Mounting house wines

Novice winemakers may be interested in the question, why fortify homemade wine? The fact is that often the concentration of alcohol in a homemade drink is too low. Because of this, the wine can lose its taste, color and aroma over time. Mounting allows you to achieve the desired concentration of alcohols. Thanks to this, fermentation stops, or rather, the fermentation process ends. This article will discuss in detail how this procedure is carried out and what needs to be used for this.

How to make fortified wine at home

Fortified wine is a drink whose strength is enhanced by a stronger alcoholic beverage (alcohol or vodka). Usually the fortress of such wine is from 15 to 22 degrees. Such a result cannot be achieved by fermentation alone. When the alcohol level in the drink rises to 13%, the wine automatically stops fermenting. Therefore, it is customary to add alcohol or purified vodka to fortified wines. Moreover, this can be done at completely different stages. You can add alcohol to berry juice, already fermenting or young wine at the final stage of preparation.

There are different ways to fix wine. All of them are different, and also have some features. The fermenting wort is not squeezed out during alcoholization. The fruits are simply kneaded, sugar syrup is added to the berry mixture and the bottle of wine is left in a warm room for further fermentation. This process can take 3 to 5 days. During this time, the amount of sugar in the drink should drop to 7-9%. At this stage, the wort must be squeezed out, and alcohol with a strength of 90% must be added to the resulting juice. In this form, the drink should be infused for 7 days. Next, the wine is drained, clarified if necessary and bottled. The resulting young wine is desirable to leave to mature for a couple of years. The result is a wonderful drink with a complex pleasant taste and aroma.

The main thing in this process is to correctly calculate the amount of alcohol. Making accurate calculations can be quite difficult. It is generally accepted that to raise the strength by 1%, alcohol should be added in an amount of 1% of the volume of wine. Accordingly, vodka will need 2 times more, that is, 2%. For example, to increase the strength of 10 liters of wine by 5%, add 500 ml of alcohol or 1 liter of vodka to it.

How to fix wine with sugar

Before fixing homemade wine, you should understand some criteria. Each drink has its own level of sugar and alcohol content. Dessert wines have a strength of 15 to 20%, and the amount of sugar is approximately 1,2%. Liqueur wine is stronger, from 16 to 40%, sugar – 1,5%. Rosé table wine contains no more than 11% alcohol and 1 to 1,5% sugar.

You should also know the proportions when adding sugar. If you add 20 grams of granulated sugar to a liter of must, then the fortress will rise by 1%. But do not overdo it, as too much sugar can, on the contrary, slow down the fermentation of the drink.

Sugar is added to dry and dessert wines in different ways:

1. To fix dry wines, sugar should be diluted in water and poured into the drink in one go.
2. Sugar for dessert wines is dissolved in the drink itself. A small amount of granulated sugar and wine is mixed and injected in several visits on days 1,4,7 and 10.

Fortified wine at home recipe with alcohol

Let’s look at how to mount cherry homemade wine. For this we need the following ingredients:

• ripe cherry;
• special yeast sourdough (300 ml of sourdough per liter of juice);
• 96% alcohol (per liter of wine from 300 to 350 ml).

For cooking, take sweet cherries. From it you need to get the bones and squeeze the juice. After that, the resulting juice is poured into a bottle and a small amount of water, granulated sugar and prepared sourdough are added there. Further, the bottle should be put in a warm place for 5 or 6 days. After that, the juice is carefully drained from the sediment and poured into a washed bottle. Now it is necessary to pour alcohol into the container and infuse the drink in this form for about six months.

Fortified wine made from grapes and herbs

The favorite drink of many winemakers is vermouth. This wine is prepared from grapes at home. Vermouth is usually called fortified drinks with the addition of bitter herbs. They are often used as an additive to coffee or tea. Many alcoholic cocktails are also prepared on the basis of vermouth. Many people like to use such drinks as an aperitif, that is, to improve their appetite before eating.

Absolutely any wine can be taken as the basis for the preparation of vermouth. For example, you can make a drink from one grape juice, or you can make a more complex vermouth from different berries. Rowan and cranberries are perfect for this, which in combination give a very beautiful rich color.

Let’s look at one of the classic options for making vermouth. As the main ingredients we need:

• 100 ml of alcohol or 250 ml of vodka;
• four grams of medicinal yarrow;
• three grams of wormwood;
• three grams of mint;
• cinnamon stick (three grams);
• two grams of cardamom pods;
• one gram of saffron;
• two grams of nutmeg.

Let’s look at how to make fortified homemade wine from grapes and herbal tincture:

1. All prepared herbs are placed in a separate glass container and poured with alcohol or vodka. Every 24 hours, the tincture must be shaken.
2. If you do not like wormwood, then you can replace it with tarragon. The amount of both the first and second ingredient remains unchanged. But you should still taste the tincture. The fact is that wormwood can have different degrees of bitterness. It all depends on the growing conditions and the particular variety. The tincture should not be too bitter.
3. When adding tincture to grape wine, proportions must be taken into account. For a liter of drink, take no more than 50 ml of tincture for alcohol or 120 ml of tincture for vodka. You should also add granulated sugar to the vermouth. For a given amount of wine, 100 grams of sugar is enough. In this case, it is better to be guided by your own taste. Next, the vermouth is well mixed.
4. It’s time to pour the vermouth into clean glass bottles. Do not fill the container to the brim, leave half the neck empty. It will take time for the tincture to fully give its taste and aroma. After 20-30 days, the vermouth will be completely ready for use. You can store vermouth for a long time, it will not deteriorate.

Conclusion

This article showed how to determine the strength of homemade wine, depending on the ingredients. We also learned how to increase alcohol content with vodka and alcohol. Fortifying wine is a great way to extend the shelf life of a drink and make your homemade wine stronger. This method is suitable for a wide variety of wines. The main thing is to correctly calculate the required amount of alcohol.