Recipe for homemade grape wine + photo

The art of winemaking takes many years to learn, but everyone can make homemade wine. However, making homemade wine from grapes is a complex process that requires knowledge of technology and some important nuances. If you are going to make wine with your own hands, you need to understand that you will have to write down or remember your every step, perform specific actions at a certain time. Therefore, for the period of preparing a home-made alcoholic drink – 40-60 days – you will have to give up other things and stay at home almost constantly, because grape wine does not forgive even the slightest violation of technology.

This article will tell you how to make homemade wine from grapes. And yet, here you can find a simple recipe for making a delicious drink, learn about when wine is made with the addition of water, and how else you can improve the taste of grape alcohol.

Secrets of making homemade wine from grapes

The technology of making a wine drink is a rather complicated and time-consuming process. Vineyard owners often ask themselves the question: “Am I preparing my wine correctly, or can something else be done to improve the taste of the drink?”.

The wine will turn out tasty, beautiful and fragrant, if you make homemade wine from grapes correctly, in accordance with all the recommendations of professionals in this field. BUT Here are some recommendations from winemakers:

1. For the preparation of wines, it is better to use special wine grape varieties, such as Isabella, Saperavi, Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and others. This does not mean that table or dessert varieties of berries are completely unsuitable – they can also make excellent wine, just, in this case, the result can be unpredictable.
2. You need to harvest on time: slightly unripe berries, with a characteristic sourness, are most suitable for winemaking. Although many dessert wines are made from berries that are overripe and wilted on the vine. At home, it is better not to wait for overripe, as the berries can ferment, the resulting vinegar will spoil the taste of the drink.

   

3. The best time to harvest is a dry and sunny day. For a couple of days before harvesting, there should be no precipitation, as water washes valuable white bloom from the grapes – wine yeast. Therefore, you can not wash the grapes before making wine, the berries are simply removed from the bunches, clearing them of twigs and leaves.
4. Winemaking utensils must be sterile so that the fermentation process is not disturbed. Before work, jars and bottles can be fumigated with sulfur or doused with boiling water, and then dried. It is allowed to use materials such as food grade plastic, glass, enamel coating, wood, stainless steel. Metal utensils are absolutely not suitable for this, because they will oxidize and spoil the wine (this also applies to spoons, pushers, lids).
5. Traditional ingredients for homemade wine: sugar and grapes. Water is added only when they want to get rid of excess acid, and vodka or alcohol will make the wine stronger, preserve it, thereby extending the shelf life.

Homemade grape wine recipe step by step

There are simple recipes for grape wine, and there are many more complex ones: with the addition of other ingredients, soaking apples, herbs or berries in the drink, saturating the juice with the aromas of wood or spices.

Here will be considered a step-by-step recipe for making traditional homemade wine, consisting of just two ingredients:

• 10 kg of grape berries;
• 50-200 g of sugar per liter of grape juice (depending on the natural acidity of the berries and the taste preferences of the winemaker).

The technology for making delicious wine consists of several large steps:

1. Grape harvesting and processing. As already noted, it is better to pluck well-ripened bunches that do not yet have overripe berries. Carrion clusters should not be taken, because of them, the finished wine may have an unpleasant aftertaste of the earth. The harvested crop must be processed within two days. First, the berries are sorted out, debris and rotten or moldy grapes are removed. Now the grapes need to be crushed (with hands or a pusher) and put the resulting mass into a wide basin or pan, filling 34 volumes. You can not grind grapes with a blender, meat grinder or other similar devices, if the seeds are damaged, the wine will become bitter. Dishes with pulp (transferred grape mass) are covered with a clean cloth and placed in a dark and warm (18-27 degrees) place. Here the wine will stand for 3-4 days, until the pulp brightens. After half a day or a day, the fermentation process will begin, a hat of peel and seeds will rise above the juice. The must must be stirred several times a day so that the wine does not turn sour.

   

2. Juice department. In a few days, the cap will brighten, a sour smell will appear over the wine, a quiet hiss will be heard – all this means that the fermentation process has started. Now you need to collect the surfaced pulp, squeeze it out with your hands. Drain the juice, leaving sediment at the bottom of the container. All the collected grape juice is poured into glass bottles or jars, after filtering through several layers of gauze. It is recommended to pour the future wine from one vessel to another several times in order to saturate the juice with oxygen, which is necessary for fermentation. The bottles are not filled to the top – you need to pour no more than 70% of the total volume of the container.

   

3. Water lock. Those who have been interested in how to make homemade wine know that jars must be kept with a glove, pipes or a special lid. The fact is that for effective fermentation (and not souring), wine at this stage does not need oxygen, and the carbon dioxide released in the process must also freely exit the juice. These conditions can be ensured by a water seal – a design that provides free exit for gases, but does not let oxygen into the bottle of wine. This device can look different: a tube connecting a container with wine and a jar of water, a special lid for winemaking, a rubber medical glove with a pierced finger.

