Making Wine from Grapes - The Method
- Apr 3
- 6 min read
If you've read my Guide to Making Wine from Grapes, here is the method designed to follow on from that post. As I have said before, this isn't a recipe as such because there are so many variations depending on whether your grapes are white, red or pink, what variety they are and their natural sugar content. I've consciously separated these two posts because sometimes people don't want to know about the information behind it plus, if I put them together, it would potentially be the longest blog post in the world.
I strongly recommend that you read the whole method through before you start. It varies slightly depending on whether you are making white, red or rosé, because you may exclude grape skins completely (white), leave them in the must for a bit (rosé) or leave them in for the whole first part of the process (red).
I do not list the equipment you'll need here as I covered that in my previous post about making wine from garden grapes.
Making Wine from Garden Grapes
Method
Remove as many grapes from the stems as you can bear without losing your
mind. Wash grapes well, send any rotting/squashed ones plus leaves to the
compost.
Put the grapes in a food grade bucket and squish them until you can squish no more. Of
course you can always use your feet too. Whichever parts of your body you
use, please wash it/them first. If your grapes are white, you could pop them in a
sterilised straining bag first and press them in the bag, avoiding the need to
strain the juice off later. Don't be tempted to put your grapes through a fruit
press or food processor, broken pips will make your wine bitter. The aim is to
extract the maximum possible juice without damaging the pips.
Then if you have white grapes, strain the whole lot through a sterilised straining bag, muslin or cheesecloth into a sterilised fermenting bucket (unless you squeezed them in the bag already as above). If you have red grapes and want to make red wine, pour the contents of your 'mashing' bucket into a fermenting bucket, ie include the skins in the bucket. If you have red grapes but want to make rosé wine, put the whole lot into the bucket but be prepared to strain off the skins after 2 days - see later.
Crush one Campden Tablet per 5 litres of juice/juice skins & pulp, henceforth referred to as "the must", add and stir with a sterilised paddle. Campden Tables kill off any 'bad' yeast in your grape juice. Now traditionalists may choose to leave the natural yeasts in their grape juice and allow them to ferment in the wine. The potential problem with that is that if any unhelpful bacteria has got into your juice at some point, it could contaminate the whole batch. This could cause anything from a slight 'off' taste in the final product, to the whole lot being spoiled. So whether or not you choose to kill of the natural yeasts with a Campden Tablet is your choice. If it helps, I don't always do that but I would always choose to use Campden with this wine.
Cover loosely with a lid or tea towel to prevent fruit flies getting in which will also spoil you wine (I know, it feels like the warnings never end, but this whole thing is honestly quite straightforward once you have the hang of it). Leave for 24 hours. Assuming you've added Campden Tablet(s), don't add your yeast yet because the same sterilising agents in Campden Tablets that kill the bad bacteria will also kill your yeast. So you need to give the Campden Tablet time to do its work and disperse. 24 hours is enough time. Don't seal the vessel at this point, you want all the Campden to dissipate into the air before you add your yeast or you may have problems later with gases hanging around and affecting the performance of the yeast.
Add sugar 24 hours later. If you don't want to use a hydrometer: a good guide is to add 900 grams of granulated sugar per 4.5 litres of must and stir well with your sterilised paddle. If you want to know precisely how much sugar to add then that's what a hydrometer can help you with. If you bought a kit with a hydrometer in it, it will contain instructions on how to use it and there's more about that in my how to use a triple scale wine and beer hydrometer post. If using one and your must reading is less than 1.010, add a small quantity of granulated sugar. If you're not using one, you can go straight to the adding yeast step.
Stir well with a sterilised paddle and test again. Keep doing this until you get the reading up to at least 1.010. If you go higher than this, that's no problem. Bear in
mind the higher the sugar content, the higher the alcohol content of the final product is likely to be. The ideal reading is between 1.080 and 1.090.
Straight after adding sugar: add your wine yeast of choice. A universal wine yeast is fine if you can't decide. You could also add yeast nutrient to help the yeast along, particularly if your grape juice seems a bit 'thin'. Or adding a handful of raisins to the must will do the same job.
Pop a clean tea towel or cloth over the bucket, loosely put the lid over the top to keep it in place and stir it once a day with a sterilised paddle.
If you're making white wine, do this for 8 days.
If you are making rosé wine there is an additional step as follows: strain off the skins after 2 days. That should be enough time for your red grape skins to have given a pinky colour to the must. Then put the strained must back in the sterile bucket and continue as above, stirring once a day, for 6 days.
If you are making red wine, simply leave the skins in the must for the full 8 days.
Damson wine in a straining bag in a fermentation bucket. Strain the must into either a sterilise demijohn or a sterilised fermenting bucket that has a tight fitting lid and a hole for the airlock (as contained in a typical starter kit).
Fill the sterilised homebrew airlock with water and fit it to the bucket lid. If you are using a demijohn, you will also need a sterilised bung with the airlock.
Leave the vessel somewhere warm (80-85°F /26-30°C is ideal) for about 8 weeks. You will know things are working because the water will be bubbling ('bloop') through your airlock. Do not be tempted, under any circumstances, to remove the lid to have a look
(bucket) or remove the airlock and bung (demijohn). You do not want to introduce air at this stage.
When fermentation has finished, ie no more 'blooping', rack the wine off the sediment into a sterile vessel, I'm assuming a demijohn. Add 1 crushed CampdenTablet per demijohn, refit the airlock and bung and leave for 24 hours.
Transfer into wine bottles and seal.
Label and store.
Why do other Methods I've seen differ from this?
There are lots of tried and tested ways to do this, though the principles are largely
the same. If the method you're following differs slightly from the above, don't worry about
it. If it works for you, stick with it.
What if Something goes Wrong?
All is not lost if air got in somewhere along the line, or you simply don't like the taste.
Simply remove the airlocks and bungs from the demijohns (or corks from the bottles, if
you've got that far). Put a small piece of muslin over the top of the vessel and secure
with a rubber band. Pop it in the airing cupboard and forget about it. 6-12 months later:
et voila. Your very own homemade wine vinegar. And yes, I have been known to do
that which is how I know.
Since the acid content of this vinegar is unknown, I would use it in salad dressings and for 'quick pickles' like quick pickled red onions when the pickle will be kept in the fridge, rather than in a traditional pickling recipe where the acidic content of the vinegar is important to avoid mould.
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