Homemade grape wine

Grape wine is a useful and tasty drink, quenching thirst and cheering soul. Its history goes back to ancient times, one of the oldest found earthen vessels with remains of wine scientists date as much as 5000 BC! But wine is not only a celebratory and delicious taste drink, it also has a lot of useful and even medicinal properties. Doctors recommend it for normalization of blood pressure, prevention of anemia and blood cleansing, to improve appetite and good sleep. Also, the wine has natural bactericidal properties - when a very small amount of it is added to the water, the causative agents of cholera and typhus die.

The store shelves are now full of wine, however, as practice shows, most of them are simply cheap counterfeits made from diluted alcohol with the addition of food colors. And what if you sometimes want to treat yourself to a holiday with a bottle of real sweet grape wine, and not a surrogate made by someone unknown and unknown from what? The only way out is to make it yourself!

Preparing wine from grapes at home is not such a complicated process. Of course, it will take some effort on your part plus a little time, but the result will surpass all expectations! And you and your guests can enjoy the most real and exclusive drink, in taste, much superior to store analogues!

There are many recipes for making grape wine yourself, and many of them are quite capable even of a beginner, who for the first time decided to try his hand at home winemaking. And even when there is no own vineyard, raw materials for the preparation of wine can simply be bought, because even in this case the final product at cost will be much cheaper than buying vintage wines of similar quality.

Only fully ripe berries collected in August-September are suitable for the production of wine. Raw materials should be as pure as possible, because one of the rules of real winemakers is never to wash grapes under running water. On the skin of berries live the natural colonies of yeast fungi, thanks to which the further process of fermentation takes place. For the preparation of wine, berries should be selected especially carefully, sorting out literally each, removing all the spoiled and rotten ones, in order not to spoil the taste of the drink.

Most winemakers believe that the best cookware for making home-made wine is enamel or glass. Metal dishes are not suitable at all, since the contact of wine with metal causes a chemical reaction, and the drink darkens and acquires a bad taste. For cooking it is best to use large containers - by 15-20 liters, because in small volumes grape wine wanders faster, and it's very difficult to control the process. Before use, all dishes should be rinsed well with hot water and soda.

Place the selected berries in a large saucepan or basin and proceed to a crush. Some winemakers advise it to do directly with their hands, someone uses canvas bags for this, spinning berries in them and squeezing out juice from them, and somebody's rubbing with ordinary tolkushka. Whichever way you choose, the main rule is one - to crush all the grapes to one, so that not a single whole remains.

After this procedure, cake will settle on the bottom, and on the surface of the pan will remain pure juice. It should be filtered through a fine strainer or gauze and poured into prepared bottles for further fermentation, filling them with not more than half. The first day must be settled, and then add to it cold boiled water with sugar dissolved in it to a volume of ¾. The calculation is done this: 10 liters of juice is added 5 liters of water and 3-6 kg of sugar. Such a spread in the amount of sugar is explained by personal taste preferences - the less you add it, the more "dry" grape wine will eventually turn out. Winemakers recommend adding no more than 6 kg of sugar per 10 liters of juice - this amount is enough to get a very sweet dessert wine.

The bottle with wine is tightly clogged with a stopper in which a tube is inserted to remove the formed carbon dioxide. The end of the tube is placed in a jar full of water. This will not allow oxygen to enter the tank, which can interfere with the fermentation process. If everything is done correctly, then there will always be bubbles of gas in the water. If they are not there, then the plug does not close the neck tightly, in this case it is necessary to correct the situation as soon as possible, otherwise you will get wine vinegar instead of wine . To seal the bottle better, the plug can be coated with a dense test or plasticine.

For further fermentation, containers with wort are put in a dark cool place, preferably with a temperature of no higher than 15 ° C, preferably if it is a special cellar. It should be remembered that grape wine does not like sudden temperature changes at all stages of production. The fermentation process usually takes about a month - two (depending on the ambient temperature, the higher it is, the faster). The complete absence of bubbles of carbon dioxide in the jar with water indicates its end.

After the wine finally ferments, it becomes transparent, all the dregs and foam settle down to the bottom. It should be poured very carefully and not completely, so that the sediment does not get into the finished wine from the bottom. Grape wine is ready! It is possible to conduct the first tasting, and for further storage it is poured into small bottles and left in a cellar at a constant temperature of no higher than 20 ° C.