A Really Simple Intro To The Main Kinds of Wine Making
Whilst the fundamentals of wine making are very similar there are various differences according to the type of wine you want to make. Wine making is not simply for huge companies and wineries as you are able to make wine from your house on a small scale. There is plenty of small scale equipment to create wine at home in addition to kits that offer you with everything you require for wine making.
The essentials of winemaking are all the same. You are converting the sugar that is in the grape juice into alcohol and carbon dioxide. This conversion is conducted by yeast and a byproduct of the production of alcohol are different aroma and flavor chemicals. So the different yeast strain you pick will produce varied smells as well as making wine.
White wine making is very akin to red wine making although there is one chief distinction. For white wine the juice is inoculated with yeast and then the juice is fermented into wine. The grapes skins, seeds and stems are all separated from the juice so only the juice is being made into wine. For red wine the skins of the grape are left in the juice, the yeast is added and the juice is fermented into wine. Because the grape skins are in the juice the alcohol that is being produced extracts the color from the grape skins producing a colored, or red, wine.
Sparkling wine making is somewhat different as there is a secondary fermentation needed. Sparkling wine making requires some specialized equipment and wine bottles as the wine is under pressure and this pressure is not relieved until you pop the cork.
To make wine sparkling you take still wine, so juice that has already been fermented to wine. Then a small amount of juice or sugar and yeast is added and the bottle is corked so the CO2 is trapped in the bottle, hence the sparkling.
Fortified wines also have a different kind of wine making. Fortified wines are sweet wines that have high alcohol. This end product is reached by stopping the yeast fermentation so there is still plenty of sugar left. The high alcohol content comes from the addition of spirits to stop the yeast.
Late harvest wines are made of very ripe grapes so that they are shriveled and like raisins. This produces juice that has high sugar. The fermentation is stopped before it is done by chilling. In this way the alcohol content is low and the wine is very sweet. There is much more to wine making but what is described above are the chief differences between the styles of winemaking you can use.
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