no way inferior to most store-bought wines, and often even surpasses them. Indeed, among the rich assortment of wines in the store, it is difficult for a non-specialist to distinguish real wine from numerous fakes. And homemade wine, if prepared correctly, is unlikely to harm your health. And if you still have a plot with grapes, then you should definitely try to create a homemade wine delicacy from it that will warm you on cold winter evenings.
This article will focus on making homemade wine from green grapes. It produces a mild-tasting and very light white wine.
The best varieties of green grapes suitable for winemaking are currently considered:
- Muscat is white;
- Riesling;
- Aligote;
- Magarach’s firstborn;
- Chardonnay;
- Fetyaska;
- Sylvaner.
But even if you do not know the name of the grape variety that grows with you, do not worry. Almost any grape can be used to make quality wine, as long as it contains at least a little sweetness. But if your grapes are not ripe enough and their acid makes your cheekbones cramp, even in this case, there are tricks to get a decent-tasting homemade wine.
Harvesting and preparation of raw materials
It is best to use ripe grapes for making wine. Unripe berries contain too much acid and few sugars, and overripe grapes can start acetic fermentation, which subsequently turns all the squeezed juice into vinegar.
Unfortunately, in many regions of Our Country, in some years, grapes do not have time to ripen to the desired condition. In these cases, a technique is used that reduces the acidity of grape juice. To do this, it is diluted with water in an amount of not more than 500 ml per liter of the resulting juice.
Keep in mind that slightly diluting grape juice with water will always detract from the taste of the finished wine, so only use this technique as a last resort if your grape juice is so sour that it stings your tongue. In all other cases, it is better to correct the acidity of the juice by increasing the amount of sugar added during the manufacture of wine.
It is also undesirable to use fruits that have fallen to the ground for making wine, as they can give the finished drink an unpleasant aftertaste.
In general, it is desirable to collect grapes in sunny and dry weather. In addition, you need to decide on the timing of the grape harvest so that 3-4 days before that there was no rain. This is necessary so that the grapes retain a plaque with yeast fungi, which play a fundamental role in the fermentation process. It is for the same reason that grapes are never washed before being processed into wine.
Collected berries must be used within two to three days after collection.
But sorting berries is a more than necessary procedure. Be sure to remove all rotting, damaged, moldy or unripe fruits. Leaves and twigs, as a rule, are also removed. Although in some recipes, some of the branches are retained so that the taste of the variety to which the grape belongs is more pronounced in the wine.
Requirements for utensils for winemaking
It is very important to understand that in order to make wine, all containers must be perfectly clean and absolutely dry. This is necessary in order not to introduce various unsuitable microorganisms into the future wine, which can completely spoil its taste. If possible, buckets, kegs and bottles are even smoked with sulfur, as this is done in industrial production. But at a minimum, they must be treated with boiling water or high temperatures and dried.
Try not to use for making wine containers that have previously stored dairy products, as it is very difficult to completely wash them from traces of vital activity of lactic bacteria.
Also important is the material of the dishes with which the juice and wine come into contact.
The best materials that can be used in the wine making process are ceramics, glass and wood. It is advisable to use plastic only for food, since the alcohol formed during the fermentation of wine can come into contact with plastic dishes and form compounds that are toxic to humans. Even for pressing grapes and stirring the juice, only wooden devices are used. You can also do this with clean hands.
Getting juice and starting fermentation
Having placed the sorted grapes in a container of a suitable volume, they must be crushed to obtain juice. If the volume of berries is not very large, this procedure is best done manually. So, you will not damage the bones, which contain a bitter substance, and avoid splashing the juice. With large quantities of berries (more than 10 liters), you can use a wooden pusher to knead them.
As a result, you will get pulp (pulp with seeds and peel) floating in grape juice. The container with juice and pulp must be covered with a clean cloth to protect future wine from insects. Then place it in a dark place with a constant temperature of at least +18°C, and preferably even warmer, up to +27°C.
The juice should begin to ferment the very next day, and this process is hard to miss – a foamy pulp cap forms on the surface. Several times a day, it is necessary to stir the juice, dissolving the frothy head, using a wooden stick or simply by hand. After 3-4 days, the pulp should lighten a little, a peculiar aroma will appear and a slight hiss will be heard – this is carbon dioxide coming out. At this stage, the juice must be squeezed from the pulp. The upper foamy part is carefully removed with a plastic colander and carefully squeezed out. The pulp can then be thrown away.
The remaining juice is filtered several times through several layers of gauze or other suitable cloth until only pure and light juice remains. Repeated straining not only helps to get rid of excess particles, but also saturates the juice with oxygen, which allows the wine yeast to immediately get to work.
Adding sugar and active fermentation
What is good about homemade wine from grapes is that, apart from the fruits themselves and sugar, it does not require anything for its manufacture. But the required amount of sugar is highly dependent on the grape variety, more precisely, on its sugar content. Most recipes use 10 to 2 kg of sugar per 3 kg of grapes. But experienced winemakers advise adding sugar in portions, waiting until it is completely processed during the fermentation of wine. That is, initially about 30% of sugar from the amount prescribed by the recipe is added to the juice purified from the pulp. 3-4 days after the start of active fermentation, the future wine is tasted, and if it seems sour, then the sugar has already been processed and you need to add it.
How to do it right? It is necessary to pour 1-2 liters of fermenting juice into a separate container, and stir the right amount of sugar in it. It is necessary to proceed from the fact that approximately 1 grams of sugar are added at a time per 50 liter of the total amount of juice. Then again pour the resulting syrup into the juice and put it back on fermentation. This procedure must be repeated 3-4 more times during the first three weeks of fermentation of the future wine.
And what is done with the juice initially after the first portion of sugar has been added to it. It is poured into special containers for fermentation – usually glass jars or bottles with airtight lids play their role.
After that, a water seal is installed on the juice container. It is needed for the free exit of the resulting carbon dioxide and the simultaneous protection from interaction with oxygen. Most often at home, instead of a water seal, they use a sterile rubber glove by piercing a small hole in one of the fingers. It is put on the neck of a jar or bottle and firmly and hermetically fixed on it, coated with wax or plasticine on the outside.
For good fermentation, a container with future wine is placed in a room with a temperature not lower than + 15 ° C. For wine made from green grapes, the optimal temperature conditions will be + 16 ° С + 22 ° С.
Under these conditions, homemade wine can ferment for 30 to 60 days.
The fact is that dead bacteria accumulate in the sediment, and if this is not done, then the wine may become bitter later.
Maturation of wine
The signal for the end of the fermentation of the wine is the lowering of the glove. A loose sediment should form at the bottom and the wine must be drained without hitting it. To do this, it is placed in advance in a higher place and one end of a transparent tube is placed in a container with wine, without bringing it to a sediment closer than 3 cm. The other end is placed in a clean and dry bottle, where you will drain the wine. At this point, the wine must be tasted and, if necessary, the last time to add sugar.
If there is no need to add sugar, then the bottles with spilled wine are tightly corked and placed for maturation in a room with a temperature of +5°C to +16°C. The most important thing is that during the maturation of young wine there are no daily temperature jumps. The stage of wine maturation itself can last from 40 to 360 days. During the maturation process, if you see the accumulation of sediment at the bottom of the bottle, you need to pour the wine into another vessel using the same straw. This must be done until the precipitate practically ceases to form.
Wine can be considered fully prepared. It can be stored in suitable conditions for up to 5 years.
The process of making homemade wine may seem complicated only at first. But if you do all the procedures correctly at least once, you should not have any difficulties in the future.
