Winemaking is an ancient process that involves harvesting grapes, breaking them down into wine must, adding yeast and other ingredients, and fermenting the mixture. The wine is then aged before being bottled or casked. The process supports many economies and can be done with basic equipment.
The process of making wine from grapes, also called winemaking or winemaking, has been around for many thousands of years. Winemaking is a process roughly as old as beer or bread baking. In the modern world, winemaking supports many economies, such as those of Australia and New Zealand, Chile and Argentina, France, Spain, Italy and the United States, especially California. A person who participates in winemaking is called a winemaker. A wine producer or merchant is called a vinter and may play a small role in the actual “dirty work” of turning grapes into wine.
The winemaking process begins with the grapes. Wine grapes are varieties of the Vitis vinifera species, slightly smaller than grapes sold in the supermarket and covered with a beautiful dark purple skin. These grapes prefer warm days and cool nights and certainly don’t grow effectively anywhere in the world. They need to be located relatively close to the equator, but not too close. For red wine, the grapes are processed together with their skins, and for white wine, the skins are removed beforehand.
At a winery, the grapes are harvested en masse, either by hand or by machine, then cut or mashed into a pulp before further processing. In the old days, the grapes were thrown into a large wooden tub and crushed by the maidens’ feet. Today we use various methods, one of the most common of which is a large screw pressing the grapes against a wooden board at an angle. The vine grinds the grapes into a pulp, which falls from the slant into a collector.
The next step in winemaking is to break down this mash, which is called wine must, and prepare it for fermentation. Sulfites are added to protect the wort from hostile microorganisms. The beneficial microorganism, yeast, which drives the fermentation process, is added next, along with some specialized nutrients and plenty of sugar for the yeast to eat. Sometimes a little tannic acid is added to give the wine that particular “bite”. The dilution or addition of other acids is necessary to modulate the pH of the wort and ensure that it is optimal for fermentation and subsequent consumption. Tap water is added to provide a base for the mash.
After all the ingredients are in place, primary fermentation begins. The wort is heated to 70°F – 75°F (21°C – 24°C) in an open container and allowed to ferment for several days to a little over a week. These conditions are ideal for yeast to grow and eat. The yeast consumes the sucrose, or sugar, by breaking it down together with the larger carbohydrate molecules in the grape, which eventually produce alcohol and other sugars. Fermentation is a bubbly, foamy and biological process, which transforms into microorganisms in the wort. Special strains of wine yeast are used, because the wrong yeast or a different microorganism will not turn the must into wine, but will produce an undrinkable microbial soup.
After this initial fermentation, secondary fermentation begins. The liquid matter and some sediments are washed off the surface of the solid matter and transferred to another container, where it is sealed from the air. This is another phase of fermentation, called the anaerobic phase, which is necessary for the production of alcohol. This stage takes several weeks, with the wine being repeatedly transferred from vessel to vessel in an attempt to isolate the liquid wine from the solid matter. The process takes place at a lower temperature than primary fermentation and therefore takes much longer.
After several weeks of fermentation and a month or two of being transferred between vessels and waiting for all the solid matter to sink to the bottom and be washed away, the wine is ready to be bottled or cask. The clear tubes at the bottom of the vessel are used to drain it into a barrel for long-term aging or a bottle for short-term aging. The wine needs to be aged slightly to be drinkable – white wine needs to stand for a year and a half and red wine for a full year. Some of the more famous wines are aged for multiple years in oak barrels or glass bottles, but if the wine is aged too long, it turns to vinegar.
The winemaking process described above can be done by anyone with the garage space and a couple thousand dollars of winemaking equipment. Even high quality plastic buckets can be used for the fermentation stages. In ancient times, people made wine with much less, but it obviously tasted considerably worse than modern wines. Today, wine and winemaking are loved all over the world, especially in Europe, North America, Australia and some parts of South America, such as Argentina and Chile.
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