How to Make Wine

Making wine at home really is not that difficult, crush some fruit, let the resulting juice ferment, and the result is wine. Well, yes, it might work if the right yeast is on the fruit to begin with and it gets ahead of any mold that might also have been on the fruit. And is there enough sugar in the fruit. Doesn't it need to age for a bit? What happens if it gets oxygen in it? Doesn't it absorb some of the odors in the air?

Sure, the first person to discover wine probably was storing grape juice in a crock and the yeast took off and he tasted it and voilas! There was a delicious drink that was easy to preserve. But the history of wine-making is a bit more complex than this. There is even a history of wine-making using seedless grapes. It is even thought that the early Gauls originally invaded Italy because they wanted to get the secret of wine-making, and when they did they took it home and made the best wine the world has ever seen. (If you don't know, the Gauls were from France.)

Probably the easiest way to make wine is to begin with a wine making kit. This will give you the equipment you need to produce a quality vintage. First, be sure to get quality fruit. It is best to begin with good wine grapes, but decent wine can be made from nearly any kind of fruit. It is just that with most fruits water and sugar will need to be added. Grapes are the only fruit that grow ready to be made into wine.

Next, crush the fruit into, what is called a primary fermenter, but can actually be a very CLEAN trash can. Generally, you will want to have a recipe to go by, to specify any sugar to be added, but a recipe is not strictly necessary, especially when dealing with grapes. However, it is well to know that you want a very sweet juice for the yeast to act upon. Next add yeast to what we will now call the must. This can be simple bread yeast or it can be specially bought wine yeast. Bread yeast can make tolerable wine, but it will never be quite the quality of wine that results from wine yeast. Next, clap a lid on your primary fermenter. Stir it once a day, taste it on occasion and add a bit of sugar it seems necessary. Plain white cane or beet sugar fills the bill precisely.

When the fermentation has slowed down, usually 5 days to a week, siphon it into a jug or carboy. Put some kind of vapor lock on top that will let the built up carbon dioxide out and not let the oxygen in. This can even be a balloon. After several weeks you will notice that the little bubbles rising from the must cease and a layer of sediment gathers in the bottom of the jug. It is now time to siphon the wine into another jug, slap a vapor lock on it and allow the wine to clear through the process of letting the sediment fall out. After three months to a year, you can bottle or simply consume your wine.

Sure, you can make it more complex, but you don't have to. Wine making is a fun process, a great hobby, and well to try out at least once, just for the experience. When you get a store of wine bottled, the next step is to build a wine rack.

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