25January
Every wine lover will want to test making some of their own. Wine making may be an art to many but for most of us it isn’t that difficult to produce a half reasonable bottle from our own efforts. So, before embarking on your adventure of making wine, you must educate yourself on the main steps involved.
Grape concentrate or grapes is the main ingredient you need to make domestic wine. If you are blessed with some farming land, try growing grapes there to make your own wine. If you are using grape concentrate, nothing but the best quality will do. Browse on the Internet or in a home brewing store to find the best kind of grape concentrate you can. After grapes (or their concentrate), you will need yeast plus other requisite brewing necessaries. If you haven’t prepared wine before, you may want to buy a wine kit to make things simpler for you or you will need to buy things individually. Once you have made your wine and assured yourself that this is a hobby you would like to involve yourself in, you can buy upgraded your wine making equipment for making larger quantities.

The number of steps in wine making will be influenced by what you use – grapes or their concentrate, but they will be no fewer than five and no greater than eight. If you are using grapes then the fruit will obviously need to be harvested first. Pull out every individual stem from the grapes that have been harvested. You have to be particular about removing the stems, otherwise their bitter tannins can give a disagreeable taste to the wine.
After making sure all the stems are gone, squeeze the skins of the grapes to remove the juice. You can use various tactics to achieve this. Crushing grapes is the most popular method used by professional wine makers. How much you crush the grapes is important because that will influence the final taste of the wine. Well they practically leave the berries wholly intact so wine makers who want to keep a fruity flavor for their wines will as good as not touch the berries at all.
The step following this is known as primary fermentation. During this process, the yeast will act on the sugar and ferment it. The byproducts are alcohol and CO2 - sometimes you may need to add more yeast. If you rely only on the yeast that is present on the fruit, you are not going to get a regular conversion, that is why you have to add some more.
Now, you have to squeeze more juice from the grapes.You have completed the step of primary fermentation, but now you can remove more juice from the fruit. You will find that the juice you get in the second stage is not of as good quality as the juice got in the first crushing stage. The juice got from the first crushing did not come in contact with the stem and skins as it ran freely. But you must not think that this press juice is of no use. Large wineries make use of this press juice so that they can increase their total yield.
There is a second fermentation after this pressing process, which is concurrent with the aging process of the wine. You can decide how long you want your wine to be fermented.
Bottling is the concluding process of wine making. Bottle the wine by directly pouring it into bottles, then to stop the fermentation and to preserve the wine, add some sulfites into the bottles. Seal the bottle with an appropriate cork when all this has been completed.