Crafty Winemaking 1: Advice to Easily Craft Award-Winning Wines

By Wally Root

You don't just "make" wine. You craft vintages from nature's ingredients. Let award-winning wine-crafter Wally Root help you produce truly great amateur wine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483510996

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Chapter One

How Wine Is Crafted

While the origins of winemaking are not certain, one thing that’s sure is wine only requires three basic elements to produce: yeast, sugar and juice, and their importance cannot be overstated. Wine cannot exist without all three.

Fermentation happens naturally in nature when wild yeast lands on any moist fruit or vegetable that contains sugar. Alcohol is a by-product of the chemical reaction between sugar and yeast. To simplify, a yeast enzyme called zymase consumes sugar to give off two by-products: carbon dioxide gas and ethyl alcohol. That’s it. That’s the simple explanation of fermentation.

Imagine an apple tree with apples that have ripened and have fallen onto the ground below. Natural wild yeast, which is plentiful in nature, soon grows on the fruit, which contains water and natural sugars, and begins a process called fermentation. The fructose-type sugar in the apple converts into carbon dioxide gas, vented into the air, and liquid ethyl alcohol that remains within the fruit. Deer hunters have often reported seeing bucks, does and fawns acting strangely after eating these rotting apples, as if they were drunk. That’s because they’ve been eating apples that have undergone natural fermentation.

Our job as crafty winemakers is to control the fermentation process in order to get the style of wine we want by creating a welcoming environment for our yeast selection to excel. Wild yeast is everywhere. It covers the earth. It’s on you and me. Take a look at a bunch of grapes. See that whitish bloom near the stem under the leaves and on the grapes? That’s wild yeast. The problem with wild yeast is that you never know what flavor you’re going to get. It could be a great wine or a sour vinegar. And that’s it. We cannot control wild yeast or its flavor characteristics.

There are many different strains of yeasts that are cultured specifically for different grapes and different types of wine. The winemaker must match a particular yeasts’ flavor characteristics to a certain grape or type of wine, then create a nurturing environment for that yeast to do its job efficiently, breaking sugar down into its component parts of carbon dioxide gas and clean, ethyl alcohol.

Most selected wine yeasts can produce alcohol above 14% under ideal conditions, while most spoilage yeast strains cease to grow above 3-5% alcohol. Wine yeasts rapidly produce alcohol in this range, killing wild yeast, and then go on to enjoy the remainder of the fermentation process without worry.

Whether you’re working with grapes fresh from the vineyard or using juice specifically prepared for winemaking, some amount of wild yeast will always be present. This wild yeast must be eliminated. Even with the cleanest sanitation, wild yeast can be introduced into the winery by standing equipment and newly picked grape clusters. Every time these clusters enter the winery, wild yeast strains do battle with your yeast during the first 24 hours of fermentation. That is why we add sulphites, like potassium metabisulphite, to the juice 24 hours before introducing the yeast to destroy any contaminants that remain in the juice. During this period, the primary fermentation vessel should be covered with a terry towel, held in place by a 7" rubber band around the top. This allows the evaporating sulphite to release into the surrounding air instead of being trapped in the juice, thus stunting, or possibly killing, the yeast upon introduction.

Using the proper wine yeast (preferably in a starter with proper nutrients) will ensure that the wine yeast will dominate the early rounds of the fermentation battle after the 24-hour sulphiting period.

Sugar and acid should be in harmony before you inoculate the juice for primary fermentation. Hydrometer readings to determine sugar content and acid readings should be taken and will be explained in this book.

It is important that you understand how yeast is mixed into your wine juice in an operation called pitching the yeast. In the majority of cases, when the yeast is pitched into the juice, or the must as it’s called during fermentation, there are three techniques of introduction.

The first is the French broadcast where an envelope of dried yeast is carefully tapped out of its foil package and distributed evenly across the surface of the juice, similar to salting a plate of food. Most yeast manufacturers suggest a period of rehydration at a higher temperature for dried yeast in order to attain the largest number of yeast organisms. This technique does not take that into consideration and forces the yeast to hydrate at a lower temperature, causing longer activation for much fewer yeast organisms, giving wild yeast a head start in the propagation of cells. It is not the ideal way to initiate a primary fermentation. This technique is generally used when restarting a stuck fermentation with Lalvins’ EC-1118 yeast which is generally accepted as the best yeast to restart a stuck fermentation.

