Homemade white grape wine

The range of wine products is quite rich. But wine made from white grapes deserves special attention from its consumers - a light drink with a pleasant aroma and delicate taste. Depending on the amount of sugar added, the product comes out dry, semi-dry or dessert.

People who are far from professional winemaking think that snow-white wine can only be made from grapes with light-skinned berries. But that's not true. Varieties with dark and pink fruits are also suitable for the production of white wine. The main conditions for raw materials are their juiciness, moderate acidity and sufficient sugar content. The juice squeezed from colored grapes should be light.

Snow-white wine differs from burgundy “relatives” in its production technology: it ferments in its own juice and is not saturated with natural dyes. Coloring substances are contained in the skin of the berries and do not color the juice.

You can create white wine from the freshest grape juice. It should not be diluted with water or sweetened with sugar. Let's master several recipes for wine from snow-white grapes, the production of which can be made at home.

How to Create Grape Juice for White Wine

Snow-white grapes are harvested when overripe. Such raw materials impart to the drink the mild taste, pleasant smell and strength of real alcohol. But residents of hot regions must collect the fruit in a slightly unripe state so that the berries provide the product with the listed properties. The bunches are picked in sunny weather or after a certain number of days after rain. Moisture washes away wild yeast, so you need to wait for new strains to emerge that start the fermentation process.

Juice for white grape wine is obtained as follows:

The fruits are removed from the clusters and sorted, discarding rotten and insect-damaged raw materials.
Unwashed berries are crushed with a wide wooden rolling pin.
The seeds are not removed or crushed.

The purchased juice is wort. 1 kg of grapes yields approximately 650 – 750 ml of juice (the amount depends on the properties of the berries and the plant variety). If the owner wants to add sugar to it, the amount of sweetness must not exceed 27% of the total volume of the wort.

Snow-white grape wine with juice

This wine recipe is considered traditional. He doesn't ask for additional ingredients. The main raw material will be Chardonnay, Sauvignon, Aligote or other technical grapes. Muscats with a strong smell are not suitable for the production of table wines.

It is generally accepted that unique wine from white grapes at home comes only from the juice that has flowed independently without human intervention. It is better not to squeeze out the pulp, because it produces good secondary wine. The freshest juice must be kept in a glass or enamel container for 6 - 12 hours so that the suspension of small particles precipitates. Drain the settled liquid using a siphon or narrow hose. Fill a clean fermentation bottle 2/3 full.

To improve the properties of the drink and protect against diseases, sulfur dioxide is added to the wort. The proportion is 0.5 – 1 g of substance per 10 liters of juice. Sulfation is carried out at will, because at home the volume of alcohol production is most often nonsense.

Fermentation of white grape wine must occur at room temperature without changing the temperature. The container is closed with a water seal and the fermentation process is observed. If the wort does not ferment, it is important to prevent it from souring. To do this, add a few raisins to the bottle or add a special starter.

Wild yeast processes natural sugar in 1.5 - 2 months and first produces dry homemade wine. If you need a snow-white semi-sweet drink, fermentation is interrupted forcibly by increasing/decreasing the temperature of the wort or carrying out sulfitation.

The young wine is removed from the yeast and placed in a cold room with an air temperature of 5 – 10°C. The remaining yeast will settle in 1 - 2 weeks. The product is again removed from the sediment and poured into another container. When stored in a black, cold cellar, the wine will become lighter due to the accumulation of sediment. During the year it must be drained from the grounds from time to time. It’s a hassle, but the wine will turn out clear, fragrant and perfectly tasty.

With sugar

Let's look at the stages of creating wine from white grapes with added sugar. There will be no other ingredients in the drink. If you need a large batch of alcohol, start from the initial proportion of 5 kg of berries per 1.5 kg of granulated sugar.

