A picture guide of how wine is made, from picking grapes to bottling wine. Depending on the grape, the region and the kind of wine that a winemaker wishes to produce, the exact steps in the harvesting process will vary in time, technique and technology. But for the most part, every wine harvest includes these basic vine-to-wine steps: Here’s a photo guide of each of the steps of how wine is made from the moment the grapes are picked until the wine is put into bottles. Most vineyards will start with white grapes and then move to red varietals. The grapes are collected in bins or lugs and then transported to the crushing pad. This is where the process of turning grapes into juice and then into wine begins. An indigenous red American grape called Norton, prior to being picked in the 2nd week of October, 2014 in Hermann, Missouri Man vs. Machine: The grapes are either cut from the vine by human hands with shears or they are removed by a machine. Hand harvesting is more labor intensive but can offer superior results for small wineries.

Quinta de Leda, Douro, Portugal. A mechanical harvester goes down a row of Vignoles vines at Chandler Hill Estates in the Augusta AVA in Missouri. Night Harvest vs Day Harvest: The grapes are either picked during the day or at night to maximize efficiency, beat the heat and capture grapes at stable sugar levels. Night harvesting is common in warm climate regions. This is the Chardonnay harvest at Donnafugata in Sicily At this point in the process, the grapes are still intact with their stems—along with some leaves and sticks that made their way from the vineyards. These will all be removed in the next step. A basket of Vignoles grape, a rare hybrid grape of unidentified origin that grows well in cool climate regions. No matter how or when the grapes were picked, they all get crushed in some fashion in the next step. The destemmer, which is a piece of winemaking machinery that does exactly what it says, removes the stems from the clusters and lightly crushes the grapes.

These Chardonnay grapes are being sorted on a ‘sorting table’ before going into the destemmer and crusher at Donnafugata Winery in Sicily. White grapes being put directly into a crusher where they are separated from the skins and seeds for the entire fermentation process. White Wine: Once crushed, the white grapes are transferred into a press, which is another piece of winemaking equipment that is literal to its name. All of the grapes are pressed to extract the juice and leave behind the grape skins. The pure juice is then transferred into tanks where sediment settles to the bottom of the tank. After a settling period, the juice is then “racked”, which means it’s filtered out of the settling tank into another tank to insure all the sediment is gone before fermentation starts. This is what the bottom of the grape crusher looks like as the juice is squeezed out. Red Wine: Red wine grapes are also commonly destemmed and lightly crushed. The difference is that these grapes, along with their skins, go straight into a vat to start fermentation on their skins.

This is what imparts the red color into red wine, otherwise, red grapes would also make a white wine. Red grapes wait to be crushed and put in fermentation tanks.good wine online coupon Here’s what the juice from white grapes look like prior to fermenting and becoming wine. can you buy wine on amazonIt’s quite frothy and will range in flavor from sour to sweet —depending on the grape.rich red wine reduction Simply put, fermentation is where the sugar converts into alcohol. daily red wine benefitsThere are plenty of techniques and technologies used during this process to accompany the different kinds of grapes. best wines & spirits shop

To keep things simple, this stage mainly includes: A view from above looking into a large fermentation tank in Portugal. Some winemakers use yeast nutrients to bolster the fermentation. ice wine uk onlineThis is a bucket of white grape juice, yeast and a yeast nutrient called Diammonium Phosphate. wine and beer businessThe winemaker waits 20-30 minutes for the mix to start bubbling and then adds it to the fermentation.best wine bar north london Winemakers have lots of choices in this step, and again they all depend on the kind of wine one wants to create. best place to buy wine in dcFlavors in a wine become more intense due to several of these winemaking choices:

Stainless steel tanks are readied for harvest by Tavis Harris, the enologist at Stone Hill Winery, Hermann, Missouri. The barrel aging room at Dinastia Vivanco in Rioja smelled richly of vanilla and spice. When the winemaker feels a wine has reached its full expression in aging, then it’s time to bottle the wine for consumption. And the rest is history, my friends. Special thanks to the head winemakers, Tavis from Stone Hill Winery and Tom from Chandler Hill Vineyards, for letting me witness their biggest parties of the year.It all starts with grapes on the vine: and it's important that these are properly ripe. Not ripe enough, or too ripe, and the wine will suffer. The grapes as they are harvested contain the potential of the wine: you can make a bad wine from good grapes, but not a good wine from bad grapes. Teams of pickers head into the vineyard. is the exciting time of year, and all winegrowers hope for good weather conditions during harvest.

Bad weather can ruin things Hand-picked grapes being loaded into a half-ton Increasingly, grapes are being machineThis is more cost-effective, and in warm regions quality can be preserved by picking at night, when it is cooler. much easier to do by machine. The harvester plucks the grape berries off the vine and then dumps them into bins to go to the winery. These are machine-picked grapes being sorted Hand-picked grapes arriving as whole bunches in Sorting hand-picked grapes for quality. rotten or raisined grapes, along with leaves and petioles, are removed. These sorted grapes go to a machine thatThey may also be crushed, either just a little, These are the stems that the grapes have been separated from in the destemmer. Reception area at a small winery. are being loaded and then taken by conveyor belt to a tank, from where they are being pumped into the fermentation This is where red wine making differs from

Red wines are fermented on their skins, while white wines are pressed, separating juice from skins, before fermentation.  fermentation vessel - a shallow stone lagar in Portugal's Douro region - will be filled up and then the grapes will be foot trodden, so that the juice can extract colour and other components from the This is a very traditional winery, again, in the Douro. The red grapes have been foottrodden, and fermentation has begun naturally. mixing up the skins and juice by hand: this process is carried out many times a day to help with extraction, and also to stop bacteria from growing on the cap of grape skins that naturally would float to cultured yeasts are added in dried form, to give the winemaker more control over the fermentation process. But many fermentations are still carried out with wild yeasts, naturally present in the are being fermented in a stainless steel tank. carbon dioxide is released so it is OK to leave the surface exposed.

Sometimes, however, fermentation takes place in closed tanks with a vent to let the carbon dioxide escape. tank the cap of skins is being punched down using a robotic capIn some wineries this is done by hand, using poles. punch downs is to pump wine from the bottom of the tank back over red wine is being pumped out of the tank, and then pumped back inThe idea is to introduce oxygen in the wine to help the yeasts in their growth. At other stages in winemaking care is taken to protect wine from oxygen, but at this stage it's needed. has finished, most red wines are then moved to barrels to completeBarrels come in all shapes and sizes. most common size: 225-250 litres. The source of the oak, and whether or not the barrel has been used previously, is important in the effect it has on the developing wine. This is a much larger, older barrel, imparting virtually no oak character to theThis suits some wine styles better than smaller barrels.

This is a basket press: once fermentation has completed and the young wine has been drained off the skins, the remaining skins and stems are pressed to extract the last of the wine that they contain. This is a bladder press, used for some reds and almost all whites. fills with air, pressing the contents gently and evenly, with And this is what is left at the end - the marc. It can be used to make compost. The inside of a tank that has been used to ferment white wine: the residue consists of dead yeasts cells. still look quite traditional. Cool underground cellars are perfect for maturing wines - a process that takes anything from six months typically check the maturing red wine barrels at regular intervals, and top them up as some of the wine evaporates during the maturation is necessary to move wine from one barrel to another, or from barrel to stainless steel tank. This cellar hand is using nitrogen gas to