How To Make Quality Homemade Wine (part 1)

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

You won't get drunk with your wine

The time has come when rarely anyone cooks jam from their fruits and berries or prepares the so-called live version of the harvest without heat treatment. The exception, perhaps, are garden strawberries (strawberries), raspberries and cherries, from the fruits of which hardly anyone would refuse to make delicious classic jam.

But what about the harvest of black, red and white currants, gooseberries, chokeberries (chokeberry) and mountain ash, apple trees, and other fruit crops that have ripened on the site? If gardeners have a large amount of unused berries, then it is quite possible to make homemade wines from them., and various - dessert, semi-sweet, dry - depending on the tastes and preferences of the manufacturers. And if you also take into account that the drinks available on the market, which are affordable, are far from natural, then, of course, it makes sense to prepare your own natural wines instead of shoveling your harvest into compost pits, especially in good years. We know that residents of the southern regions of Russia, as well as Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine have long been making their own homemade grape wine, which they drink at holidays and family feasts. And why are we worse if we have learned to grow berries and fruits in abundance? And we also have real masters of winemaking.

Usually, at the mention of wine, inexperienced people associate with alcohol and sugar. But in fact, real wine is a drink very rich in nutrients. It is no coincidence that the Portuguese, where there is a very ancient culture of winemaking, say: "Whoever eats and drinks well will live a long time." First of all, wine contains organic acids: malic, tartaric, succinic, acetic and others. They adsorb harmful substances accumulated in the body in the form of nitrates, heavy metals and other substances. The phenolic compounds present in wine are natural antioxidants, have anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic properties. Ethyl alcohol in moderation is also useful, as it thins the blood, has a beneficial effect on blood vessels, and helps relieve stress. Wine contains substances that break down and bind fats,therefore, it is recommended to wash down fatty foods with wine.

Finally, vitamins. There are much more of them in mature wine than in young wine. A glass of wine, for example, covers half of the need for vitamin PP - a vascular strengthener, it also contains iodine, fluoride and much more.

Of course, the composition of these substances differs depending on the type of fruits and berries. The classification of domestic wines is large and, even with an incomplete list, consists of dessert wines, semi-sweet, semi-dry and dry wines - those wines that are made in the fermentation process. There are also blended (compound) wines, liqueurs, liqueurs and ciders.

Let's consider the characteristics of the wines.

Dessert wine

It is made from natural juice diluted with water with added sugar. Water is needed to reduce acidity, and sugar is needed to increase sugar content and the formation of alcohol as a result of fermentation. In production conditions, alcohol is added to obtain the required strength, and at home, alcohol in wines accumulates as a result of the natural fermentation of sugar by yeast. Therefore, homemade wines are always softer and more harmonious than fortified ones. This is due to the fact that during the fermentation process alcohol is completely bound to the elements of the wine. In addition, homemade wines are enriched with by-products of fermentation, such as glycerin, succinic acid, aldehydes, esters, etc. Therefore, they do not have a pungent taste due to the added alcohol, from which fortified wines get rid of by long aging.

To make any homemade wine, you need the following set of tools and containers:

• Bottles with a capacity of 20, 10, 5 l or plastic bottles from under drinking water with a capacity of 5, 6, 8 l for the process.
• A bottle sprinkler (water seal) or elastic gloves replacing it.
• Tube for siphoning when removing sediment and bottling from a large container.
• Receiving container for overflowing wine material (wort).
• Electric press or juicer, manual.
• A bowl or enamel saucepan, if necessary to heat the mash.
• Blender or crushing machine for crushing fruits.
• Thermometer.
• Scales for weighing constituent products.

The technological process of making dessert wine begins with crushing the pulp of fruits and berries. The method of making wine pulp is no different from these processes for obtaining ordinary juices, and the processing of the pulp depends on the consistency of the juice.

First way. After crushing, water is immediately added to the pulp of such fruits in which the juice consistency is liquid (cherry, white and red currant), 200-300 ml per 1 liter of pulp (this figure is recorded). The pulp is mixed with water and juice is extracted from it in any way possible.

Second way. For fruits with a thick juice consistency (black currant, gooseberry, raspberry, blueberry, plum), to facilitate the extraction of juice, coloring and aromatic substances, the pulp is heated in a bowl or saucepan for 30 minutes at a temperature of + 60 ° C. Preheated to + 70 ° C water is poured into the basin in the ratio of 300 ml per 1 kg of pulp with a record of the amount of pulp. After heating, the juice is extracted from the hot pulp.

The third method is considered one of the best ways to prepare the pulp. It will consist in her mating without heating. You can ferment the pulp of any berries, but it is especially good for black currants, Japanese quince, gooseberries, blueberries, apples, plums and other fruits.

To do this, the crushed pulp is placed in an appropriate container (an enamel bucket, a glass bottle with a wide neck) and water heated to + 24 ° C is added there at the rate of 250 ml of water per 1 kg of pulp and a four-day leaven of wine yeast. It must be said right away that dry wine yeast and nutrition for them (salt - ammonium chloride) are available for sale in specialized stores.

The amount of added water is recorded, and the dishes are filled with pulp with water by 3/4 of the volume, covered with a towel and left in a room with a temperature of + 20 … + 22 ° C.

