Wine making process - step 1

Now that we have grapes, we need to figure out how to make wine.  We had a small harvest, so we did all of the work by hand.  Luckily, we were able to recruit my mom to help us.

The first step was to de-stem all of the grapes that we picked.  We may have eaten a few of the grapes during this process...and they were delicious!

After a couple of hours of effort, we had all of our grapes cleaned up and ready to press. As you can see, we collected two 9x13 pans and one 8x8 pan of Sauvignon Blanc, and one large bowl of Pinot Noir.

We pressed the SB using a variety of standard kitchen items.  We put the grapes in a mesh bag and smashed them with a potato masher and bowls of various size.  We collected the juice in a 5 gallon buck.  To ensure we got it all, we put the grapes in a strainer and put a bowl on top with a weight in it and let it sit overnight.  The juice is separated from the skins and seeds in this case.

The Pinot Noir was easier to process because the juice and the skins stay together.  We did press the grapes a bit before letting it sit.  The juice will darken as a result of sitting on the skins.  This is what makes red wines red.  The juice will also pick up more of the flavors from the skins.

After we collected the juice, we let both types sit for some time.  At this point in the process we had about a gallon of SB and a little bit over one bottle of PN.  There are several more steps in the process before we have finished, bottled wine.  Check the blog over the next few weeks for more.