How to Make Wine At Home

Mak­ing wine is an art, and if you’re not an artist, you should prob­a­bly leave the finer brush strokes of win­ery to the pro­fes­sional artisans—at least, that is my opinion—but if you can­not resist the temp­ta­tion of get­ting your feet wet (and red) then we’ll present you with some tips on how to pro­duce the finest bot­tle of basement-Bordeaux your neigh­bor­hood has ever tasted.

The Grape

The first thing you will need to deter­mine is the grape. It’s highly advised that you choose a local grape, and you want to ide­ally start in early autumn where they were is going to an excess amount of fresh, deli­cious grapes. If you can­not get your hands on some local grapes you can obtain some through the mail; you can also use pre-made grape con­cen­trates, but that takes out all of the fun, and much of the taste. Some camps would argue that if you’re going to make wine, make it right.

The prepa­ra­tion of the grapes is as fol­lows: First, inspect the grapes; it is crit­i­cal that they do not have any insects or other con­t­a­m­i­nants in them, as that can spoil the whole batch. Sec­ondly, remove the stems, as they are not going to do any­thing for you.

The Equip­ment

Next is the gear. It’s rec­om­mended that you have the tools to help you mea­sure the acid con­tent, sugar lev­els, and tem­per­a­ture.
You can get the hard­ware required for mak­ing wine at a wine mak­ing shop or a ‘U-brew’ type estab­lish­ment. It’s very impor­tant that all of the equip­ment you’re using is prop­erly san­i­tized. Clean equip­ment means fresh, tasty wine.

Rack­ing

Rack­ing refers to the trans­fer­ring of the fer­mented wine away from the sed­i­ment. When you get to this stage it’s impor­tant to go slow and fol­low the direc­tions explicitly.

Bot­tles and Corks

Some peo­ple enjoy recy­cling bot­tles, whereas oth­ers sim­ply pur­chase them from a wine­mak­ing store. The type of bot­tle that you go with is less impor­tant than your choice of cork. In order to avoid get­ting cork taint or other com­pli­ca­tions you want to look for cork that comes in a tightly sealed plas­tic bag or pack­age. If you’re wor­ried about the steril­ity of your cork you can boil them in a mix­ture of water and 1tsp of sul­fite crys­tals for an extra layer of protection.