Wine is wine because it is made from grapes. The most complete guide to making grape wine, both white and red.
Many people say that it is difficult to make wine from grapes at home, that this is a whole science and only a select few can comprehend it, science. Others, on the contrary, argue that making homemade wines is as easy as shelling pears, applying the most ridiculous recipes with no less ridiculous description of the technology. I refuse to say anything about this. I prepared grape wine, and it turned out not bad the first time. Could it be shown to specialists? I don’t think so, but it was drunk quickly and with appetite, despite the fact that the grapes were not suitable, my hands grew from the wrong place, and ordinary plastic eggplants were used as fermentation containers. Don’t try this at home!
In this article, I will describe in more detail the technology for making all varieties of homemade wine from grapes, and after reading it, you will definitely breathe a sigh of relief, because you realize how easy it is to do. But winemaking does not tolerate lazy people. At each stage of wine production, you need to be very careful, otherwise you can screw everything up at the very beginning. Also, winemaking is not suitable for emotional people who take every failure too close to their hearts. The first mistakes are the most insidious, but they are almost unavoidable.
And now let’s do away with formalities and move on to theory, without which practice is doomed to failure. I will try not to bore you with scientific terminology, because we are preparing homemade wine, not exclusive vintage. However, one does not interfere with the other. Everything is in order.
A little about the essence of grape wine
For that matter, wine, based on logic and etymology, can be called a drink that was made exclusively from grapes. However, fruit and berry wines, on which I have focused before, fully deserve the name “wine”, no matter what anyone says. Wikipedia describes the term as follows:
Wine (lat. vinum) is an alcoholic drink (strength: natural – 9-16% vol., fortified – 16-22% vol.), obtained by complete or partial alcoholic fermentation of grape juice (sometimes with the addition of alcohol and other substances – i.e. alcohol). n “fortified wine”).
This wonderful drink has been prepared since time immemorial, but only in the century before last, scientists undertook to investigate the essence of the chemical and biological process of fermentation. The process occurs due to the reproduction of yeast fungi in sugar-containing liquids, which we used to call simply yeast. Yeast fungi have one important feature – they multiply very quickly if they are in favorable conditions: the necessary amount of food, heat and oxygen. Their reproduction and causes the fermentation process
Yeast feeds mainly on protein (nitrogen) and minerals (phosphoric acid, potassium, magnesium, lime, etc.). To a lesser extent, they need sugar, that is, carbohydrate, which they need to get heat through “breathing”. This is the key moment for winemaking. Absorbing carbohydrate, they burn it incompletely, forming heat, alcohol and carbon dioxide. There are other similar organisms that pick up the waste products of the first yeast and continue to burn carbohydrates. These, for example, include bacteria and fungi of acetic fermentation – one of the main enemies of the winemaker.
But back to more important matters. All wines, including fruit and berry ones, differ from each other according to many criteria, but for us it is enough to distinguish them by the content of alcohol and sugar.
According to the content of residual sugar, wines are divided into (according to EU standards):
- dry – sugars up to 4 g / l;
- semi-dry – sugars up to 12 g / l;
- semi-sweet – sugars up to 45 g / l;
- sweet – sugars more than 45 g / l.
According to the alcohol content, wines are divided into:
- light dining rooms – 6,5-8,75% by weight and 8-11% by volume;
- strong dining rooms – 9,75-11,5% by weight and 12-14 by volume;
- strong – 16% or more by weight and 18-20% by volume.
Homemade drinks can also be distinguished separately, for example, cider, the alcohol content of which rarely exceeds 6% by weight or 7,5% by volume. There are other classifications as well. So, it is possible to single out dessert semi-sweet wines, which contain 9-15% alcohol and 3-10% sugar. There is a separate classification according to domestic standards – it is given in the Russian Wikipedia.
Dry and semi-dry wines are the most difficult to prepare, as they are more susceptible to various diseases than others. This is due to the low content of sugar in them, which acts as a preservative. Therefore, for the first experiments, it is better to choose semi-sweet and dessert wines.
