Home Winemaking

I have done a post on wine which details the different types on my alternative therapies blog at http://daveroberts69.wordpress.com it might be of interest if you enjoy this post. The book I read to research this post was Home Winemaking for Dummies by Tim Patterson which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. The best wine is made from grapes although I've even heard of someone making wine from old socks. This book deals exclusively with grapes. Many people use grape juice which is easier as you don't have to remove the bits. Although people buy a press & if you make red wine the pigmentation comes from the skins. Other people buy the grapes or grape juice ready frozen which adds a nuance to the flavour & you get more juice for your buck, any winemaking specialist should do this. Wine typically takes 2-3 weeks to ferment then it must mature typically 6 months for white & 12 months for red. If it's red it's a good to let it mature in oak caskets, some people leave it in a carboy with pieces of oak wood inside, same result if cheating. French oak is best although the american casket industry has come along in leaps & bounds & is even sometimes used by the french winemaking industry to add certain nuances to the taste. If you're impatient beer making is typically a lot quicker although I think winemaking is more satisfying. When it's fermenting a small piece of copper or a small amount of sulphur dioxide is added to kill the bad bacteria. You can't skimp on cleanliness when making wine & it doesn't take much bad bacteria to make the wine go off. Never use rotten grapes as they'll turn the wine & preferably use small bunches of grapes as large bunches tend to make it watery. You can use late season grapes which add to the alcohol content. Also a good idea is making port or sherry where you add alcohol & try & retain the sugar content. Some people are tempted to add an extra bag of sugar to increase the alcohol content but bear in mind the bad bacteria feeds on sugar as well.

Wine

The book I read to research this post was Wine All in One for Dummies by various authors which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. There are various recommendations for what wine goes with what. 2 of the most interesting are an italian amarone with asian foods & a californian zinfadel with spicy foods. Sometimes you will see a classic wine at a very cheap price & the way they do it this cheap is to mix it with cheaper wine. Some expensive wines need to mature & this is traditionally done in french oak casks which especially if they are new cost a lot of money. France is the top producer of wine in the world & grapes have been grown there for thousands of  years. Nowadays the different areas specialize in specific types of wine but this has not always been so. Improved transport links & susceptibility of certain grapes to certain types of fungus like mildew has made the french do this. The french consume more wine per capita than any other nation. There are 2 major types of wine, table wine which by law has less than 14.5% alcohol & dessert wine better known as port & sherry which has alcohol added to it. Yeast dies when the alcohol content reaches 14.5% so if you want to increase it you must add it. An interesting idea in wine which is popularly produced in canada is iced wine where the grapes are frozen prior to fermentation this gives the taste a certain nuance. Although french wine is often considered the best & is probably the most expensive for a vintage one other countries produce excellent wine which is often a lot cheaper & is often better value. In particular australian & californian wines.