A Truly Simple Introduction To The Main Kinds of Wine Making
Whilst the nitty-gritty of wine making are incredibly similar there are various differences according to the type of wine you want to make. Wine making is not just for huge companies and wineries as you are able to make wine from your home on a small scale. There is plenty of small scale equipment to create wine at home as well as kits that provide you with everything you could do with for wine making.
The nitty-gritty of winemaking are all the same. You are converting the sugar that is in the grape juice into alcohol and carbon dioxide. This conversion is performed by yeast and a byproduct of the production of alcohol are different aroma and flavor chemicals. So the different yeast strain you pick will create varied aromas in addition to making wine.
When making white wine and red wine there is one large difference. This has to do with the incorporation of the grape skins into the fermentation for red wine. White wine can be made from white grapes or red grapes but only the juice is used for fermentation. With red wine the skins are left into the juice and as the alcohol concentration increases the color is extracted from the grape skin and causes the wine to be a dark red color.
Sparkling wine making is slightly different as there is a secondary fermentation needed. Sparkling wine making needs some specialized equipment and wine bottles as the wine is under pressure and this pressure is not relieved until you pop the cork.
The still wine is put back into a bottle, a solution of sugar or juice is appended to the wine, called the dosage, and some yeast is added. The bottle is then corked. As the yeast ferments the added sugar the CO2 builds up and when you open the bottle you get a plethora of fizz and bubbles.
Fortified wines also have a different kind of wine making. Fortified wines are sweet wines that have high alcohol. This end product is reached by stopping the yeast fermentation so there is still plenty of sugar left. The high alcohol content comes from the addition of spirits to stop the yeast.
The massive difference in these wines is how the yeast is finished. For fortified wines a spirit is appended to the wine and that much alcohol will straight away kill the yeast. With dessert style wines the wine is quickly chilled and the yeast will stop growing. Yeast needs a special, warm temperature to grow and a too cold environment will discontinue the fermentation.
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