Any winemaking, in particular grape winemaking, consists of the following stages, which I decided to include in the universal recipe for grape wines:
- preparation of dishes and tools;
- preparation of grapes for processing;
- extraction of juice and its research;
- wort preparation;
- violent fermentation;
- pouring and quiet fermentation;
- maturation and aging of wine;
- bottling and storage of wine.
grape wine recipe
Preparing dishes and tools
You should immediately take care that the grapes and its juice do not come into contact with the “bare” metal for more than 15 minutes. Be sure to exclude the contact of wine with copper surfaces, as well as with utensils tinned with lead. For winemaking suitable glass, wooden, earthenware or enameled dishes and tools. As a last resort, you can use food-grade plastic that does not react with alcohol.
All utensils involved in the process of winemaking, as well as the hands of the winemaker, must be immaculately clean and dry. To do this, it is necessary to wash the dishes with neutral detergents, and preferably with baking soda, then rinse well with running water and dry them dry.
If you decide to use wooden barrels, then they must first be prepared and fumigated with sulfur. The ideal container for winemaking is still glass. Buying glass bottles of 10-20 or more liters is not problematic now. For crushing berries, you can use special crushers or meat grinders. The juice from the pulp, crushed grapes, can be extracted using a wine press or juicer. All metal elements of the press must be made of stainless steel.
Collection and preparation of grapes for processing
Only grapes that are ripe or slightly overripe for dessert wines are suitable for making wine (they contain more sugar). Some winemakers believe that perfectly ripe red grapes contain 22% sugar and 7,5 g/l of acids, while white grapes contain 20% sugar and 8,5% acids. But often such values are rarely achieved. In addition, to measure these values, special devices are needed, for example, a hydrometer, which is not always available in settlements remote from large cities. Therefore, we will cook from what we have.
Grapes should be harvested in clear weather and in no case during rain. Ideally after three dry days.
During the harvest, you should immediately get rid of spoiled and small green berries, as well as dry leaves. But the most important thing is that a minimum of time should pass from the grape harvest to its crushing. Ideally, it is better to start crushing immediately, but sometimes this is not possible. Then the berries must be processed no later than 2 days after harvest. The grapes should never be washed, even if you choose to ferment the must with a pure yeast culture (hereinafter referred to as PKD) – store-bought wine yeast. The water will degrade the quality of the grapes and will also wash away the wild yeasts that are needed for fermentation if you can’t get your hands on CKD.
Extraction of juice for grape wine
Here you need to immediately decide whether you will prepare the wine in the red or white way. Red wines are mainly used for making red wines. The method itself involves fermenting the must on the pulp, as a result of which the wine is saturated with tannins, aromatic and coloring substances. If you decide to ferment with wild yeast, then this is the only sure way. White wines are often prepared according to white, and this method involves the fermentation of only pure juice or a slight fermentation of the must on the pulp (up to 12 hours), so it is more difficult to do without CKD. You can also leave the stems, which will saturate the wine with a lot of tannins, but can also give it a grassy aftertaste.
The highest quality and lightest wine is obtained from grape juice, which was obtained by gravity, that is, under the weight of bunches before pressing or crushing. Gravity must can be separated and made into wine in separate containers, but there is usually not much of it, and it is up to you to decide whether to add it to the main must or ferment separately.
So, the harvested grapes need to be crushed. This can be done with hands, feet (do not forget about cleanliness) or special crushers. At this point, you need to add “sulphur”, SO2 sulfur dioxide, to the crushed grapes if you are making wine using CSA. It blocks unwanted bacteria and fungi, including wild yeast, has an antioxidant and extractive effect. The easiest way is to purchase potassium pyrosulfite (metabisulphite), 2 g of which is equal to 1 g of SO2. If you don’t go into calculations, 25-50 mg / l of sulfur per 1 kg of grapes is enough for red wine, the amount depends on the condition of the grapes (the worse the grapes look and the longer they waited for crushing, the more sulfur should be added). For white wines it is necessary to add 70-100 mg/l of sulfur per 1 kg of grapes.
