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Wine 101

Step 3.

Step 1   Step 2   Step 3.

How Wine is Made (from our personal experiences in Napa Valley)

We went to St. Clement winery in Napa for a 2 day winemaking course. Here are our experiences. 
 
We start by following the winemaker as he goes to each of the fermentation tanks (full of fermenting wine). He tastes (& spits) a small amount of wine from each to see how each of the wines is coming along in the process. We started with Cabernet Franc, a minor but key constituent of their Bordeaux blend. We moved along the row of tall silver tanks (photos at right) and went on to taste Merlot & Cabernet Sauvignon.

RED Winemaking Process

 (the tank tasting mentioned above is part of Bullet 3 below)

  • Pick the grapes
  • De-stem and crush
  • Move the crushed grapes to fermentation tanks
  • The skins, seeds and juice (collectively called must) remain in the tank during fermentation (5-7 days) and maceration (between 12 and 50 days beyond the fermentation). The maceration period allows the wine to soften & more intensity from the fruit is exptracted
  • The grapes are pressed and the press is combined (or not) with the free run wine.
  • The wine is then filtered & bottled or put into oak barrels for aging (& then filtered & bottled).

The winemaker tasting fermenting wine from the fermentation tank

A highlight of the day was to put on pant coveralls & shovel out one of the fermentation tanks. We had had drained the tank of must, so now we had to climb in to shovel out the left over skins!  Fun.

Wine 101 ............

The process for white wine is similar but the wine is made from the juice rather than from the whole grapes.

This completes our 3 step introduction to wine.

 

Want to know more? Check out our Wine Regions section.