Recipe for making wine from white grapes and sugar:

The sorted fruits are crushed by hand or with a wood pestle. The consistency does not have to be uncrushed berries.
Place a piece of gauze on the pan and take the dishes out to a warm space for 5 days. Once a day, in the morning and evening, stir the contents of the pan with a wooden spatula.
Grape juice is filtered through double folded gauze and the berry mass is squeezed out.
The prepared juice is poured into a sterile bottle, sugar is poured into it and everything is mixed.
The top of the container is sealed with a rubber glove and one of the fingers is pierced with a narrow needle.
The wort is kept warm for 2–3 weeks, filtered and bottled into dry glass bottles.
The containers are sealed with corks and taken to the cellar for a couple of months.
The wine is filtered again and bottled into the same bottles.
The intoxicating liquor is stored in the basement for 8 months, then tasted.

Ice white wine made from grapes

Recently, Eiswein dessert wine, which the tradesmen call “ice”, is in high demand. The drink differs from other snow-white wines in its rich aroma and soft, light taste. The development of its production does not coincide with traditional recipes, but it is completely possible to create prestigious ice wine with your own hands.

Ingredients:

Sugar – 3 kg.
Unripe grapes – 10 kg.

Winemaking begins with freezing the berries in the freezer, where they remain for 1 day. Under the influence of low temperatures, raw materials acquire other properties that make the future wine inimitable.

On the 2nd day, put the fruits in a bowl, knead and squeeze out the juice. Then the general principles of wine production are followed. Sugar is added to wine at the final stage of production, when the drink is filtered and ready to be bottled for storage.

Snow-white grape wines are stored in cool, black rooms with high air humidity and good ventilation. Under these conditions, the corks do not dry out and do not oxidize from contact with alcohol.

Dry wine is best consumed in the first two months after ripening. Experts recommend aging strong snow-white wines for up to 12–15 years. A fundamental condition for preserving the properties of intoxicating drinks is the horizontal placement of bottles.

White grape wine at home - the usual recipe

Based on the beliefs of the most experienced sommeliers, wine made from white grapes is considered the most refined.
It is consumed together with seafood dishes, juicy steaks and sweets. A drink with a pleasant slightly tart taste and spicy aroma. Doctors prescribe it as a medicine for anemia and blood pressure. Also, it is capable of removing unsafe radionuclides from the body, which is why it is given to workers at nuclear power plants. In order to create wine from white grapes at home, there is a simple recipe that any novice winemaker can master.

Which grape variety to choose for white wine

Snow-white grape wine is made at home from virtually all berries, regardless of color, sugar content and taste.
It is true that it is more difficult to make homemade wine from blue grapes. The main varieties of snow-white wine grapes are as follows:
Aligote is suitable not only for wine, but also for champagne, blend or cognac.
It is believed that the drink will be more delicious only when it is young. The grapes are juicy and sweet, they are suitable for table wines. Fortified dessert wines are made from white muscat.
It is grown in special weather conditions, because it is very wary of sudden temperature changes. Homemade snow-white wine made from Riesling grapes will have a rich and sour taste.
Experienced winemakers believe that there is no terrible wine made from the Chardonnay variety. Almost any kind of wine can be created from the berries; the taste will depend on the region where the vine grows and production.

Process stages

Making homemade white wine involves different steps. First, prepare the container in which the drink will be stored. Next, the material is collected, washed with water, and dry, putrid or bad berries are removed. When squeezing juice, take all precautions so as not to crush the seeds of the berries. The freshly squeezed drink is settled and passed through gauze (a medical system of cells and intercellular substance, united by a common origin, structure and functions) . Only after this the liquid will begin to ferment either actively or silently. At the very end, it is important to correctly filter the purchased wine, gradually removing it from the sediment.

The production of homemade white wine must comply with sanitary standards. To do this, use a two percent soda solution, which is used to treat all tubes and containers.

Preparation of wine material

Homemade wine is made from ripe white grapes. This rule is indispensable for both experienced winemakers and beginners. The taste, smell and clarity of the drink depend on the degree of ripeness of the berries.

When collecting grapevines, it is important to take into account:
Sour greenish grapes spoil the taste, making it bitter with a nasty liquid smell.
Overripe berries cause semi-sweet wines to become cloudy and poorly clarified and filtered.
Such grapes for fortified dessert wines. Rotten berries give a moldy taste and deprive them of their generous aroma.

From 1 kg. The average yield of ripe berries is 600-700 ml. juice Naturally, this depends on the variety and age of the grapevine. In young or very old vineyards, ripe berries are often not so juicy.

