There are five steps to making wine, harvesting, crushing, pressing, fermentation, clarification, and then of course aging and bottling.
When you drink your wine do you ever wonder how it is made? I always thought you grab a bunch of grapes, take off your shoes, as Lucy Ricardo did. And stomp until you have the liquid that everyone wants to drink. Then you put it in a barrel, wait a few years so you can then open the bottle for some special occasion to drink it. Well, there are a few more steps than that.
There are actually 5 steps, but even before that, the decision should be made as to which kind of wine you would like to have. Red, White, Rose, or even sparkling. Once you have decided on your type and color then you can choose the grapes that will give you the best results in color and taste. So red is made from the pulp or red or black grapes and the fourth step is fermentation. Then you have the white that is made by fermenting juice from the crushed pressed grapes with skins removed. Funny thing is White wine can also be made using red grapes. And of course, the famous Rose which is made from red grapes, where the juice stays in contact with the skin to give it the right hue. Of course, you use the less common lazy way and mix and blend white with Red.
Fermentation Step of How Wine is Made
So now after you harvested crushed and pressed, the grapes you can start the first step of fermenting the wine by adding yeast. This step takes about two weeks where the yeast turns most of the sugars that are in the grape juice into alcohol and carbon dioxide. But the carbon dioxide is lost to the air. After this step whatever wine is made is pumped into tanks and the skins that are left are pressed to get all the rest of the juice and wine that might be left. Depending on what your preference is you can combine the pressed wine with all the wine that ran out free. The wine is kept warm so that all the rest of the sugars turns into alcohol and o course the CO2 evaporates into the air.
Yup wine needs to sit for either several months or as in the case of some wines to over twenty years!!! That does not mean that if you wait only a few months it will taste decent. For the best taste, you are better off to wait at least five years.
Malo-lactic Conversion
Malo-lactic conversion is the extra step for red wine. This is actually a bacterial process to soften the taste of the wine. Red wine is stored in barrels for weeks or months to give the wine some oak aromas and tannin. For the red wines, a lot of effort is made to get as much color and intensity from the grape skins as possible. So in order to do that the wine is fermented on the skins as long as it is possible, that could be 18 days or more.
However, making a Rose is a bit different where skin contact time is very short, like 2-24 hours in general. The grapes for a Rose are picked when they are less ripe. There are several different ways to make a Rose.
Rose methods of how to make wine
Normally crushing and destemming red grapes into temporary storage containers makes a Rose. The liquid starts off white until the color from the skin starts leaching into the juice. At that point, the color will be cloudy light pink. As time goes on the liquid will darken to the desired shade of pink. Whoever is making the wine will decide on the color. Maceration is the name of this step. this can take from 3-12 or more hours. Fermentation starts when the color is just right.
SAIGNE
Saigne is the other method of making a Rose. It means “bleed” in french. So for this method, the grapes are actually prepared for the purpose of making red wine. During a cold soak, a portion of the juice is removed so now you have more skin than juice. Since the grapes were picked specifically to make the red the sugar will be too high and the acidity too low for a Rose.
We have to make some adjustments. Now, this method might be preferable because it is a bolder taste and a darker color. Anyway, there are other ways to make Rose like mixing red and white together. The last method is to crush and de-stem the grapes into the press and pressing them right away to give you a very light-colored Rose.
So who is ready to make their own wine? I mean can you imagine the equipment you would need to make just one glass??? So my suggestion is to just join a club, specifically my WINE CLUB. I mean where can you get a bottle of the finest Rose–with a private label no less? Wine ambassador is more than just a wine club, They also have an incredible Cheese grotto for the cheese connoisseur. All in one package, pretty great right? You can also join us on our wine and dine night. Enjoy a fun night as we introduce new recipes while pairing them with some of our wines. In the meantime go to our wine pairing page and enjoy some of our recipes.
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