Also at this stage, the introduction of other substances that promote fermentation is carried out – various top dressings, etc. CKD is also introduced, because “sulfur” disabled wild yeast. But if you decide to add sulfur, but you could not get CKD, 5 days before processing the wort, make a simple starter. To do this, take a few kg of grapes and prepare a miniature version of the must from it, which then you just need to add to the main one.
But back to home winemaking, where only grapes and wild yeasts living on its surface are at hand. The crushed pulp and juice must be loaded into stainless steel, food-grade plastic or glass tanks with a ¾ wide mouth (if you load more, the wine may “run away”). Tanks should be covered with gauze and left in a dark place to ferment for 3-5 days at a temperature of +20 оC. Several times a day, the pulp cap that will be collected on top of the fermentation tank must be knocked down so that it does not become moldy. Primary fermentation can be extended up to 2 weeks if you want a very rich, dark, tart wine.
At this stage, a study of the wort is carried out, its sugar content and acidity are determined. This data allows you to decide whether to add sugar and acid (or reduce its content). As practice shows, it is necessary to regulate the level of sugar and acidity at the stage of primary fermentation – this is how the wine turns out to be of the best quality. But it is more expedient to do this after fermentation, since when squeezing the pulp, part of the introduced substances will be lost. At home, it is quite difficult to determine these parameters, especially if you do not have special measuring instruments at hand, so we are guided by average values. You can use the following table:
Preparation of wort for grape wine
To get a strong wine, the initial sugar content in the must should not be less than 22-25%. Therefore, after fermentation, you need to squeeze the juice, for example, with a press, and add enough sugar to it so that the sugar content of the wort reaches 22-25%. The remaining cake can be put into action and make chacha from it. Separately, it should be said about the preparation of dessert and strong wines. The fact is that a large amount of sugar greatly inhibits fermentation. That is why, during the preparation of very sweet dessert and strong wines, sugar should be added fractionally – on the 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th day, dissolving it in a small amount of fermenting wine.
During fermentation, from 1 gram of sugar, an average of 0,57% alcohol is formed in the finished wine. Under different fermentation conditions, the spread is from 0,53 to 0,6%.
As for acid, the optimal level of its content for red wine is 6-8 g/l, for white – 7-9 g/l. The acid content is reduced by adding water, and its content is increased by adding tartaric acid to the must. For a universal recipe, let’s take the acid-perfect juice (the first time I had sour grapes, so I added 1 parts water to 3 part juice).
Yeast needs oxygen to ferment properly. Therefore, they need to saturate the juice. To do this, it is enough to pour it several times from one container to another.
So, we got pure grape juice, infected with yeast fungi and passed the first stage of rapid fermentation with pulp. We pour it into fermentation tanks, and glass bottles with a narrow neck are best suited for this. We fill them not completely, leaving 5-10 cm for foam. We install a water seal on the tank, it is also a fermentation tongue, it is also an air blocker. The water seal allows the accumulated carbon dioxide to freely leave the fermentation tank, but does not let oxygen in, which can stimulate oxidative processes that we do not need, in particular, activate the work of bacteria that will make vinegar out of wine.
A water seal can be made independently or purchased at a store. You can also use a regular medical glove with a hole in one of the fingers. In an article with recipes for apple wines, I described the process of making a simple water bottle from a dropper. Store-bought dowels may look like this:
Water seals with instructions.
The must is ready. Now we put the wine on rapid fermentation.
Rapid fermentation of grape wine
For the fermentation of red wines, the optimum temperature is + 20-25 оC, for whites – +12-18 оC. Lower fermentation temperature threshold – +10 оC. At low temperatures, the fermentation process slows down, and at +10 оFrom and below, wild yeasts fall into anabiosis. At +35 оWith and above yeast fungi can die altogether, so it is also important not to overheat the wort. The exception is CKD – they can withstand more extreme temperatures, but not all of them. It is advisable to place fermentation containers with wine away from drafts and sunlight, which can affect the thermal regime and worsen the quality of wine.
