Wine Production Process

Harvesting:-

The harvesting of wine grapes is one of the most crucial steps in the process of wine-making. There are two ways of harvesting; It can be done by hand or mechanically. Many winemakers prefer to harvest by hand because mechanical harvesting can be tough. While harvesting the harvester has to check the maturity of grapes, because it may affect the aroma characteristics, each harvest date is clearly differentiated. Once the grapes are taken to the winery, they are sorted into bunches, and rotten or under-ripe grapes are removed.

Crushing and Pressing:-

Most of them are having the wrong impression that crushing and pressing are the same terms but actually it’s not. Crushing is a simple matter of bursting the skin of the grape so that all the inner solids can be exposed. For many years, men and women did this manually by stomping the grapes with their feet. While Pressing is, after fermentation for 5-6 days, it’s time to remove all the solid so they start pressing to remove the remaining in the basket to extract even more juice, what is called must. Must is simply freshly pressed grape juice that contains the skins, seeds, and solids. Nowadays, most winemakers perform this mechanically. Mechanical pressing has brought tremendous sanitary gain as well as increased the longevity and quality of the wine.

For white wine, the winemaker will quickly crush and press the grapes in order to separate the juice from the skins, seeds, and solids. This is to prevent unwanted color and tannins from leaching into the wine. Red wine, on the other hand, is left in contact with the skins to acquire flavor, color, and additional tannins.

Fermentation:-

After crushing and pressing, fermentation comes into play. Must (or juice) can begin fermenting naturally within 6-12 hours. A ripe organic grape is full of natural sugars and there are wild yeasts living on its skin. As soon as the skin of the grape is broken, fermentation can begin and will continue until all the sugar has been turned into alcohol or the level of alcohol around 15 % to 20% and at this stage, the yeasts will die naturally and sugars will remain in the wine. However, many winemakers intervene and add commercially cultured yeast to ensure consistency and predict the end result. To create a sweet wine, winemakers will sometimes stop the process before all of the sugar is converted. Fermentation can take anywhere from 10 days to one month or more.

Clarification:-

This process is done before bottling of wine which removes all the insoluble particles which may affect the color, aroma, textures, clarity, chemical, and biological stability of the wine. Clarification is the process in which solids such as dead yeast cells, tannins, and proteins are removed. There are different method both for Red and White wine as both has different Characteristics. Wine is transferred or “racked” into a different vessel such as an oak barrel or a stainless steel tank. Wine can then be clarified through fining or filtration to keep the wine clear.

Fining occurs when substances are added to the wine to clarify it. For example, a winemaker might add a substance such as clay that the unwanted particles will adhere to. This will force them to the bottom of the tank. There are two types of fining agents which are commonly used Organic compound and solid material. The most common compound is Egg white, casein derived from milk, gelatin, and icing glass obtained from the fish bladder and while bentonite clay is the most common mineral material. Filtration occurs by using a filter to capture the larger particles in the wine. The clarified wine is then racked into another vessel and prepared for bottling or future aging.

Aging and Bottling:-

Aging and bottling is the final stage of the winemaking process. A winemaker has two options: bottle the wine right away or give the wine additional aging. In wine’s chemistry — namely, color, pH, acidity, tannins, and alcohol content plays a very important role. however, they mconsidered holistically for a more accurate assessment. If any one indicator is abnormally low or high for a specific style of wine, the wine will be unbalanced and may not age gracefully. Further aging can be done in the bottles, stainless steel tanks, or oak barrels. Aging the wine in oak barrels will produce a smoother, rounder, and more vanilla flavored wine.