The wine was healthy, almost vibrant. It had a soft but distinct Pinot Noir fragrance with a pleasant hint of herbs. The feel was velvety, with a fine thread of acidity. Everyone knows that good grapes make world-class wine. But in recent years, the quality of kit wines has improved enough to impress even the most dedicated fresh-fruit purist. Besides offering first-time winemakers an easy introduction to the hobby, kits offer experts a chance to makes wines from grape-growing regions around the world.
Would a vineyard have enough surplus Nebbiolo or Viognier to ship you a few cases? But high-quality varietal wine kits are available nationwide at any time of the year, sourced from vineyards in California, Australia, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and other classic wine areas.
You can also find kits for interesting styles, like late-harvest wines, ice wines, noble-rot wines, even sparkling wines, ports and sherries. The wine-kit boom began in the s, when high-quality kits first emerged from California. Although state law called for a minimum 51 percent content for a wine kit of any stated variety, many manufacturers were providing 70 percent. This means that in a Chardonnay kit, for example, 70 percent of the juice or concentrate is made from pure Chardonnay grapes.
The higher the Chardonnay content, the more varietal character in the finished wine. Because these California kits were considered better than their European counterparts, it forced a wholesale effort to increase quality worldwide.
The boom in asceptic packaging, fueled by cutting-edge Canadian companies, also fueled the drive for quality and freshness. In the s in Canada, for example, less than one percent of all wine consumed came from homewinemakers. Now, the figure is closer to 10 or 12 percent. Making a kit wine is less labor-intensive than making wine from fresh grapes. Another bonus: Many kits are all-inclusive.
The recipes are easy to follow and the results are fairly predictable. Recipe options allow you to add more concentrate for a bigger, grander wine. You can also choose to add less water than a concentrate recipe suggests.
There are four main types of wine kits: pure juice; fully concentrated grape juice; partially concentrated grape juice; and kits that combine juice and concentrate. The approach to making wine from these kits is similar. The only difference is that the pure-juice kit requires no additional water.
Grape concentrates are simply grape juices that have had their water removed through a high-tech vacuum process. Some kits are fully concentrated; you have to add water, and sometimes additional sugar, before making the wine. Partially concentrated kits require less water added back. Kit prices should directly correlate to the purity of the product. Pure juice kits will be more expensive than concentrate or mixed kits.
Before you leave the store, check the kit ingredients against the recipe. These additives might include grape tannin, nutrients, wine acids and yeast. Some concentrate kits also require additional sugar; some do not. The recipe will spell it out. Some kits contain one, some the other and some both. Pure juice kits are made from freshly crushed grapes; the juice and possibly some grape pulp is vacuum-sealed in food-grade pails. Need Supplies?
Find your nearest winemaking supplier through our Supplier Directory. Here is a list of items we recommend you have for your first wine kit. Before you begin, be sure you have everything you need. Some sulfite solutions are not meant to be rinsed away. In these cases, another quick treatment just before using that piece of equipment is fine.
Getting into this practice will make the already tedious task of sanitizing equipment much easier. Resist the temptation to delay the cleaning job until you need the equipment; the chances of contaminating a subsequent batch are greater this way.
If you are a first-time winemaker, follow the recipe exactly. Later, you may wish to change, add or eliminate ingredients and steps. A typical recipe for a Pinot Noir concentrate, generating five gallons 19 liters of wine, will contain one bladder pack of concentrate ounces minimum , one or two yeast packets, and three or four numbered, pre-measured and pre-mixed additive packets.
Open the can, pail or bladder pack in your kit. Taste the contents — they should be clean, sweet and fruity.
Pour the contents into a primary fermenter and add the first group of ingredients water, sugar if required, any wine acids, grape tannins and nutrients. The recipe will be very specific. For the late-harvest style wine, hold back ml of the concentrate, to be re-introduced later. Put it in a baby-food jar, seal it and stick it in the freezer.
Once you have mixed the concentrate and the first group of ingredients, stir them well with your spoon and sprinkle on the yeast. You may now want to take a specific gravity reading, even though the recipe will usually provide it. The Pinot should have an SG reading of about 1. Specific gravity is the density of the liquid compared to water, which has an SG of 1. Fermentation temperatures can be a personal choice. I like to bring my wines especially whites into a cooler environment as soon as I see the signs of an active fermentation.