Vigorous fermentation lasts until the yeast has processed almost all the sugar. When this happens, the water seal will stop bubbling or will do it very rarely, the glove will deflate, and yeast sediment will fall to the bottom. It’s time to make the first transfusion of wine from grapes and put it on a quiet fermentation under different conditions.
First transfer and quiet fermentation
Containers with wine should be placed on a hill and using a siphon (rubber tube) drain the drink from the sediment into another clean, dry container. It is important not to touch the yeast sediment, so it is better to move the tube 3 cm away from it. If you continue to keep the wine with this sediment, it will begin to taste bitter and it will not be so pleasant to drink it. The resulting young wine cannot be called perfectly transparent, but it still needs to be fermented and clarified.
For quiet fermentation, the containers must be filled to the very neck. During the first pouring into wine, you can add more sulfite, approximately 25 mg per 19-20 liters of must, that is, 1 g of pyrosulfite. This pyrosulfite is worth a penny, and the wine will turn out to be lighter and more resistant to diseases, which is especially important for wines that will be subjected to long-term aging.
Quiet fermentation, which is also called the post-fermentation of wine, lasts about 3-4 months. Optimal fermentation temperature 10-12 оC. It would not be superfluous to install a water seal on the bottles, since fermentation has not yet ended and carbon dioxide, although not in large quantities, will continue to accumulate. In the process of quiet fermentation, the wine will still be clarified, and sediment will collect at the bottom of the container, so it needs to be drained. The transfusion is also needed to saturate the wine with oxygen, which plays an important role in the process of wine maturation. It is enough to transfuse once a month.
After the end of quiet fermentation, dessert and liqueur wines are sweetened. For semi-sweet wines, it is enough to add about 50 g/l of sugar, for dessert wines – 100-160 g/l, for liqueurs – 200 g/l or more. After that, grape wine can be sent for maturation and aging. You can already drink it, but the taste will not be expressive, as well as the aroma.
Maturation and aging of wine
Velvety, dense red wines, including dessert and liqueur ones, should be aged for at least one year, but two is better. For light red wines, one year is enough. Rich, aromatic white wines are aged from 6 months to a year, while light wines are aged for 3-6 months. The ideal aging temperature for any homemade wine is +13 … +14 оC, suitable – +10 … +16 оC. The room in which the wine will be stored must be dark and dry. An ideal place for aging wine is a closet or cellar, reliably protected from temperature extremes.
It is also recommended to carry out the process of the so-called cryo-stabilization of wine – a short-term holding of wine at a low temperature. In winter, this process can take place naturally in the cellar, but a bottle of wine can also be put in the refrigerator for 2-3 weeks (you can buy a second-hand one for this purpose). Cryostabilization contributes to the clarification of the drink and helps to quickly eliminate cream of tartar and other crystalline components that will quickly settle to the bottom of the container. Cold aging also removes excess acid and softens the taste of wine.
Wine bottling and storage
Before bottling homemade wine from grapes, it is advisable to filter it. This can be done through special filter paper, flannel or tissue paper. But this procedure is not necessary if the wine was clarified by fining, that is, artificial clarification using bentonite, egg white, gelatin or tannin.
For storage, it is better to use special wine bottles, as they are more durable and can be corked with long corks. You can choose a cork based on this article. Before bottling, be sure to rinse the bottles with a solution of soda and rinse well.
Bottles should be filled almost to the stop so that there is no more than 1-2 cm of air between the cork and wine. Wine should be stored in a dry, cool cellar with a temperature of 6-8 оC for white wines and 8-10 оC for red. Bottles must be stored in a lying position – only under this condition the corks always remain quite elastic and tightly clog the bottles.
Summarizing
The technology I have described for making wine from grapes is universal and is suitable for making wines of all varieties and from any grape. However, for each individual variety, both wine and grapes, there are nuances that I will try to reveal in future articles. Of course, this article is only superficial and, for sure, does not claim to be a scientific treatise. Also, it does not describe various unforeseen situations, which will certainly become topics for subsequent notes. However, this information should be enough for a novice winemaker.
In conclusion, I suggest you watch a few videos on the topic: