Sep 18 2009
A Very Simple Intro To The Major Types of Wine Making
There are loads of varied choices that can be made using wine making. You do not need to be an expert to do wine making as there are resources available for anybody to do their own wine making. There are kits that can be made use of to make wine as well as a plethora of books that offer loads of information on wine making. Home wine making has been carried out for centuries and this is how the big wine companies initially got started.
The main purpose of wine making is the same no matter what kind of wine you are planning on making. Yeast is utilized to change sugar into alcohol. A byproduct of this conversion is the production of carbon dioxide and flavor and aroma compounds. There are many different kinds of yeast that can be used in wine making as some yeast are preferred for white wine making and others for red wine making.
There is one key difference between white wine making and red wine making. With white wine making you take the juice and ferment it using yeast. With red wine making the skins are also incorporated into the juice so as the yeast is making alcohol the color is extracted from the skins. You do not need to just use white grapes to make white wine and red grapes can furthermore be utilized to make white wine.
Sparkling wine also has an added step. The wine is fermented like white wine. Once this still wine is produced there is a second fermentation.
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 find lots of fizz and bubbles.
Fortified wines also have a different sort 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 ended. 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 rapidly chilled and the yeast will stop growing. Yeast needs a special, warm temperature to grow and a too cold environment will discontinue the fermentation.
At Food and Wine World you’ll find very interesting info relating to building a wine cellar and inexpensive wine cellar cooling systems.
