A Really Simple Intro To The Major Types of Wine Making
While the basics of wine making are incredibly similar there are a quantity of differences depending on the kind of wine you wish to make. Wine making is not just for large 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 over and above kits that provide you with everything you could do with for wine making.
The main purpose of wine making is the same no matter what kind of wine you are planning on making. Yeast is utilized to change sugar into alcohol. A byproduct of this conversion is the production of carbon dioxide and flavor and aroma compounds. There are many different kinds of yeast that can be used in wine making as some yeast are preferred for white wine making and others for red wine making.
White wine making is very similar to red wine making though there is one major difference. 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 also has an extra step. The wine is fermented similar to white wine. Once this still wine is produced there is a second fermentation.
Once you have still wine, the wine is put into bottles, a little bit of juice or sugar solution is added to the wine with some extra yeast. The bottles are then capped and a second fermentation happens in the bottle. The CO2 produced builds up in the bottle so that when you open the sparkling wine it fizzes.
There are sweeter wines including fortified wines and dessert wines that additionally have their own particular step. The wine maker does not allow the yeast to finish fermentation so there is still sugar left in the wine and it tastes sweet. Examples of these sweet wines are fortified wines, late harvest wines and ice wines.
Late harvest wines are made of highly 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 extremely sweet. There is much more to wine making however what is described above are the main differences between the styles of winemaking you can use.
Tags: Alcohol, drink, food, grapes, hobby, taste, tasting, wine