This practice can impart to the wine subtleties of flavor that a warmer fermentation may not provide. During the first 24 hours after inoculating a batch, yeast cells merely multiply until they reach a mass that can take on the job of fermentation. So it may be two to three days before you see any real action.
If you keep your batch at the right temperature, the yeasts will start working fairly quickly and provide a rigorous fermentation. This could contribute to a stuck ferment and could lead to bacterial spoilage. Any spoilage should give off unpleasant odors, so check for it. Use the recommended yeast and monitor the temperature of your fermentation room.
Once the must has reached 1. Do you want more recipes? Make Muscadine Wine at Home in 7 Steps. However, the chance of making errors when homebrewing wine is obviously higher than the manufactured wines you see in stores.
There are some things that can go wrong tho, that might give you indications that it is the winemaking you sick, but usually, it is due to human mistakes when brewing the wine.
Here are some things that can go wrong and possibly make you a bit sick when drinking and making homebrewed wine:. This is a general rule when homebrewing anything, always sanitize literally everything Amazon link , this includes all your equipment, bottles, airlocks, tubes, vials, and even some ingredients. Along with this, you can even purify the water you use to completely delete any form of threat that hostile bacteria can enter your wine batch. In an earlier blog post , I talked about the natural fermentation that some winemakers use.
These recipes using natural yeast rely on the yeast found on grapes and in the air, but generally, have a higher chance of contamination compared to using manually added yeast.
Using this method, you allow yeast into your wine, but it also allows for unwanted bacteria to possibly enter your wine batch, which can create complications. TIP: It may be a good idea to stay away from natural fermentation if you are not very experienced. If you are putting together your own homemade kit, keep in mind to acquire a food-grade container Amazon link.
On several forums, you can read about people complaining that their homemade wine gives them headaches compared to store-bought wine. The reason for this is quite simple science and happens due to an increase in histamines and tannins in the homemade wine.
When homemaking wine the balance between the two can shift quite regularly, and make some of your batches give you quite nasty headaches. If it continues to be this way, you may want to consider switching up your processes or find a new recipe. If you are interested in homemaking wine, go for it, the chances of failing on a health-threatening level are very slim. As long as you make sure to sanitize everything, and maybe stay away from natural fermentation as a beginner, you are not very likely to run into the risks mentioned above.
Hello, my name is Simon. Together with a group of writers I write about brewing beer and making wine. We all share a passion for the great things in life, such as making stuff from scratch. The business of HomeBrewAdvice is to bring you great information, stories and product reviews from brewing at home, and making wine.
Image: Pixabay. This blog post is what i learned about making wine at home. Here is a little cheat-sheet of how different aging times affect your wine in the bottle. Wine Aging Properties 1 month The definite minimum time it takes before you can even taste your wine, anything shorter results in bad tasting wine 3 months Wine has matured more, and gained increasing flavors and distinctions 6 months The typical time for aging wine, both red and white.
We assist you at all times to whatever extent required. After the batch is started the customer has no further obligations until the wine is ready to be bottled. We provide all the necessary equipment and assistance for you to accomplish this with ease. Wine kits are ready to bottle in 4 to 8 weeks, depending on which product you choose.
Winexpert Island Mist and Winexpert Classic are ready to bottle in just 4 weeks, while our premium Winexpert Reserve kits are ready to bottle in 6 weeks, and the ultra premium Winexpert Private Reserve wines will take 6 to 8 weeks. They are usually ready to drink in a few weeks after bottling though our premium and ultra premium kits may benefit from months in the bottle before drinking.
Please refer to the wine descriptions for individual alcohol levels. Our wine menu has sweetness indicators next to the wine names. Most of our wines have a dry finish, but we can adjust the levels to your taste. Just ask. No, your bottles should already be clean as we provide time and equipment for sanitizing already clean bottles. Thoroughly rinsing a wine bottle very soon after it is empty, soaking it for a few minutes to remove the label and draining it completely eliminates the need to spend much more time cleaning bottles that are left to the last minute.
Store the clean bottles upside down to avoid contamination by foreign objects, dust, insects etc. Sorry, once your wine is ready to be bottled you need to bottle and remove it to your home within a reasonable length of time 30 days. This is required by law as well as by the availability of containers and space to put them in. Tannin comes from the skins, seeds, and stems of the grapes, and also from wood.
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