The Making of Wine: Simplifying the Science

Wine making can be viewed as an exact science or a form of art. Some of the best wines I’ve come across thus far involve an approach combining the two.Not being particularly well versed in the finer details of The Wine, while also lacking an understanding of both art and science, gaining comprehension of the overall process of the creation of wines has been rather interesting.

I have, however, managed to glean the below regarding the process:

Our story begins with a happy bunch of grapes hanging upon a vine of a particular varietal. Some vines are bush vines, some are trellised, some are old vines and some are newer vines. There’s a difference between all of these I am told. Of these differences, I have learned that I enjoy bush vine Chenin Blanc as a general rule.

From here, our hero, the Bunch of Grapes, is picked by hand or by some form of machinery. This is often dependant on the size of the farm. The time of day, week and month appears to have an impact; depending on whether you prefer the grapes a little less ripe (with less sugar I am led to believe), more ripe (by a complicated process of deduction, I assume this means with more sugar), cooled by the morning air or warmed by the afternoon sun. I have yet to discover which of these methods I am partial to.

The grapes are then transported to the cellar where they are sorted through one of many varieties of methods, including vibrating tables, hand sorting and conveyer belts.

Once these precious chaps have been sorted, they need to be squished – we do after all need to be able to drink them. Some wines use only the “free run” juice produced by this squishing – that’s effectively the juice you get from rather gentle squishing. It’s the stuff you get before having to squeeze the living daylights out of the poor things. Others are made from the juice produced by the aforementioned daylight squishing method.  I have learned that the free run versions are much more sought after.

From here the juice gets popped into a receptacle of sorts for fermentation to take place – some are cement, some are steel, some are wood (though the wood usually comes a little later). This is the most fun part where, through a bunch of rather complex processes the kid-friendly juice becomes adult-friendly wine. The most important process involves yeast. The yeast is responsible for ingesting the natural (or added) sugar, digesting it and then pooping out the all-important alcohol. The wine hangs around in its chosen receptacle for a time as deemed appropriate by our wine-making magician.

Here, if we’re making red wine, some more rather exciting processes like pump-overs and punch-downs are introduced. This involves getting the pale almost-wine from under the thick cap of red grape skins (floating at the top of the tank) to above the cap to add colour and texture to our wine.

Sometimes the wine is transferred to an alternate receptacle such as a barrel where it is left for awhile to age for age gives character. Here we have more processes like malolactic fermentation taking place causing the crunchy apple-like aspect of the wine to turn into something soft and buttery.

Barrels are a whole other vat of wine – they come in different sizes, they sometimes involve toasting (contrary to common usage of the word, this involves neither bread nor bubbly) and they’re usually made from oak from France, America or Hungary. The oaks from different regions give wines different characteristics – similar the influence of different schools on people. Back to the point, the wine remains in these barrels (where applicable) for as long as it takes to groom its particular personality.

Once our magician is happy with his creation, this wonderful nectar is transferred into a purchasable format – the bottle. This bottle is then corked or capped, labelled and packaged. Sometimes the wines are kept in the bottle for a time to adjust to their new home and grow a little more mature, others are shipped off right away to those lovely places where we, the avid lovers of wine, can buy them and take them home to enjoy.

That, in a screw cap, is my novice’s version of how we come to have the miracle of wine in our glasses at the end of a long day, with our scrambled eggs in the morning or on a sunny day on the lawn. Some of my facts may be a little fuzzy on the finer details but, I have, to the best of knowledge, covered most of the bases. Either that or I’ve offended anyone who knows more into furthering my education. Either way – cheers!


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