Fermentation begins on the second day. It can be seen how the pulp rises with emitted carbon dioxide in the form of a cap. To avoid acetic oxidation, this cap must be stirred several times a day. After 2-3 days, the pulp is squeezed out and the amount of juice is recorded. This method is complex and requires precise execution, but it maximizes the extraction of coloring and aromatic substances, increasing the quality of the wine.

Consider the process of making dessert wine

After squeezing the mash, the amount of wort is measured and the yield of pure juice is calculated, subtracting the amount of water added during pressing. To correct the wort, after pressing, add water and sugar for the fruits and berries growing in our zone.

For easier reading, we present these data in the form of a table.

The amount of sugar and water per 1 liter of pure juice (in grams)
Culture	Before fermentation		Sugar during fermentation
	Water	Sugar	on day 4	on day 7	on day 10
Apple tree	100	150	thirty	thirty	20
Japonica	3200	830	150	150	150
Rowan chokeberry	400	230	40	40	40
Rowan nevezhinskaya	1050	370	60	60	60
Gooseberry	1460	470	70	70	70
Raspberries	940	350	60	60	60
Black currant	2200	630	100	100	100
Red currant (white)	1450	490	70	70	70
Cranberry	2160	680	100	100	100
Blueberry	400	260	40	40	40
Strawberry	500	280	40	40	40
Cherry Vladimirskaya	430	230	thirty	thirty	thirty
Sea buckthorn	1630	510	100	100	100
Rhubarb	580	320	60	60	60

"Water" in the table is the total amount of water added to the pulp before and during spinning.

These tables indicate the amount of water and sugar that must be added to 1 liter of pure juice to obtain dessert wine with an approximate content of 16% alcohol (by volume) and about 0.8% acid.

Plum juice, depending on the variety of plum and the area of growth, has different acidity, so it should be diluted with water to taste, and sugar before fermentation add 200 g per 1 liter of wort (mixture of juice and water) and 20 g per 1 liter of wort for 5 10th and 10th day of fermentation.

The temperature is measured in the wort, corrected with water and sugar. In case of low temperature, the wort is heated up to + 22 ° С, then it is poured into glass bottles for 3/4 volume. If the wort has not been fermented together with the pulp, then yeast starter must be added to it in the amount of 3% of the wort put for fermentation. To feed the yeast, add ammonium chloride (this is the NH4Cl salt) in an amount of 0.3 g per 1 liter of wort. The dishes with the wort and sourdough are shaken until the sugar is completely dissolved, then closed with a cotton plug and placed at a temperature of + 20 … + 22 ° C for fermentation. The rest of the sugar is added on the fourth, seventh and tenth days of fermentation, dissolving it in a small amount of fermented wort poured into another container. There is an important point for obtaining high-quality wine, which excludes the oxidation process, which impairs the taste of the wine,- this is the regular topping up of wine with healthy wine, which simultaneously with the main one undergoes the fermentation process only in a smaller container. Wine for topping up is stored in bottles poured to the top. It should be borne in mind that if a bottle of healthy wine is topped up with at least a small amount of diseased wine, then the whole wine will get sick (diseases of wine will be reported further after the description of the main process).

After the end of the vigorous fermentation, the process is very quiet. During this period, the container is filled up to the top, and the cotton plug is replaced with a water seal. There are special glass tubes for these purposes, and in its simplest form, a flexible tube with a diameter of 5-10 mm is used, which is hermetically inserted into the cylinder lid at one end, and placed in a jar of boiled water at the other.

Quiet fermentation usually lasts 3-4 weeks, while bubbles of carbon dioxide formed in the process of converting sugar into alcohol are released into a jar of water. The end of fermentation is determined by the cessation of the appearance of bubbles in a jar of water and the absence of sugar in the wine to taste. At this time, the wine begins to clarify with the formation of sediment at the bottom of the bottle (bottle). This is a yeast sediment, from which the wine must be carefully freed without muddying. For this, containers with wine are placed on the table, and the receiving container on the floor. A rubber tube is lowered into a bottle of wine 3 cm above the sediment, and from the other side of this tube, clear wine is pulled out by the mouth. The end of the tube with the flowing wine is lowered into the receiving container. The wine removed from the sediment is filled in clean cylinders to the neck, sealed with corks and placed in a cold room for settling. A month later, the wine is again removed from the sediment in the same way as the first time.

This wine is called wine material. It is aged according to sugar conditions. Therefore, it does not yet have the fullness of taste and the necessary sweetness. To obtain these qualities, sugar is added to it in the form of a syrup, dissolving it when heated in a small amount of poured wine. For liqueur wine it is 200 g per 1 liter, for dessert wine - from 100 to 160 g per 1 liter.

The finished sweet dessert wine is bottled 3 cm below the edge of the bottle and tightly sealed with corks (the cork cork should be filled with resin, and the bottle with wine should be stored lying down, since corks tend to dry out). The bottles are labeled with the name of the wine and the year of its production.

Dessert wine is a strong drink. When cooked properly, it is not susceptible to acetic oxidation or moldy at any storage temperature. The possibility of its deterioration arises when an incomplete bottle is stored and at temperatures above + 15 ° C. The possibility of blending a mixture of different cultures or ready-made juices is interesting.

To be continued →

Lyudmila Rybkina, wine grower

Photo by the author