Vinification

 

Wine is an inevitable part of any celebratory occasion especially in the western world. High sugar content and low acidity levels in grapes makes them ideally suited for fermentation. Fermentation is a biochemical phenomenon that involves transformation of the juice extracted from the grapes into wine using yeasts.

 

Italy is one of the earliest wine-producing countries in the world. Currently, there are twenty regions producing different types of wine with distinct flavors in Italy. Flavor of wine depends on the grapes from which it is produced and therefore utmost attention has to be paid to vineyard maintenance.

 

The Process

 

You will have to be extremely careful while harvesting the grapes and extracting the juice by crushing and later pressing them. This can be done manually or using specialized machinery. The collected juice is to be kept in containers called vats for fermentation. Sugars inside the juice are broken down by yeast to alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.  Bubbling sound is caused inside the vats by carbon dioxide that is emitted.

 

You can let the skin and seeds of the grapes ferment along with the juice after pressing to produce red wine. Tannins that are present in the skin of grapes impart red color to the wine. Segregating the skin and seeds and allowing only the juice to ferment produces white wine. Depending on sugar content in the grapes and climate fermentation can take ten days to one month.

 

After fermentation is finished all the residual solids have to be separated from the fermented liquid. This process is referred to as clarification or stabilizing. You can do this by fining, filtering, or siphoning. Clarified wine is transferred to wooden casks or metal vats. This is the final step in vinification referred to as aging. You can allow the wine to mature inside the vat and develop different flavors. Wine is bottled and stored after the aging process is complete.