Making Wine

So you want to make your own wine. This is a status thing, you know. Whipping out a bottle of homemade wine at your dinner party is like saying, “not only do I know wine, but I KNOW wine. I know it so well I make my own”.

Once you get the hang of making wine, you can have fun with the finished product. Heading to a friend’s house for dinner and wondering what to bring the host? How about a bottle of your homemade wine? Say you’re hosting a 50th birthday party for yourself. Custom design some wine labels, label your homemade wine and make sure everyone gets a bottle as a party favor before heading home. It’s a good bet many people would enjoy getting a special homemade bottle of wine as a Christmas present. The possibilities are endless.

But as with all things, practice makes perfect. You won’t turn out a bottle of wine worth drinking, much less giving away, if you don’t practice this craft. First, it’s important to know the various steps to making wine. But before you even consider starting the process, be sure you have some space in your house. Perhaps a corner of the garage could be assumed for this purpose, or some part of the basement. You’ll need room for some (not too large) equipment, and space to store your bottles of wine.

The basic steps to making wine (and there could be variations to this depending on what type of wine you’re making) are as follows:

1. Extract the flavor from your basic ingredients (usually a fruit or fruits) by chopping, pureeing, crushing or boiling them.

2. Add your acid, sugar, yeast and nutrients to the above and ferment. The fermentation will take 3 to 10 days in a covered crock or jar. This should be done at about 70 to 75 degrees.

3. Strain off the liquid from the pulp you started with in step 1 and fermented in step 2, and put it into a secondary fermentation vessel (ie., a “carboy” or jar), fitted with an airlock. This second fermentation will be complete when the liquid stops bubbling and can take several weeks. This should be done at about 60 to 65 degrees.

4. Once that second fermentation is complete, siphon off the sediments into another fermentation container. Reattach the airlock (or fermentation trap) and store for one to two months. You’ll repeat this step once or twice before bottling your wine.

5. When the fermentation has stopped, the wine is clear, and you’re ready to bottle, siphon the wine into bottles and cork them well. Store the wine upright for 3 to 5 days, then lay them on their side for up to 6 months for white wine, and up to a year for red wine. If the wine doesn’t taste as you would like, store it for another year before sampling again.

Within the context of those basic steps, there are a myriad of choices in ingredients, fermentation time and even supplies you can use. Although winemaking is not considered difficult, there are enough details to be aware of that purchasing a book or perusing websites for information is a good idea.

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