Natural
wines consist a category of wines that is claiming in a very dynamic way a
share of the wine market in recent years. These are homemade wines which come
from small or amateur producers, who usually apply the principles of organic
farming to their vineyards.
Harvesting the grapes at the right time is one of the most critical stages of homemade wine production process. The farmer choose to harvest his grapes when they are mature, while it should be noted that different varieties of grapes mature at different periods of time. Grape sugars on the other hand should not be too high but also not too low. In most of the commercial wines we buy, their alcohol degrees correspond to grape sugars of about 20-26 degrees of Brix scale, and these are the degrees of sugars that we should seek to have the grapes we use for homemade wine production. The measuring of Brix degrees in grapes juice is made by an inexpensive device called refractometer.
The basic steps for producing homemade wine are as follows:
·
Harvesting the grapes
·
Grapes compression
·
Must extraction
·
Alcoholic fermentation of the
must
·
Storage and ripening of wine
To be able make our own wine
we will need some basic equipment that consists of the following:
·
Utensils to pick up the grapes
·
Hydrometer and refractometer
·
Grape press for extracting the
must
·
Containers for storing the
must and wine
·
Container for temporarily
store the grape pulp
The process of homemade wine
begins by crushing the grapes in the grape press and extracting the must, which
is temporarily placed in a clean container for 12-14 hours, so that the
containing solid particles will settle down. Then, the must has to be
transfered to the container where the alcoholic fermentation will take place
and which must be in a ventilated area. At the end of this stage of homemade
wine production, we will also have at our disposal the grape pulp besides the
must. If we want to make rosé or red wine, we should first put the grape pulp
together with the must for 2-18 days, because the longer the grape pulp stays
with the must, the more red color the wine will have. In this case, we should
remove the stalks from the pulp because the presence of the stalks affects
adversely the quality of wine but also the health of the consumer.
An important parameter in wine
production is the temperature of the environment during fermentation
process of the must, which should be around 18 °C. This way the fermentation process lasts longer and the wine will get more
aromas. When the alcoholic fermentation is completed after about 2 weeks, we
can transfer the wine to another container where it will be stored. Typically,
wine is directly consumable but the more time you leave it in storage the
better it becomes. Last but not least, indicatively we refer that a manual
grape press costs about $100, while a large plastic container of 1 ton capacity
and with a faucet at its bottom for storing must or wine, costs about $120.