Happy #winemakingmonday

Happy #WineMakingMonday

Step 1: Harvest red wine grapes

Red wine is made with black (aka purple) wine grapes. In fact, all the color you see in a glass of red wine comes from anthocyanin (red pigment) found in black grape skins.

Step 2: Prepare grapes for fermentation

After the harvest, grapes head to the winery. The winemaker decides whether or not to remove the stems or to ferment grape bunches as whole clusters.

This is an important choice because leaving stems in the fermentation adds astringency (aka tannin) but also reduces sourness.

Step 3: Yeast starts the wine fermentation

What happens is small sugar-eating yeasts consume the grape sugars and make alcohol. The yeasts come either from a commercial packet (just like you might find in bread making), or occur spontaneously in the juice.

Step 4: Alcoholic fermentation

Winemakers use many methods to tune the wine during fermentation.

For example, the fermenting juice gets frequently stirred to submerge the skins (they float!).

Step 5: Press the wine

Most wines take 5–21 days to ferment sugar into alcohol.

Step 6: Malolactic fermentation (aka “second fermentation”)

As the red wine settles in tanks or barrels, a second “fermentation” happens.

Step 7: Aging (aka “Elevage”)

Red wines age in a variety of storage vessels including wooden barrels, concrete, glass, clay, and stainless steel tanks.

Step 8: Blending the wine

Now that the wine is good and rested, it’s time to make the final blend. A winemaker blends grape varieties together or different barrels of the same grape to make a finished wine.

Step 9: Clarifying the wine

One of the final steps of how a red wine is made is the clarification process. For this, many winemakers add clarifying or “fining” agents to remove suspended proteins in the wine (proteins make wine cloudy).

Step 10: Bottling and labeling wines

Now, it’s time to bottle our wine. A small amount of sulfur dioxide is often added to help preserve the wine.

Step 11: Bottle aging

Finally, a few special wines continue to age in the winemaker’s cellar for years.

#wine #winetasting #redwine #winemaking