Basic steps in winemaking

Winemaking can seem to be a very complex process, with each choice along the way opening up the door to many more choices. The art of winemaking is to transform this labyrinth of options into a manageable process by matching your preferences to what Mother Nature has put into the grapes. Experience, intuition and a determined effort to squeeze out every last bit of character from the grapes as they get turned into wine is the hallmark of a great winemaker.

We use the basic steps below as our roadmap as we create your wine. By combining your tastes and preferences with your grape choices, we shape your wine, and your wine cellar, to reflect your taste.

1. Crush and press the grapes.
2. Adjust the grape chemistry, if necessary. Wine is a complex balance of many flavours; we will take several technical measurements to ascertain pH (acidity) and total sugars in the juice. These parameters can be adjusted, if necessary, to shape the wine.
3. Choose the yeasts. Old world wine fans may prefer using the natural yeast strains that live on the grapes. Alternatively one can choose to use pure strains of yeast, each strain having its own characteristics. For further information on yeasts, visit the Lalvin website.
4. Choose ingredients to accentuate various flavors and characteristics of your wine. To learn more about these ingredients, check out the Scott Laboratories website.
5. When making red wines, there are numerous choices to make - how long to leave the grapes on the skins, extended maceration, délestage (removal of the seeds during fermentation), etc.
6. After pressing the red grapes and fermentation is completed, (or after fermentation is completed for white wines), decisions are made about ageing. What type of oak chips or barrel needs to be used, if at all? For example, when making chardonnay, is a rich, buttery character desired?
7. When making several different reds or whites, decide whether the various wines should be blended.
8. Many studies have shown that red wines that are both unfiltered and unfined (fining is a process of adding an inert ingredient that binds to and takes out particles) score higher in blind tastings. This is not recommended for whites, as white wines that look clear to the eye will still drop sediment in the bottle.
9. Bottling wine is a fast, easy process with automated bottle fillers and pneumatic corkers.