Preparation of raw materials at home

Plastic bottles are not suitable for the production of semi-sweet wine from white grape varieties. PVC containers contain harmful substances that, when a chemical reaction occurs between sugar and acids, inevitably end up in the drink.

Experienced winemakers advise using containers made from the following materials:
glass;
enamel;
stainless steel;
ceramics;
tree.

Methods for obtaining grape juice

The refinement of taste is obtained due to the lack of contact of the skin with the acquired juice. The grape skin contains tannins and coloring substances, which greatly spoil the taste of the drink.

Gravity flow is considered an ideal method for obtaining high-quality juice. Grape juice is released under the pressure of the berries themselves; this requires a huge amount of grapes, which are dumped in one heap and wait for the natural release of juice. The liquid comes out light and without unnecessary pulp impurities. The only disadvantage of this method is the time, which must be a lot to achieve the greatest effect of the press.

How to create snow-white wine at home if you don’t have time to wait for the natural release of juice? In this case, manual or foot squeezing of berries is used. It’s hard to imagine, but in wine production, press juicers are not used at all, because they crush the seeds, and these, in turn, spoil the taste of the drink.

Water settling and sediment filtration

At home, making wine is difficult because the grape juice becomes cloudy after squeezing. To achieve a clean and clear drink, the liquid must be left to stand for at least 6-12 hours in a dark, cold place, preferably in a cellar.

Early fermentation is prevented by the usual fumigation of the container with a sulfur wick. A flaming wick is lowered into an empty bottle and after it burns out, they begin to slowly pour the grape mixture into a third of the container. The container is tightly closed with a lid and shaken slightly to dissolve the carbon dioxide. Then they perform the fumigation function again, add more wort and shake. This is done until the container is filled to the brim. Pouring into a clean container is permissible only after all the sediment has settled to the bottom. For ease of overflow, a rubber tube is used.

Some homemade wine recipes require the addition of sulfur dioxide. But this procedure at home is useless and is being replaced by ordinary fumigation.

Active fermentation phase

The fermentation process begins as a result of a chemical reaction between grape acid, tannins and sugar. In fact, all these components are contained in the skin of the berries. Since the berry shell is not used when making semi-sweet wine from white grapes, the reaction is weak and the fermentation process is slow. It should be noted that the purchased wort does not like sudden changes in temperature, so it is better to store it in the basement. To block access to oxygen, special rubber plugs are put on the lids or a tube is inserted, the end of which is lowered into a jar of water. If this is not created, carbon dioxide will spoil the drink.

Slow fermentation phase

How to make wine from white grapes during the "quiet" phase? Shaking, moving or sharply heating the container is prohibited. These unnecessary movements interfere with natural fermentation actions and spoil the taste of the drink, often making it sour and smell musty. In time, this continues for 21-30 days.

When the liquid does not begin to boil and release CO2, and the sediment has fallen to the bottom, the process can be considered one hundred percent complete.

There is a home recipe for making semi-sweet wine, where the fermentation process is deliberately interrupted by sharply lowering the temperature.

To artificially increase the “degree” of the drink, sugar is added. For example, if the natural alcohol level is about 12, then after saccharification it will rise to 16 or 18°.

Wort separation and filtration

How to properly remove wine from sediment - carefully place the container on the table and use a tube to pour the liquid. Create everything carefully so as not to stir up the sedimentary wort. The remaining sediment is passed through gauze folded in several layers. Next, the bottles are filled with filtered wine and kept in the cellar for 1 month. After this period, you need to filter it again using the above method and pour it into a clean container. The filtration procedure is usually carried out 2-3 times.

Blend and aging

At the final step, the filled containers with the drink are sealed with lids and stored in the basement, reclining, at a temperature not exceeding 15°C.

It is important to realize that the sediment contains natural yeast. If they are not removed, the drink will become bitter with a nasty beer smell.

Wine is consumed after a certain time, during this period the drink “rests” and is filled with the best qualities. This could be 2 months or 2 years, the period is strictly personal and depends on a huge number of reasons.

Recipe with sugar

There are a huge number of usual recipes for making wine from grapes at home, and one of them is making a drink with added sugar.

