A Very Simple Intro To The Main Types Of Wine Making
Whilst the basics of wine making are very comparable there are a quantity of differences depending on the sort of wine you wish to make. Wine making is not just for big companies and wineries as you can make wine from your house on a small scale. There is plenty of small scale equipment to create wine at home over and above kits that provide you with everything you could do with for making wine.
The nitty-gritty of winemaking are all the same. You are converting the sugar that is in the grape juice into alcohol and carbon dioxide. This conversion is carried out by yeast and a byproduct of the production of alcohol are different aroma and flavor chemicals. So the different yeast strain you select will create varied aromas in addition to making wine.
White wine making is really similar to red wine making though there is one main distinction. For white wine the juice is inoculated with yeast and then the juice is fermented into wine. The grapes skins, seeds and stems are all separated from the juice so only the juice is being made into wine. For red wine the skins of the grape are left in the juice, the yeast is added and the juice is fermented into wine. Because the grape skins are in the juice the alcohol that is being produced extracts the color from the grape skins producing a colored, or red, wine.
There is also an extra step for wine making when making sparkling wine. Instead of one fermentation, sparkling wine uses two fermentations. The most famous example of sparkling wine is champagne but there are many different types of sparkling wine.
The still wine is placed back into a bottle, a solution of sugar or juice is appended to the wine, called the dosage, and some yeast is added. The bottle is then corked. As the yeast ferments the added sugar the CO2 builds up and when you open the bottle you obtain loads of fizz and bubbles.
Fortified wines and late harvest or sweet wines can be manufactured using two styles of wine making. With fortified wines the fermentation is not finished so that there is still some sugar left in the wine. The fermentation is stopped by adding liquor or spirits to the fermentation which kills the yeast.
Late harvest wines are made of incredibly ripe grapes so that they are shriveled and like raisins. This creates juice that has high sugar. The fermentation is stopped before it is done by chilling. In this way the alcohol content is low and the wine is incredibly sweet. There is much more to wine making however what is described above are the major differences between the styles of winemaking you can use.