   

4. The initial stage of fermentation. During this period, active fermentation of grape juice takes place, and the main thing now is to provide the wine with a sufficient temperature. For white wine, 16-22 degrees is enough, red wine needs a little more heat – from 22 to 28 degrees. If the temperature jumps or drops below 15 degrees, fermentation will stop – the wine will turn sour.

   

5. Adding sugar. This is probably the most difficult step in making homemade wine. The main task of sugar in winemaking is to be processed during the fermentation process and turn into alcohol. Giving the wine a sweeter and more pleasant taste is only in second place. Need to know what 2% sugar can be converted into 1% alcohol. Any grape already contains sugar – an average of 20% (in most regions of the country). This means that if a wine recipe without sugar is selected, then the drink will have 10% strength at the end. But the sweetness of the wine will be zero, and not everyone likes such alcohol. It must be remembered that the maximum concentration of wine alcohol is 13-14%, if there is more sugar in the wine, it will not ferment and adjust the taste of the drink. You need to determine the sugar content of grapes by the taste of juice: it should resemble compote or tea in sweetness, be sweet, but not cloying. For normal fermentation, the wine should not have more than 15-20% sugar. Therefore, sugar is added to wine in parts, adding the next batch only when the previous one is processed. The first 50 g per liter of juice is added on the third day of fermentation. When the wine becomes sour again, you can add the next 50 g of granulated sugar. This procedure is repeated 3-4 times within 14-25 days at the stage of active must fermentation. People who make wine professionally recommend draining a couple of liters of juice and diluting sugar in them, and only then pour this syrup from the bottle. You need to stop adding sugar when the wine will not sour for a long time – it means that sugar is no longer processed into alcohol.

   

6. Removal of wine from sediment. The fermentation period of homemade grape wine is 30-60 days. You can find out about the end of this process by a deflated glove or the absence of air bubbles in a jar of water. By this time, the wine is clarified, and a loose sediment appears at the bottom of the bottle – fermented yeast. So that the dead fungi do not give up their bitterness to the wine, the drink must be drained from the sediment. One or two days before this, bottles and jars are raised above the floor: you can put dishes with wine on a stool or on a table. When the agitated sediment falls again, the wine is poured into another container using a small hose (7-10 mm in diameter). The end of the hose is not brought to the sediment more than 2-3 cm.

   

7. Sweetness adjustment. The active phase of fermentation has ended, the sugar added now will not turn into alcohol, it will only improve the taste of the wine. Add sugar to taste, but do not pour more than a glass for each liter of wine. Homemade grape wines can be fortified, for this they add vodka or alcohol (from 2 to 15% of the total volume). It should be remembered that alcohol will make the wine harder, worsen the natural aroma.

   

8. Maturation of homemade grape wine. The production of the drink does not end there, now the stage of “silent” fermentation follows. It can last from 40 (for white varieties) to 380 days. If the wine was sweetened, it is necessary to put the water seal again, when sugar was not added, a simple nylon cap is put on the bottle. Store young wine in a dark and cool place with a stable temperature – the cellar is optimal. As soon as the sediment layer becomes more than 2-4 cm, the wine must be drained so that there is no bitterness.

   

9. Storage of finished wine. The complete readiness of the drink will be indicated by the absence of sediment in the bottle – now you can bottle delicious wine and store it for up to five years.

How to make unconventional house wine

Even the most delicious wine made from sugar and grapes can find a more interesting alternative. Simple time-tested recipes will help diversify the range of home-made wines:

• Polish table wine can be obtained by replacing sugar with raisins. In this case, the amount of raisins should be twice the required dose of sugar.
• to prepare wines more Hungarian raisins are also needed, but they also take wine yeast. A wooden barrel with such a drink is buried in the ground and kept there for a whole year.
• You can put the wine for fermentation, after placing a bag in the bottle with chopped cloves. When the grapes ferment, the cloves are removed – the wine has time to get enough of the spicy aroma of this spice.

  

• They cook even lemon wineby adding the zest of one lemon to the must. When the product ferments, you can add orange peel, lemon balm and a little mint.
• To prepare the famous Moselle wine you need to evaporate elderberry and mint in a wooden barrel. When the container is saturated with these aromas, the broth is poured out, replacing it with young grape wine. You can also add a few mint leaves and elderberry flowers here.
• apple drink on the basis of grapes, they do this: fresh apples are regularly put into the fermenting must, replacing them with new ones a few days later (so that they do not ferment).

By following the step-by-step technology for making wine given in the article, you can get a wonderful drink at home, which will be no worse than expensive store-bought wines from grapes. And by adding a bit of imagination, it’s easy to “compose” your own wine recipe, the secrets of which will be passed down from generation to generation.