The ancient recipe is as follows - for 10 kg. berries at least 3 kg. sweet sand.

The step-by-step {instructions} look like this:
Separate the berries from the bunch of grapes and pass them on with your own hands.
Cover the container with gauze folded in half.
Next, you need to leave the wort in a warm place for at least 5 days. Stir the liquid once a day. After 5 days, you need to strain the grape mass into a clean container for further settling for a period of 1 month.
Next, slowly add sugar, stirring constantly until completely dissolved.
Close the container with a rubber stopper and wait 3 weeks.
Later, strain through cheesecloth folded in 2 layers, pour into glass bottles and leave for 2 months. At the final step, repeat filtration by straining the wine through cheesecloth, and leave for 6-8 months. After this period, the snow-white wine is one hundred percent ready for consumption.

Wine from white grapes at home

White wine made at home has many benefits. The most important thing is that you select the raw materials for wine yourself. Homemade snow-white wine can be prepared from both wine and table grapes. Most often, dry and semi-sweet snow-white wines are prepared at home; they are usually consumed within 1 year and are not left for long-term storage, because the taste and color of such wines change over time, not for the better.

The usefulness of snow-white wines is irrefutable, because in limited quantities snow-white wine is a medicine that increases immunity, it improves the digestion of food, provokes metabolic and rejuvenating processes in the body, helps normalize blood pressure, and neutralizes free radicals.

Recipe for making homemade semi-sweet wine from white grapes step by step

Even the most inexperienced winemaker can make semi-sweet wine using this recipe.

The clusters must be crushed with a thresher or by hand into a huge fermentation container, and covering this container with a lid, throw it there until the pulp begins to rise intensively. This usually happens on the 3rd - 4th day, but it can be earlier or later, it all depends on the ambient temperature, grape variety, amount of sugars, acids, etc. During these first days, the wort must be stirred 1-2 times a day in order for the juice to ferment moderately.
When on the 3rd - 4th day the cake rises very high above the wort, and the juice acquires a slightly sour taste, this means that it is time to drain the juice from the pulp.
All fermented juice is drained, for any 10 liters. add 250 grams of sugar, mix well until the sugar is completely dissolved and filter through a sieve into a clean, washed and dried container. It would be better if this dish had dark walls.
The cake is easily squeezed by hand through a sieve or colander lined with gauze. If wine is made in large quantities, it is done using a special grape press. Sugar is also added to this juice at the rate of 250 grams per 10 liters.
Then the wort is diluted with water, at the rate of 1 liter of water for any 6 liters.
juice In any bucket of added water, 2.5 kg of sugar is dissolved (in other words, 250 grams per liter of water). Fundamentally ! The wine will be strongest if you add more sugar to the wort. From 1 kg of sugar in wine comes 0.6 liters. alcohol But if there is a lot of sugar, then fermentation may slow down and the wine will not clarify.
The water is mixed with the wort and the container is closed under a water seal for a month or 40 days.
Then the beautiful homemade wine is ready. The water seal is removed, and the wine is removed from the sediment using a silicone or rubber hose.
The clarified wine is closed in another container with a tight, airtight lid for future storage. You can also pour the finished wine into glass or plastic bottles. It is better to store them horizontally in the cellar at a constant temperature of about 10-12 degrees.

Dry homemade white wine

To prepare dry snow-white wine at home, you must follow the same recipe. The difference is that neither water nor sugar need to be added to the wort. This wine will be ready in about 30-40 days and is best consumed young within 6-7 months.

Fortified homemade white wine

To make fortified wine from white grapes at home, follow the recipe given above up to point 5. Next, the grape juice that has fermented for 25 days will need to be removed from the sediment and grape moonshine or alcohol of your choice added to it.

Proportions of alcohol or chacha:

The amount of alcohol in fortified wines is 10-20%. At home, it is usually added at 100-120 grams per liter of wine material.
Home winemakers add wine vodka (chacha) at the rate of 150-200 grams per liter of wine.

