If you have never made a home made wine before, don’t worry, these tips are designed to ensure your success, so that you don’t end up wasting all your efforts.
Below I have included a simple overview to the recipe and how it works to remove some of the “mystery” that surrounds it, and to help you get started. I think you will enjoy it.
What Ingredients To Use
For this recipe you will need some basic ingredients such as 2 teaspoons pectic enzyme, sugar, 15 pounds of white grapes, white wine yeast, and Campden tablets (or strong sulphite solution).
An Overview Of The Process
The first thing you will need to do is to pick the grapes, remove them from the stalks and place them in a plastic bucket. If the grapes are fully ripe they can be crushed easily by hand or with a sterilized wooden block.
Next, add the pectic enzyme, and one crushed Campden tablet or 1 teaspoon strong sulphite solution. Stir well, cover with an upturned plate, then cover the bucket and leave for 24 hours. Press the grapes or strain through a strong nylon straining bag, squeezing the bag to extract all the juice.
Take an S.G. (specific gravity) reading of the juice and adjust with sugar syrup to 1.080. Pour into a demijohn and add an active yeast starter. Plug the jar with cotton wool and when the fermentation is active replace with an airlock.
Leave in a warm place and when the fermentation is finished, in about 10-14 days, rack the clearing wine from the lees into a clean jar and remove to a cool place. After 2 days rack again. This time adding 2 Campden tablets or 2 teaspoons strong sulphite solution.
Now you let them age and mature in for 12 months before bottling.
Finding Good Grapes
When growing grapes you need good summer weather to enable the vine to produce grapes with a high sugar level, and a low acid content. A wine made from grapes that haven’t had the chance to completely ripen will be of poor quality. It will usually have a low alcohol level with high acidity.
If the grapes can be left on the vine a far superior wine should be achieved. This is because the maximum sugar level in the grapes can be achieved, which in turn, produces a higher quality wine.
Although there are a number of fruits that be used to make wine, grapes are the standard choice, and will yield the best results for your grape wine recipe.
