This is the 2nd day of the weekend wine making course (2 day) and we focus on the stages after vineyard cultivation looking in depth of producing your wine from your harvested grapes.

We go through the process of wine production including the following essential stages of wine making using whole grapes.

Harvesting of grapes

This is the first part of the wine making process and critical to ensure delicious tasting wine.  Harvesting the grapes at the correct time is critical for ensuring the correct balance in the grapes of acidity esters, and tannins to consistently make natural and stable wine.

We look at the important aspects of how you pick the grapes and harvest from your vineyard to ensure the most efficient method of picking your grapes and harvesting your vines.

Crushing & pressing of grapes

Once you have collected your grape vines will need to destemmed and sorted before being crushed.  We will look at the varied methods of crushing your grapes.  The crushing of grapes now generally involves crushing equipment and the method of crushing will depend on whether white or red wine is being produced.  The crushed grapes containing the skins, juice and solids is called must.

For white wine the grapes will be crushed quickly to separate the grape juice from the skins, seeds and solids.  This is to prevent unwanted colour and tannins from leaching into the wine. Red wine is left in contact with the skins to acquire flavour, colour, and additional tannins

Fermentation of the grape juice

Once you have the crushed grape juice or must then the next step is the fermentation of the juice to produce wine.  Fermentation of the wine normally start in 6-12 hours with the wild yeast but many winemakers supplement the use of wild yeast with other wine making yeasts to assist in the fermentation process.  The use of cultivated yeast helps with the predictability and controllability of the fermentation process.

The length of fermentation of the grape juice or must will depend on whether the winemaker is looking to produce a dry or sweet wine and can last anywhere from 10 days to 1 month.  Where are dry wine is required the fermentation process will continue until all the sugar has been converted to alcohol.  In the case of a sweet wine the fermentation will be cut short to allow some of the natural sugars to remain within the wine.

Clarification of the wine

After the fermentation of the wine has finished the next stage in the wine making process is clarification.  This the process of removing solids such as dead yeast cells, tannins and proteins.  To do this wine is first ‘racked’ into vessels such as historically wood barrels but more likely in modern wine production stainless steel vessels.  At this stage the wine can be clarified through fining or filtration.

The fining of wine occurs when other substances are added to the wine which cause the particles in suspension to clump together and either drop out of solution and fall to the bottom or can be filtered out of the wine.  The wine can be then filtered user a membrane which takes out the larger particles in the wine.  This clarified wine is then racked into another vessel ready for bottling or aging.

Aging and bottling of the wine

The aging or bottling of wine is the final stage in wine production.  A wine maker has 2 options:  They can either bottle the wine immediately or age the wine in separate vessels such as oak casks.  Acing the wine in oak barrels will produce a smoother, rounder and more vanilla flavoured wine.  Aging of the wine also increases the wine’s exposure to oxygen while it ages, this decreases tannin and helps the wine reach optimal fruitiness.  Steel tanks are used where zesty white wines is the winemakers aim.  Following the aging process wines are then bottled or put into the required packaging format ready for consumption or sale.

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