How to add alcohol correctly:

Having mixed the drink well with a stick, twist it into a funnel, and then add alcohol to the center of this funnel, leave this mixture to settle. When sediment falls, and there will be a lot of it, it is imperative to remove the clear liquid, separating it from the sediment flakes, so that bitterness and foreign odors do not appear in the fortified drink. It will be necessary to remove the alcoholic beverage from the sediment a couple of times over the course of 2-3 months. Then it must be poured into clean bottles and sealed. This fortified wine can be stored for a very long time, for almost all years. The taste of the drink will become more striking in the 3rd year of settling.

Ordinary step-by-step recipes for homemade white grape wine

To make wine from white grapes at home, there are a huge number of usual recipes. Individual production depends on the grape variety. You can make both sweet and dry alcoholic drinks.

Process stages

Making white wine involves a number of steps.

Extracting grape juice

To make the alcohol tasty, you need to peel the berries: you must not allow the skin to come into contact with the juice.

The usual and effective method of obtaining juice is by gravity, by gravity. The role of the press in all this is played by the grapes themselves. The purchased light juice will not contain pulp impurities. However, this method also has a drawback: it will take a lot of time to obtain water. For large quantities of raw materials, implementing such a method can be cumbersome.

Another method is better if you need to get juice from a huge amount of grapes. In this case, the liquid is carefully squeezed out with your hands.

There is no need to use a juicer, blender, or press. Often the seeds are damaged in the process and the substances in them end up in the juice. This can spoil the properties of alcohol.

Settling and sediment removal

Often the squeezed juice comes out cloudy and there is sediment in it. In this case, the wort needs to be cleaned. Before settling, the dishes must be thoroughly washed. The raw materials are kept in a cold room for 6-12 hours so that the pulp impurities settle. It is not recommended to leave bottles unattended: if the contents begin to ferment, you will have to stop settling.

When the suspension settles, the liquid will become the lightest. After this, using a tube or siphon, the liquid is poured into a previously painstakingly washed glass bottle.

Active fermentation

Wild yeast grows on the surface of grape berries. Since the skin is removed during squeezing, the amount of yeast decreases. Because of this, the fermentation process can take a very long time. In addition, there will be a strong dependence on the temperature regime. The optimal temperature in the room where the workpiece is located is +18…+24°C. It is better to choose a room in which the air can be heated or cooled as needed.

There should be no oxygen reaching the wort. To prevent access of gas to the raw material, you need to put a special aqua seal on the bottle cap or a rubber glove with one of the fingers pierced with a needle.

The process takes approximately a week. After this, active fermentation slows down.

Quiet fermentation

After the active stage, the speed of the process decreases, but the wort continues to ferment.

At this step, the strength of the future alcohol is increased by adding sugar to the preparation, which produces alcohol when split by yeast. If you skip this step, you can get the lightest alcohol, the strength of which is no more than 12% ABV. Adding sweet sand allows you to increase the value of the indicator up to 16% o. From time to time, the recipe recommends adding sweet sand at the earliest stages.

At this step, you need to maintain a constant temperature in the room with the wort. Stirring the contents or moving them around is prohibited. The duration of the stage varies from 3 weeks to 1 month. You can realize that the process has ended when the formation of gas bubbles stops, marking the exact boundary between the precipitate and the liquid. You can also determine readiness by the taste of the drink: you shouldn’t notice any sugar in it. But only experienced winemakers can appreciate the taste properties; an amateur cannot always understand whether the alcohol is ready.

If you are preparing dessert wine, fermentation should be artificially interrupted.

Removal from sediment and filtration

Removing alcohol from sediment must be done with caution: the suspension should not end up in bottles with the drink. The container with fermented wine is carefully placed on the table, the container is placed on the floor. The wine is poured using a tube or hose lowered into the liquid. However, it is not recommended to lower the hose very close to the sediment. The remaining wine is poured into the smallest container, left until the suspension settles and the function is repeated. As necessary, create another or several repetitions.

Then filtering is applied. The remaining precipitate is filtered using a gauze bandage folded a couple of times. The resulting liquid is added to the bottles, then sealed and stored in a cold space.

Bottling and aging

To prepare snow-white grape wine, you need to age it for some time. The period depends on the recipe, the characteristics of the drink, and the type of grapes used to make alcohol. Most often it ranges from several months to 2 years.

