The next step

The main difference in making red wine vs. white wine is in the amount of skin contact time allowed. In a white wine the grapes are crushed and pressed usually in rapid succession and only the resulting juice is fermented. When making a red wine the grape skins are kept in contact with the juice for an extended period of time. The mixture of grapes and skins is called must. To make a red wine the yeast is added directly to the must and allowed to ferment. Fermentation in glass carboys is impractical with must so it is done in wide mouth containers. I use a food grade plastic trash can or I ferment directly in the 5 gallon pails that my frozen must from California comes in. During fermentation pigment and tannin in the skins will be released to the juice. Red wine fermentation tends to be very active and fast. The large amount of Carbon Dioxide produced will push the skins to the top of the fermenter and this cap needs to be punched down several times a day to keep the skins in contact with the juice and to prevent spoilage. Because of the fast fermentation, heat generation can also be a problem. The temperature of the fermenting must should be monitored and reduced if necessary.

One more thing to consider about making red wine from grapes is that you will need to press the grapes to separate the skins from the juice when primary fermentation is completed. For small batches of wine, a small 1-2 gallon cider press will work fine. For larger batches the sky and the size of your wallet are the limits.

With all that in mind let's review the red wine making process:

1. If you can get your grapes crushed and de-stemmed by your supplier, all the better. If you need to or want to do it your self you have three options. You can de-stem and crush by hand. I make red wine in 10 gal. batches max so I simply remove the stems myself and stomp on the grapes with clean feet. It is crude but effective and inexpensive. If your are mechanically inclined, you could build your own unit. I am looking for some plans or links to plans to add to this page. Or you can buy a commercially available unit if you would like.

2. Place your crushed grapes into a clean open container. Ideally it will be filled about 3/4 full and you will have a tight fitting lid to place on it later. Stir in your yeast solution and place the lid on loosely.

3. Once the fermentation starts, the carbon dioxide produced will push a cap of skins to the top of the fermenter. In order to get maximum color extraction and to minimize air contact and the chances of spoilage, the cap should be pushed down and mixed with the fermenting wine several times a day.

4. Keep an eye on the must temperature during the first few days of primary fermentation. The combination of rapid fermentation and the skin cap can keep heat released during fermentation in the wine. You may have to stir the wine more frequently or add plastic bottles filled with water and then frozen to your must to keep the temperature low.

5. Fermentation usually slows down in 5 to 7 days (at least for me) and you have the option to press now or wait (extended maceration). Pressing early is the safe route. You get the wine in the carboy and away from air as soon as possible but it has some trade offs. Extended skin contact for an additional week or two will increase the color intensity of your wine and the tannin content. If you are happy with the color of your juice and don't plan to keep your wine for an extended period of time then press right away. If you want a deep color extraction and enough tannin to make your wine age worthy then patience is advised. Once the cap begins to sink into the wine on it's own it is time to cover the wine tightly and leave it alone for another week or even two. According to the books you will be breaking the rules leaving your wine alone for such a long time without it being completely air tight or under a CO2 blanket. All I can say is that I have used this technique successfully for 5 years without a problem. Question authority, challenge some rules, shift some paradigms!

6. Once you are ready to press, I suppose that you could somehow separate the wine from the skins manually but in this case the traditional grape or fruit press is your best bet. Get your pressed juice into glass carboys and allow it to finish fermentation and let the solids fall to the bottom. From here on you are ready for your first racking and the process is identical to making white wines.

I must admit up front that this is not one of my strong areas of knowledge. I don't make sweet wine on a regular basis but I will tell you here what little I know. Let's start with a barely sweet wine since that is the simplest. If you follow the same procedure as with making a dry white wine but use Cotes des Blanc (Epernay 2) yeast and ferment your wine at as cold a temperature as possible (45-50 deg F) you will have a long slow fermentation yielding a fruity slightly sweet wine. This technique works well with Riesling or Vidal grapes. A word of caution; Cotes des Blanc will stop fermenting earlier than other yeasts but it will do it when it is ready. It is not the yeast to choose if you want to try to stop fermentation at your desired sugar level. It has a high tolerance to Meta which brings us to the next method of making sweet wine and that is to stop the fermentation process before it's normal completion. Two ways I know to do this are with chemicals or with filtration or of course with a combination of the two but that makes three so we won't discuss that one. Potassium Sorbate can be added to a wine to suppress fermentation but in my experience you have to use the minimum amount possible or it imparts a noticeable flavor to the wine. The sorbate addition should be followed by an addition of Meta for the one two punch to knock out the yeast before it's time. You could also stop fermentation by filtering the wine to remove yeast cells. This requires a special filter medium with a .2 micron or smaller spec. I have friends that use both methods successfully so don't let my lack of knowledge hold you back. Go for it.

I have avoided math and science up to this point as much as possible so as not to scare anyone away. (Since you are on the Internet, I probably didn't have to worry.) The time has come though to discuss some basic wine analysis.

Knowing the acidity of your juice and wine and being able to correct it when necessary will be a major advantage to you in your quest to make consistently high quality wine.

You can get an acidity test kit from your local wine supply shop or from mail order. In it's most basic form you need some way to measure at least 10ml of liquid in .1ml increments and some .1N Sodium Hydroxide and some Phenolphthalein. You need to start with 5ml of juice or wine in a glass along with about 50ml of water. To this add 5drops of Phenolphthalein. Then start adding Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) from a syringe or burette so that you know exactly how much you are adding. Swirl or stir the glass all the while. In a white wine you will see the liquid turn pink and then back to normal. When it just stays pink stop adding NaOH and note how much you used. Multiply the amount used by .15 and you will have your wine's acidity in percent. For instance if you had to add 5ml of NaOH, your acidity would then be .75
When you are testing fermented wine and not juice you need to drive out all the Carbon Dioxide from the sample before testing. CO2 takes the form of Carbonic acid when dissolved in the wine (or something like that) and will throw off your reading. I microwave my 5ml sample until I see the first sign of boiling then add 50ml of cold water before testing. This works well for me.

When I started making wine about 5 years ago Red Star brand yeast was the only thing available to me, and the people I learned from basicly stuck to 3 varieties, Epernay for fruity off dry wines, Montrachet for dry wines, and Pasteur Champagne for bone dry wines. I still use Red Star yeast and am happy with the quality and price of their product. They now have a wider range of products and there are other options available to home wine makers these days as well. Let me give you my as always highly opinionated description of the yeasts I am familiar with.