Category: Wine Making Science

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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 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”

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Making Wine from Grapes vs Kits

Wine kits are a great place to start when learning to make wine. They’re inexpensive, pre-stabilized, and come with a great set of instructions to help you through the process. You also need only a minimal amount of equipment.

At some point though we all want to graduate kit wine making to making wine from fresh grapes.

There are a few things that differ between the two methods of making wine. The most obvious is the equipment required to process the fruit. You’ll likely need a crusher / destemmer as well as a grape press, all of which are used to extract the juice from the fruit.Wine grapes prepped for pressing.

The other differences are on a deeper level and this is where I’d like to dive in and explore what the big differences are. Continue reading “Making Wine from Grapes vs Kits”

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Effects of Fermentation Temperature on Wine

Heat is a catalyst. By definition when it is applied to a chemical reaction or biological process it speeds things up. The same is true for fermentation.

Fermentation temperature is critical in the production of great wine.The higher your fermentation temperature the faster your yeast will convert sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. While this sounds great on the surface you never really want to rush anything when it comes to making wine.

Continue reading “Effects of Fermentation Temperature on Wine”

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Making Sulfite Free Wine

Sulfite Free wines have no added sulfites but may contain trace amounts.
Even wines made without sulfites will still contain trace amounts of SO2.

There is a lot of confusion out there regarding sulfites and what it means to make a “sulfite free” wine.In reality it’s nearly impossible for a wine to be sulfite free as they are a natural byproduct of the fermentation process

Beyond the fact that they are naturally produced there is the issue of stability. Sulfites are used to stabilize wine against microbial spoilage and oxidation. Without them our wines become much more vulnerable and can potentially have a shorter shelf life. Continue reading “Making Sulfite Free Wine”