The Aha Moments of Winemaking

 

As I stood there, the hose of a gravity siphon in hand, dripping in wayward Pinot Grigio, I couldn’t help but swallow the little bit of wine that had ended up in my mouth. As the flavors of peach, tangerine, pineapple and pear rolled over my tongue, I was ecstatic to discover that though I was wearing a portion of the final product, my first attempt at winemaking had been a success.

              The process of making wine has always been a fascination of mine. Honestly, how can one wine taste so incredibly different from a wine made just down the road with the same type of grapes? Over the years, I have poured over numerous books on the subject. I also had no shame in listening in on the conversations down in the production and barrel rooms at the winery, peaking in on what they were doing whenever I could. All of this gave me a great foundation for understanding the various intricacies of the winemaking stages, but it was a Christmas gift that gave me true clarity on the subject; gave me those wonderful aha moments where everything becomes crystal clear.

              The Christmas of 2023, my sister-in-law on my husband’s side gave me a Pinot Grigio winemaking kit. Containing all of the essentials and a step-by-step guide on how to make the wine, I knew I held in my hand a glimpse into the amazing world of winemaking. Sadly, out of a paralyzing fear of instructions and poor time management, it took until this spring for me to grow some lady balls and crack open the box. Hoping I hadn’t let it sit too long, but believing the process would be great for my education no matter the outcome, I got to work on my first batch of wine.

              The first day started with the fermentation process. After carefully sanitizing all the equipment, which was always a top priority at the winery as any unwanted bacteria could destroy an entire barrel of wine, I grabbed my bag of grape concentrate and got going on this newest adventure.

              To begin, Bentonite, a natural fining agent made of a clay that helps to stabilize the wine and prevent the final product from being cloudy or hazy, was mixed with warm water in the glass carboy. Next, I was to add the concentrate. By starting the process with already made juice and a predetermined fermentation vessel, I realized that the first few winemaking choices had been made for me. This meant I would not be deciding if I would destem the grapes or not, the length of time the juice would be in contact with the grape skins, if I would use oak, stainless steel or something else to house the wine, etc.

              After the juice had been added, I topped the carboy off with water and swirled everything together. Then came the main fermentation ingredient, the yeast. From my numerous readings, I knew that not only do the yeast convert the sugars in the juice into alcohol, they also play a key role in the taste and profile of the finished product. Some winemakers like to use natural yeast to make the wine more terroir driven, believing that this will help make the wine taste like the land it came from. Others pick a yeast strain based on flavor components it can help tease out of the juice and bring to the finalized product. The rest will perform fermentation using a combination of the two.

I obviously added the yeast packet that came with the kit, assuming it was the strain most commonly used when making Pinot Grigio. As I poured those magical organisms into the carboy and finished up my first round of this winemaking process, it finally dawned on me the importance of each step I took, and each step I didn’t take. Aha! Those first few days in winemaking are big determiners of the style, structure and flavors of the wine, and since so many of these decisions had been made for me, I would be making a wine based on the vision of the people who created the kit, not my own.

 

              Now for the waiting game. For the next two weeks, I would need to let the wine ferment in a room that stayed between 70 and 75 degrees. As I watched over my golden concoction during this time, I gained myself two more aha moments.

The first dealt with the fermentation temperature. My husband helped me to set up a space heater in our spare room, so I could keep the temperature within that 70-to-75-degree window. Throughout the day, one of us would glance in, checking the thermometer stationed next to the carboy to verify it was within that designated range, adjusting the heat as needed. For the most part it stayed where it was supposed to, with it only creeping up to 76 degrees about four times and down to 68 once. During the temperature monitoring, I couldn’t help but think back on what I had previously learned about this part of the winemaking process. I recalled that white wines are typically fermented at a lower temperature than reds. The reasoning behind this is that cooler temperatures help to preserve delicate fruit notes, which is the desired outcome of a white wine, while reds are fermented at higher temps to help extract color and tannins and give the wine some more heft to the body.  Aha! Since I was making a Pinot Grigio, a white wine known for its fruit notes of pear, apple, peach and lemon, I was fermenting at a cooler temperature to help bring out these flavors.

              The other part, a quite enjoyable one, over this two-week period was watching the yeast at work. For the first few days, the liquid foamed up in the middle of the carboy, creating a small bubble mountain. This made me think of my days at the winery following the harvest, when I would walk in and see an open air tank bubbling to the brim. I always loved taking photos of this phenomenon for our social media pages, showing our customers the fermentation process in motion. Though small-scale in my little carboy, I once again found myself caught up in this wonderment, snapping photos from various angles.