For bottling, bottles made of glass should be used. Plastic will not work: the toxic material will spoil the taste of the drink. Filled bottles must be tightly corked and then stored in a cool place in a supine position.

Traditional recipe with grape juice

First you need to select raw materials. The best grape varieties for the production of homemade alcoholic drinks are snow-white Kishmish, Alpha, Bianka, Chardonnay, Lydia. Isabella and White Muscat produce rosé wine. The recipe allows you to get a light dry or semi-sweet wine.

Preparation of wine material

The berry needs to be carefully examined. Remove spoiled, putrefactive ones. Sour, unripe berries will also have to be removed: they can spoil the taste of alcohol. Overripe ones are also not suitable, as they do not yield juice well and make it cloudy.

Obtaining grape juice, must

The juice is extracted by gravity (in this case, the berries themselves will act as a press) or manually. The first option is not suitable for huge sizes of raw materials and takes a lot of time. There is no need to use a press or special kitchen utensils due to the high probability of damage to the seeds.

It is recommended to squeeze out the juice quickly so that its contact with the pulp takes less time. Only the watery part should be consumed. The pulp can be used to make secondary wine from snow-white grape varieties. Since the squeezed juice often contains impurities of pulp or skins, it is recommended to let the product sit for 6-12 hours. During this period of time, the suspension will settle, and the liquid can be drained into a new container.

Wort sulfation

Sulfitation is not a necessary step for making homemade wine from a recipe. But some experts give advice for beginning winemakers to carry out this function: it helps prevent premature spoilage of wine, the formation of mucus, and evens out alcohol during long-term storage.

Sulfur dioxide is used. The substance is added to the wort at the rate of 0.5-1 g per any 10 liters.

Fermentation

This step is the main one in order to prepare semi-sweet wine from white grapes. The temperature must remain constant. The ideal range is +15…+20°С. The fermentation container is sealed with a lid with a water seal or a honey glove.

Since grape juice contains less feral yeast than pulp, the process will be less intense. Making wine will take more time. If the process does not start for a long time or is stopped in advance, you will have to add dry yeast or a handful of raisins to the wine. Otherwise, the wort will turn sour. The entire process will take approximately 2 months.

In order for snow-white wine from grapes to come out semi-sweet, fermentation should be interrupted shortly before the end of the process. This way some of the sugar will remain in the alcohol. To interrupt the process, a sharp change in temperature must occur. You can either increase or decrease the value of the indicator.

After fermentation stops, the container is moved to the coolest room. With all this, the yeast will settle in 5-10 days, and you can pour it into the drink. Then the wine is removed from the sediment and poured into glass containers.

Lightening

The next step in the step-by-step annotation is lightening. To do this, the container is placed in a cold, black space. After some time, a sediment will form on the bottom of the bottle. You need to remove the wine from it often so that it gets a pleasant light color. In addition, this action allows you to improve the taste properties.

Recipe with added sugar

To make homemade wine, you can use sugar. This will make it possible to make high-quality alcohol from a product that does not meet the standards.

Manufacturing process

Making wine material is similar to that described in the previous recipe. Cover the container with the pulp with a cotton cloth (A collection of different and interacting tissues form organs) . Leave for 2 days in a warm room. The foam cap must be removed from the surface frequently. Then remove the pulp and pour the juice into a clean container. Squeeze out the pulp and discard the cake. Filter the juice a couple of times using a gauze bandage. Then pour into a glass container, filling it 75%. Install the lid with water seal. Place in a room with a suitable temperature.

Sugar is added in stages at the rate of 50-200 g per 1 liter of juice. If the juice is sour, add the first portion of sweet sand immediately before installing the water seal. It is recommended to add three times every 10-12 days. After performing these manipulations, the actions are similar to those described in the previous recipe.

Fermentation on pulp

You should use cake that has not been squeezed dry. At the same time, the seeds should not be crushed: this will make the alcohol taste bitter. You can supplement the drink with other ingredients: spices, herbs, oak chips. Fermentation takes place in an enamel basin covered with gauze. Afterwards the pulp is poured in a 1:1 ratio with spring water. Add 100-200 g of sugar to any liter of water. Alcohol is ready for consumption after 3-6 months. Its strength usually ranges from 5 to 11 degrees.