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Guide To Temperature Storage Of Wine

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After your wine has been bottled you will need to take careful steps to ensure that careful temperatures are maintained in order for the wine to remain stable. In most cases, it is best to store your wine in cool temperatures. For long-term storage, most bottled wines do better when stored at a temperature of about 55 degrees Fahrenheit. The reason why it is so important to store wine at cool temperatures is because cool temperatures help to reduce the effects of oxidation.

Keep in mind; however, that you do not necessarily need to obsess if you absolutely cannot obtain a storage facility at exactly 55 degrees. The improvement provided for each degree in temperature you are able to reduce in the storage area is really only marginal. Of course, a dark area that has a temperature of 65 degrees is always going to better than an area with a lot of light that has an average temperature of 75 degrees. Being able to store your Continue reading Guide To Temperature Storage Of Wine →

Guide To Oaking Your Wine

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Certain wines can certainly benefit from the addition of oak chips. Just a few of these wines include Chardonays, Cabernets, Pinot Noir, Chianti, Merlots, Sauvignon Blanc, Burgundy, Pinot Blanc and Fume Blanc.

Oaking provides a way to develop a wine that is quite complex. The depth of the complexity is greatly determined by the type of oak that is used as well as the wine itself. Oak can provide a wide variety of flavors to wine including coconut, vanilla and even spices such as cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon. In some cases, oak can even add a somewhat earthy tone. The type of flavor that is added to your wine is largely determined by the type of oak that is used. For example, American oak when used with white wines such as Merlot tends to add an aroma that is decidedly vanilla in nature. Generally, most of the oak that is used for flavoring in wine is either American or French. Hungarian and Yugoslavian oaks are also now being increasingly used as well; Continue reading Guide To Oaking Your Wine →

Guide To The Basics Of Wine Making

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Before you begin your first batch of wine, it is a good idea to understand something of the background of wine and the basics of winemaking. Today there are certainly many kits which can be purchased which will walk you step by step through the process of winemaking. Even so, you may find that you enjoy and appreciate the results all the more for understanding the background of each step.

Wine is produced by fermenting grapes that have been freshly harvested. While many people today have taken up an interest in winemaking, the actual process of making wine has remained relatively unchanged over the years.

As we all know, yeast is essential to the fermentation process as part of making wine. Yeast actually grows on grape skins and then begins to automatically ferment the grape juice as the grapes are crushed. This begins the process of turning the grapes into wine. The combination of grape skins and grape juice is known as the must. When the mixture is in this phase of immersion it is known as maceration. This is one of the most important stages of winemaking, especially when making red wines. The actual color of red wine is obtained not from the juice inside the grapes but from the color of the grape skins. The juice inside all grapes, regardless of the skin color of the grape, is actually clear. In order for red wines to obtain their dark color they must extract the color from the skin of the grape. This is why black grapes are commonly used for the production of red wines. Conversely, light colored grapes are used for the production of white wines.

During the actual fermentation process, the natural fruit sugar that is contained within the grapes undergoes a conversion process into equal parts of carbon dioxide and alcohol. As Continue reading Guide To The Basics Of Wine Making →