As the foam pile and fizzing sound subsided, and what looked like little bubbles moving up and down the side of the glass slowed their hasty pace, a light aroma filled the room. A scent I distinctly remembered the winery smelling like when a new batch of vino was in the works. The smell of grapes becoming wine. I had just witnessed the effects of the yeast at work and was able to see the progression of fermentation, from its speedy beginning to its still end, and now fully grasped the various stages. Aha!

  

              The fourteenth day is what the kit called the clarifying day, a day designed to ensure the final product was a clean and clear looking wine. The first step was to move the wine off the sediment that had settled at the bottom of the carboy. Known as lees, this sediment is made up of dead yeast cells and grape skins - when fermentation occurs with the actual grapes – that fall to the bottom of the vessel as the process comes to an end. As I examined my carboy and the solids at the bottom, a big aha hit me before I even started any actual work. I had read and read and read about lees, knew the definition inside and out, but had never fully grasped what it looked like. Until today. I finally knew what lees looked like. Aha!

To remove the lees, I had to transfer the wine from the carboy into a clean pot, dump the sediment, then put the wine back into its glass home. I would be accomplishing all of this using a racking cane and transferring tube, which, thanks to my husband, I learned made a gravity siphon when combined. I followed each step to the letter, making sure the pot was at a lower level than the carboy and the tube was primed with the required level of water that would create the pressure needed to start the whole transferring process. I stuck the racking cane into the carboy, verifying it did not touch the sediment on the bottom, placed the other end of the tubing into the pot, unclamped everything and waited for the magic to happen. I was greeted by nothing.

As I stared, quite stupidly, at the tube not flowing with wine, muttering to myself, my husband walked through the kitchen and asked what was going on. When I explained the situation, he knew exactly what the problem was thanks to years of running the water system for his family’s RV park. Apparently, when the instructions say the pot has to be at a lower level, they mean a really lower level. And, using the water to get everything started? A waste of time. We lowered the pot down so the tubing between it and the carboy was completely straight. After verifying the racking cane was still not touching the lees, my husband got the wine flowing by sucking on the tubing until the wine was about three fourths the way through, then placed that end in the pot. As the wine moved from one receptacle to the next, I finally understood why so many of the world’s top wine producers brag on their gravity-flow wineries. These wineries are set up in a multiple story floor plan, so whenever the wine needs to be transferred it can flow gently down to the next level. This reduces the need for pumps and siphons, putting less pressure and movement on the wine, which means the final product will not be overly tannic or exposed to unnecessary oxygen. It also makes for a more fluid, and quite frankly, easier fermentation process. Aha!

              After cleaning out the carboy and transferring the wine back in with my new-found gravity siphon knowledge, the rest of the day was a whole lot of stirring to remove the excess CO2 and to mix in the preserving and clarifying agents, Potassium Metabisulfite/Potassium Sorbate and Chitosan. As I stirred and stirred, I couldn’t help but ponder the fact that one of the agents I was adding to my wine was sulfite. The subject of sulfites in wine always cracks me up because there is a camp of wine drinkers out there who think they are allergic to sulfites and state they only drink wines that do not have any. This is funny, as all wines contain at least a little bit because it is a byproduct of the winemaking process. When a bottle says it contains sulfites, it simply means that the level in the bottle exceeds 10 mg/L. As sulfites are a preserving agent, winemakers will add more to the wine to help slow down the chemical reactions that cause the wine to age. This is what it meant to help preserve a wine. Aha! And, as a side-note, the number of people who actually have a true sulfite allergy is less than one percent of the population. What does this mean? It means that those three women in your office who claim they get sulfite headaches every time they drink wine are probably just drinking too much and suffering from the ever-common hangover. Just saying.  

              The next step was to wait two more weeks before bottling. The bottling process was fairly familiar to me, as I had been given the opportunity to help out with this task a few times at the winery. After sanitizing my equipment and bottles for the final time, I sat up that crazy gravity siphon and grabbed a small glass so I could try a sample of my hard work before starting to fill those bottles. Which takes us back to where we began, with me covered in wine, ecstatic that it was yummy.

As I messily filled each bottle, one less than the other thanks to my wine shower, I couldn’t help but look back over the past month and all of the aha moments I had experienced. Getting this hands-on opportunity had helped to cement in so many concepts I had only heard or read about it. I felt so much more confident in my understanding of the winemaking process and was so grateful for everything this wonderful gift had given me. It also gave me the drive to want more. Now that I had mastered the basics, I wanted the full experience, from grape to final product. This has pushed me to contact my old boss and start discussions regarding working on and buying some of his grapes. It is my goal to take grapes I helped grow and turn them into a delectable wine. Thanks to this thoughtful gift, and all of its aha moments, I am finally pushing myself towards a dream. Today, I raise my glass to aha moments and the new adventures and perspectives they bring. Cheers!