Making Wine From Fresh Grapes: Is this the Best Way to Go?

Imagine relaxing and enjoying the delicate scent as it comes up from your first glass of wine from the batch that you just bottled. Making wine from fresh grapes is a hobby that hundreds of people participate in so they can reap the rewards when it comes time to try out their wonderful creation.

It was just a short time ago that you ordered the grapes from a distributor, several cases of them. You see, you cannot buy them from the local grocery store as the grapes required for wine are of a different variety than the grapes you eat. 

After receiving all the grapes you need, comes the biggest and dirtiest job of all, which is crushing them. Whether you stomp on them as they did in the olden days or either buy or rent a crusher it is a very difficult job. Once done, however, you can sit back and relax as the sugars and natural yeast do their part in the primary fermentation of the wine.

When the primary fermentation is done the next step is to load all the crushed grapes into a press to squeeze all of the juices out of them. With all the juice extracted you can then discard the left over pulp and take all the juice and put it into a secondary fermentation vat. This vat can either be a carboy or maybe an oak barrel, it all depends on how many grapes you had and the amount of juice extracted from them.

Now there is nothing to do but wait and occasionally check to see if the wine has completed its fermentation. This will normally take a month or two for the whole process. Wineries will usually leave them in barrels for up to a year.

With the fermentation over it is then time to try out the fruits of your labor. This is the best part of the whole process.

You will no doubt think that making wine from fresh grapes is easy, but on the contrary, it entails a lot of hard work, knowhow and patience.