How to make wine from Grapes (midwest supplies)
Winemaking has been around for thousands of years. In its basic form, it is a natural process requiring very little human intervention. Mother Nature provides everything needed to make wine—it is up to humans to embellish, improve, or obliterate what nature has provided, to which anyone with wine-tasting experience can attest.
There are five basic components or steps to making wine:
- Harvesting
- Crushing and pressing
- Fermentation
- Clarification and aging
- Bottling
Undoubtedly, one can find endless deviations and variations along the way. In fact, it is the variants and little deviations at any point in the process that make life interesting. They also make each wine unique and ultimately contribute to the greatness or ignominy of any particular wine.
The steps for making white wine and red wine are essentially the same, with one exception: if you are making white wine, the juice gets separated from the seeds and skins right away, so that they don’t impart any color to the wine.