Wine Tips & Advice, What is Wine, How Wine is Made

What is wine?

Wine is an alcoholic beverage resulting from the fermentation (the process of turning grape sugars to alcohol by yeast) of grapes or grape juice. The word comes from the Latin ‘vinum’ - referring to both "wine" and the "vine". Wine-like beverages can also be made from other fruits or from flowers or grains. The word wine by itself always means grape wine.

How wine is made?

Decision on when to pick the grapes
The wine-making process begins with the decision to pick the grapes. The picking of grapes is dependent on the weather. If it is too hot, the grapes have to be picked in the evening / night. The grape variety, combined with wine style, will determine the pick dates. The ripeness of the grape is then analyzed and it is then checked for sugar level, pH, acidity levels, pH, aromas, colour and flavours.

Dependent on the vineyard, some grapes are picked by hand. It is very important that the grapes arrive at the crush platform freshly picked and the wine making process begins immediately as the grapes are checked and weighed.

Destemming
All stems are removed from the grapes using the ‘destemmer’.

Skin Contact
The process during which the juice of grapes rests in contact with the grape skins; in red wine, the process by which the wines absorb color, tannin, and other substances. This is not normally used in white wine production, but occasionally used to enhance the aromatic character of the wine.

Pressing
The juice extracted under pressure after ‘pressing’ for white wines and after fermentation for reds, usually with more flavor. Used as a blend with other wines.

Cold Settling
White wine “must” is cold-settled and racked fresh from the press. This removes any grape skin particles that might have travelled with the juice from the press. The result is a clean grape must which is ready for fermentation.
Once the grapes have been ‘pressed, the resulting juice is cooled, sulphur dioxide is added and pumped to a holding tank for "cold settling" so temperature remains too low for fermentation to start so that grape solids can settle out and the fermentation proceed on "clean" juice.

Fermentation
The process of turning grape sugars to alcohol by yeast.

Racking
The process of transferring young wine from one barrel to another barrel whilst leaving the leftover sediment behind.

Fining
A method used for removing particles, or clarifying wine. A substance is added to the wine e.g. egg whites or gelatine in order to capture solids before the filtration process occurs.

Cold Stabilization
A technique of chilling wines before bottling to cause the precipitation of harmless tartrate crystals.

Filtering
The wine is filtered in order to remove impurities before bottling.

Bottling
Filling the bottles, corking, capsuling, labelling and palletizing are the last steps to finishing the wine. Red wines often mature for years before being sold. White wines tend to come to market earlier. Wine is made up of over a thousand different minerals, vitamins and other components and once in the bottle, the wine continues to mature and improve.

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