How Wine is Made?
Perhaps the best way to deal with the problem of defining wine is to
describe the processes of its manufacture. In doing this, some of the
mystique of wine, which many of us like to attribute to it, may be lost
forever. For indeed the processes of growing the vine and of making the
wine are simple when thought of in terms of the complexities of many
modern manufacturing processes.
 In essence, wine is fermented grape juice. But fascinating though the
fermentation process may be, it is by no means the first stage in making
wine, or even the most important. Many liquids can be made to ferment,
provided they contain sugar, and are brought into contact with yeasts.
But they are not all wine. The first, and indeed the most important part
of wine making is the growing of the grape, the part of wine making that
many experts believe calls for the greatest skill.
The vine is the sturdiest of plants. It will grow almost anywhere, given
enough water. This is not to say that it will bear grapes without
cultivation and care, or even that grapes of one vine will contain juice
identical with that of another. The stories are legion of grapes
noticeably different on one vine from those on another, and of making
perceptibly different wine.
The winemaker therefore is first and foremost a farmer whose job is to
grow a crop of fruit, and he must grow fruit of the finest—certainly of
a particular—quality, for poor grapes will not make good wine. When he
has grown his grapes and the time approaches for vintage, the winemaker
becomes chemist. Sample bunches of grapes, from different parts of the
vineyard, are crushed, and the sugar content measured. This is the time
for a very important judgment by the winemaker, for upon his measurement
of the sugar—and the acid—is based his decision to pick the crop. If the
grapes are too low in sugar, he will not get sufficient alcohol into his
wine; if they are too high in sugar, it will be at the expense of the
acids which contribute to the formation of the sugar.
When the winemaker judges the grapes to be exactly ripe for picking,
they are taken to the winery for crushing and fermenting. Here again,
considerable judgment is needed, for some of the best wines are made of
one grape variety blended with smaller quantities of one or more other
varieties. A better wine is produced if the fruit is blended before
fermentation, rather than blending what has already become wine.
Grapes brought in from the vineyard are dropped into bins which are
really large versions of the kitchen mincer, so designed that they
discard most of the stalks, taking juice and skins to the fermenting
vats. These usually are large, open-topped concrete tanks, lined on
their insides with beeswax to insulate them from the grape acids and
sugars.
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