Just as every avid reader is said to have a novel inside them waiting to be written, many a white wine enthusiast dreams of making and bottling their own wine. And while it would be a little naive to assume that absolute beginners can miraculously conjure up great wines, there’s absolutely no reason at all why wine lovers can’t experiment with making wine at home.
Patience, a bit of hard work, good quality ingredients and the correct equipment should be all that are necessary to produce palatable white wine, but do make sure you get to grips with the art of wine-making before imposing your home-produced plonk on visitors – they may well prefer that you just open that bottle of Sauvignon Blanc that has been nicely chilling in the fridge. Remember, too, that home-brewed wine can often be significantly stronger in alcohol content than its store-bought counterparts, so take care not too guzzle down too much at once.
The good news for green-fingered wine lovers is that it is perfectly possible to make wine from pretty much any fruit that can be grown in the garden. Elderflower and elderberry wines are old English traditions, whilst strawberry and raspberry wines are deliciously fruity tipples for summer drinking. Plum wine, too, is a good way to make use of autumn fruit, but can have certain ‘rocket-fuel’ tendencies.
For the purposes of this brief guide, we’re going to look at how to make decent white wine, without spending too much money or investing too much time.
For absolute beginners to the world of winemaking, kits for making homemade white wine are a good introduction. These kits are widely available to buy and will give full instructions as to how to make white wine. At first, many white wine makers will be content with making a tipple that is vaguely drinkable, but with a little practice it should be possible to make white wines that are appropriate to your own tastes – adapting the process to make sweet or dry, light or full bodied white wine.
You can use grapes, blackberries, elderberries, apples and even nettles to make wine, there are no limits to your creativity. With practice, you can also choose to make your wines dry or sweet, light or full-bodied.
Whatever style of wine you choose to make, it is essential to start by making sure that you have all the equipment necessary.
The basics for making white wine at home are: glass bottles (or jugs); corks or plastic stoppers; wine thermometers; a plastic pail; cheesecloth; a wine straining bag; sulfite crystals; plastic tubing; and a lock and bung for fermentation.
Whilst this may all sound a little baffling, all of this equipment is widely available online and in specialist stores. Speak to the seller about the type of wine you hope to make and the quantities in which you wish to make it and you should be firing on all cylinders in no time.
Start by putting around 18 lbs of ripe white wine grapes into the straining bag, put the straining bag into the plastic pail and thoroughly crush the grapes with your hands or a sanitised potato masher. Sprinkle one teaspoon of sulfite crystals over the fruit and cover the pail and the straining bag with cheesecloth before letting stand for roughly one hour. After this, you can start to wring the juice from the bag, squeezing out as much as possible.
With this amount of fruit, you should expect to have about a gallon of juice. Clearly you can adjust the measurements throughput depending on the desired batch size but a smaller batch makes sense until you have perfected the art!
Check the temperature of the juice – it should ideally be between 55 and 65 degrees. Next, dissolve a packet of yeast in a pint of warm water and let it stand until it bubbles. Pour the bubbling mixture onto the juice and cover the pail with cheesecloth once again.
Fermentation should begin within 24 hours, at which point you can siphon the liquid into sanitised bottles or jugs; which should be fitted with a sanitised bung and fermentation lock. After three months, siphon again into sanitised wine bottles and cork them. Wait another three months and your white wine should be ready for drinking.
Yes, patience is a very necessary part of making white wine at home and the end wine is not always worth the wait. With patience and practice, however, you should be making reliably drinkable wine.
Image by star5112.
