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Maceration of Wine Must

Simply put maceration is the process of soaking crushed grapes, seeds, and stems in a wine must to extract color and aroma compounds as well as tannins. This is where red wines get their color and tannins and it is the lack of maceration that makes white wines so light in color and nearly tannin free.

Maceration is key to extracting the color, aromas, and tannins for red wines.
Punching down the cap during a red wine maceration.

There are actually several different types of maceration processes. The three most common are the extended maceration, cold soak, and carbonic maceration. Carbonic maceration is a bit different from the other two and will be discussed only briefly. Continue reading “Maceration of Wine Must”

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How to Ameliorate Wine

The dictionary definition of amelioration is “to make better”. In wine making this is exactly our aim when we ameliorate our wine must, however, as wine makers we have a much more specific definition of the term.

To ameliorate wine you simple add water to dilute the acids or sugars.
Not the best way to ameliorate!

Ameliorating wine is simply adding water to unfermented must with the purpose of making the finished wine better. Some wine makers use the term ameliorate to describe the addition of water or sugar to a must, however, this can get confusing so we’ll use the term ameliorate to describe the addition of water to must. Continue reading “How to Ameliorate Wine”

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How to Chaptalize Wine

Chaptalizing is the act of adding sugar to a grape must in order to increase the alcohol content of the finished wine. Since yeast consumes sugars to produce alcohol, if you add sugar to grape juice before or during fermentation the yeast will have more sugar to convert thus yielding higher alcohol levels.

This process is widely regulated in commercial wine making depending upon where in the world you are located. The US has federal regulations (available here) and some states enact their own regulations to go on top of the federal ones. Continue reading “How to Chaptalize Wine”

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My Bottled Wine is Cloudy – Now What?

Bottling is the final step in the wine production process. If your wine going to look good in the glass it needs to look good when it goes into the bottle. Once it’s in the bottle it’s hard to clear up any issues.

Recently Tom wrote in  with the following situation:
We bottled 2 days ago and the wine is cloudy, you can see by holding the bottle up near a light bulb. My question is can I still clear the wine? I mean can I put the wine back into a carboy and use another clearing agent or something like that or am I stuck with the wine as it is? Continue reading “My Bottled Wine is Cloudy – Now What?”

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How to Know When to Rack your Wine

There’s a lot of different information out there on when to rack your wine. Largely this is because you rack at different times for different reasons depending upon where you are in the wine making process.

Knowing when to rack wine will help you make a better bottle of wine.The three main times when you rack a wine are:

1. When moving your wine from the primary fermenter to the secondary.
2. When moving your wine from the secondary fermenter to a bulk aging vessel.
3. After fermentation you can rack either for clarity or in and out of oak vessels.

Let’s take a look at why and when you rack wines during these different phases. Continue reading “How to Know When to Rack your Wine”