The second technique is the simple, rehydration of yeast in 1/4 cup of 90-100 degree Fahrenheit water that has been boiled to eliminate microorganisms. The temperature must be strictly monitored because 110 degrees Fahrenheit water could kill the yeast entirely. Empty the yeast packet and allow it to stand on the surface of 2 ounces of prepared water for 15 minutes without stirring, then stir gently to suspend yeast. Take special care to reduce the temperature of the yeast solution to within 5 degrees Fahrenheit of your juice. Then add to your sulphited must by gently stirring.

The third technique, and the one I use for every primary fermentation I initiate, is the yeast starter method. In this method the yeast is rehydrated in a prepared liquid that allows for initial growth and propagation before pitching. Sort of like a training gym for yeast. In general terms, a sweetened orange juice liquid base is boiled to kill any unwanted microorganisms. Once cooled, yeast energizers and nutrients are added to the yeast to create an ideal environment for cultivating the wine yeast for the upcoming fermentation. See Chapter Four for a more detailed description of the process.

But in the end, that’s what happens. Yeast, sugar and juice combine to create an alcoholic fermentation. It’s that simple. It’s our job to create the ideal, nurturing environment for the yeast to produce a strong fermentation. That’s what I’m going to teach you in this book.

Peel Me a Grape

Basically, there are two general types of wine grapes: one with a lot of sugar in its skin (Vitis Vinifera), and one with not so much sugar in its skin (Vitis Labrusca). These are the two basic families of wine grapes.

The first type of grape we’ll explore is Vitis Labrusca. It is grown primarily in the eastern areas of Pennsylvania, Upper New York, and the State of Washington. They’re a hearty vine that can live in harsh, cold climates and provide a meaty, sweet-tasting grape that is used extensively for grape juice, jams and jellies. Although grapes in this strain, like Concord, taste sweet when eating them off the vine, they actually do not contain a lot of sugar in their skins, which, if left to nature, would produce a low alcohol, weak-tasting wine.

As a rule, this variety needs to have sugar added to its juice to attain a level of sweetness that promotes a healthy fermentation with an acceptable alcohol level. This method is called chaptalization and is also used to back-sweeten wine, bringing it to an acceptable drinking level. Vitus Labrusca wine that is dry is flavorful but tends to be bitter, so by adding sugar in a liquid syrup form greatly enhances its drinkability. If you like sweet dessert-type wines, you’ve found your variety. However, if you prefer your wines semi-dry to semi-sweet, take heart, it can be done! The beauty of crafting your own wines gives you the ability to flavor and sweeten your particular wine any way you like. Through experimental back-sweetening and blending, delicious wines can be crafted from Vitis Labrusca grapes.

Many northeastern Pennsylvania wineries, like Mazza Winery, Arrowhead Winery, Wilhelm Winery, Conneaut Cellars, Presque Isle Winery and Volant Mill Winery stand as testament to the exceptional wines being crafted today from Vitis Labrusca grapes. These wineries have exceptional selections to satisfy the most discriminating of palates and invite you to contact them for a tour of their facilities should you find yourself vacationing in the eastern Pennsylvania-Lake Erie area.

Vitus Labrusca Species

First, a list of the better known grape varieties of the Vitis Labrusca Native American family of grapes:

Red Grapes: Buffalo, Caco, Carlos, Clinton, Concord, Freedonia, and Noble.

White Grapes: Niagara, Elvira, Isabella, Magnolia, Noah, Scuppernong, Stueben, Suwannee, Welder, Diamond, Stover, and Catawba.

Concord is a Vitis Labrusca Variety

Naturally, when someone thinks of sweet grapes they usually think of Concord grapes, which are used in making Welch’s Grape Jam. It’s probably the most famous Vitis Labrusca grape in America. It was developed by Ephraim Wales Bull in 1847, who released the vines for sale in 1854. Bull named the variety after his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, where he developed it after seven years of hybrid research into native vines. It is formed from a cross between an unknown wild Labrusca variety and a Catawba vine, making it an early American original. It was also the first native grape to be cross-pollinated with European Vitis Vinifera stock to produce hybrid vines in Europe during a phylloxera plague in the 19th century. As sweet as it tastes plucked off the vine, the Concord grape has very little natural sugar to make wine without help. Any wine made that depends on the Concord grape’s natural sugar level will be hardly alcoholic and a let-down overall.

Early American settlers called wild, native grapes fox grapes since to fox meant to intoxicate