The Five Steps in the Making of Wine

Since ancient times, people have made wine. Wine production is fundamentally a natural process that requires very little intervention from humans. Anyone with substantial wine tasting experience will verify that Mother She gives everything necessary to make wine; it is up to people to enrich, improve, or completely annihilate what nature has provided.

Harvesting, crushing and pressing, fermentation, clarifying, and finally aging and bottling are the five fundamental stages or steps in the production of wine.

Certainly, the first step in the real wine-making process is harvesting or picking. Without fruit, there would be no wine, and no fruit—aside from grapes—can reliably generate enough sugar each year to yield enough alcohol to preserve the ensuing beverage. Other fruits also lack the necessary acids, esters, and tannins to consistently produce natural, stable wine. The majority of winemakers agree that, at least metaphorically, wine is made on the vineyard for this and many more reasons. The grapes must be harvested precisely, ideally when they are physiologically ripe, in order to produce good wine. When to harvest is typically decided using a combination of science and traditional tasting, with input from consultants, winemakers, vineyard managers, and proprietors. Harvesting might be carried either manually or mechanically. However, because machine harvesters can frequently be too harsh on the grapes and the vineyard, many estates choose to hand harvest. Reputable winemakers sort the grape bunches once they arrive at the winery, removing any rotten or immature fruit before crushing.

The next step in the wine-making process is typically to crush the full bunches of fresh, ripe grapes. The time-honored practice of stomping or trodding the grapes into what is known as must is now carried out by machine crushers. For hundreds of years, it was men and women who danced the harvest in barrels and presses that started the magical metamorphosis of grape juice into the most beneficial and enchanted of all libations, wine. Change, like everything else in life, entails both gains and losses. The romanticism and ritual of this aspect of the wine-making process have mostly been replaced by mechanical presses, yet this is a loss that shouldn't be lamented for too long given the enormous sanitary benefits of this method. Additionally, mechanical pressing has increased the durability and quality of wine while decreasing the need for preservatives on the part of the winemaker. After all of this, it is crucial to remember that not all wine starts off in a crusher. Winemakers will occasionally decide to start the fermentation inside entire, uncrushed grape clusters before pressing them, enabling the weight of the grapes and the start of the fermentation to burst the grape skins. The processes for generating red wine and white wine are substantially identical up until crushing and pressing. To separate the juice from the skins, seeds, and sediments, a winemaker must quickly press the must after crushing it in order to produce white wine. Thus, tannins and unwelcome color (which originates from the skin of the grape, not the juice), cannot permeate the white wine. In essence, red wine is left in contact with its skins to obtain color, flavor, and extra tannins during fermentation, which is obviously the next stage, while white wine is given very minimal skin contact. 

In fact, fermentation is the magic that makes wine. If left alone, juice or must will start fermenting organically in 6 to 12 hours with the help of airborne wild yeasts. This natural fermentation is a welcome occurrence in vineyards and wineries that are exceptionally clean and well-established. But for a number of reasons, many winemakers choose to step in at this point to inoculate the unprocessed must. In order to more easily predict the outcome, they will destroy the wild and occasionally unexpected native yeasts before introducing a strain of their own choosing. Regardless of the route taken, fermentation usually lasts until all the sugar has been turned into alcohol and a dry wine has been formed. Ten days to a month or more may be needed for fermentation. Due to the must's overall sugar concentration, the alcohol content of a wine will differ depending on the region. It is common to have an alcohol level of 10% in chilly regions against a high of 15% in hotter settings. When the fermentation process is interrupted before all the sugar has been metabolized into alcohol, sweet wine is the result. Usually, the winemaker makes this choice with awareness and purpose.

The process of clarifying starts once the fermentation has finished. In an effort to keep the precipitates and solids known as pomace to the bottom of the fermenting tank, winemakers can rack or siphon their wines from one tank or barrel to the next. At this stage, filtering and fining may also be carried out. Everything from a coarse filter that simply captures big particulates to a sterile filter pad that completely removes all life from the wine can be used for filtering. Fining is the process of adding chemicals to wine to make it clearer.

Wine aging and bottling make up the last step of the wine-making process. Following clarification, the winemaker can choose to either bottle the wine right away, as is the case with Beaujolais Nouveau, or to age it longer, as is the case with Grand Cru Bordeaux and outstanding Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. Additional aging can take place in bottles, stainless steel or ceramic tanks, big wooden ovals, small barrels, or what are known as "barriques," which are tiny barrels.