It is fairly straight forward to make wine from your own grapes and there are many online guidelines showing you how doing it. Unfortunately, many of them "oversimplify" the process, which is absolutely fine if you are preaching to gamble with the results, but not much use if you are hoping for producing consistent, repeatable results.
In essence, many guides suggest that all you need to do is-
- Pick your grapes.
- Crush and press them to extract the juice.
- Leave them to ferment using the natural yeast.
- Leave to clear and then bottle when fermentation has finished.
Wishlist requiring a bit more effort, you are more likely to obtain better results if you use the following method-
Not all grapes are actually suitable for winemaking straight from the wine, not all have sufficient levels of sugar or acidity and, depending on when you pick the grapes, you may or not have any natural yeast present to undertake the fermentation. Using the method above gives you a half chance of obtaining fermentation and a less than 50% chance of obtaining anything that is either a drinkable or repeatable.
- Pick your grapes - you will need around 8-9Kgs per gallon.
- Strip them off their stalks, wash them in clean water if necessary, and then crush and press them to extract the juice. For small quantities, this can be done with a potato masher. It will often be easier if you freeze them first and then allow them to defrost.
- Check the sugar content with a hydrometer and add extra sugar, if required, to obtain a starting gravity about 12-13% alcohol in your finished wine, depending upon your finishing gravity.
- Check the acidity with a pH strip. You should aim for a pH level of 3.1 - 3.4, so you may need to add citric acid to increase the acidity or precipitated chalk to lower it.
- Add 1 crushed Campden tablet per gallon of juice and leave for 24 hours to kill any natural yeast that may be present.
- Add your preferred wine yeast and leave to ferment.
- Once fermentation has finished, or you have reached your preferred finishing gravity, siphon the wine into a clean demijohn bucket, add 1 crushed Campden tablet per gallon, and leave to clear.
- If you are making Red or Rose wine, you will generally need to leave the skins in contact with the juice for 5-10 days depending on how dark a color you want. Once the juice has become the color you want, strain it into a clean demijohn or bucket and allow it to continue to ferment.
Wine will normally take 2-6 weeks for the initial fermentation, depending upon the initial sugar content and the temperature in which it is fermented. It should then be stored and matured for 3-6 months to obtain the best results.
Legal & Disclaimer-
I am a blogger, and therefore any information that I provide here is strictly advisory in nature, and should not be taken as law, you will need to refer to your local state laws/regulations.
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