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Winemaking depends on the process of growing grapes, which is known as viticulture. Viticulture has been around for centuries but it has recently been brought into the age of science and technology. The knowledge and skills required of a vintner are very specialized, especially to produce complex, fine wines.

Vintners, makers of wine, have to consider site, season, soil and a host of other factors in order to deliver fine wine to the consumer’s table. Dark soils absorb heat more efficiently and rocky soils allow better drainage and provide stones that also help retain heat. Relative concentrations of nitrogen and other elements play an essential part. Topography (the contours of land) partly determine the usable amounts of sunlight and shade, while climate encompasses temperature range, total sunlight available, annual rainfall, wind and so forth.

When you have many vineyards with basically the same growing conditions, the growing conditions of this collective group can be referred to as a terroir. Typically, the types of wine grapes you grow will depend on this terroir. Likewise, your growing season will be impacted by this terroir.

Upon harvesting, you will process your grapes through a crusher. The output is your must, which is basically a mixture of the ground up components of your grapes. The must runs through a perforated drum that rotates. The perforations allow the juice and skin to separate from the rest of the must.

If you’re doing red wine, you’ll send the juice and skins on to fermentation tanks. If you’re doing white wine, you’ll send the juice and skins on to the wine press. This wine press is a rubber bladder that can be inflated and a stainless-steel tank. The point is to separate the skins from the white grape juice. Before sending it on to the fermentation tanks.

Fermentation tanks are airtight and typically hold up to three thousand gallons of wine. The tanks are kept at a constant temperature of around 40 Fahrenheit. To begin the fermentation process, sugar and yeast is added. The yeast and sugar initiate a process called glycolysis which creates alcohol and other sugars. The process typically takes about four weeks.

Once fermentation is complete, red wines are sent to a press to filter the skins from what is now wine, then filtered again to remove the yeast. Some reds undergo a second, malolactic, fermentation process. White wines, by contrast, are allowed to settle, after which the yeast is filtered out. With the yeast removed, the wines are stored in stainless steel tanks or oak barrels for anywhere between three months and three years.

After sufficient aging, where ’sufficient’ is determined by individual judgment based on repeated taste and other tests, the wine is pumped from the tanks to a bottling machine. Most vineyards now have a highly automated bottling process, though even there labeling, foil addition, and stacking is often still done by hand. Despite the many modern improvements to the winemaking process, most growers and winemakers still take a personal and passionate interest in selecting and tending vines, creating delicious varieties, and judging whether product meets their high standards. It’s easy to taste the results.

See more about the art of winemaking at www.Wine-Information.org. Visit Sarah Omseo’s site to get the latest wine information to improve your wine knowledge.