Wine making process red wines

The biggest difference between the wine making process for red and white wines is that the red grapes are fermented before they get pressed, as with white wine it will be the other way around. The reason for that is fairly simple, for red wines you do want to extract colour coming from the skins of the grapes.

The grapes are picked, then brought to the winery. Here the grapes will firstly go through the process of destemming and bruising. The stems of the grapes have very bitter and green tannins, which can be very invasive in the flavour of the wine. The grapes are bruised, meaning that the skin gets cracked up just a little, to make the extraction of colour and fermentation go easier. After the bruising the grapes go into a fermentation vat. This either can be a closed off vat or an open cuvee. For the purpose of this general explanation, only the open cuvee will be described here. Yeast will either be added or wild yeast from the winery and vineyard is used to start the fermentation. This process takes about 2 weeks or longer. After the fermentation is completed, the grapes will now be pressed. This process includes the separation of the skins and other firm particles from the wine.

After this the wine will be aged mostly in oak vats, although some red wines will be aged on stainless steel tanks. With the last option, the result will be a less astringent tannin wine, with more focus on its red fruit characters. The majority that has a firm red as end result, will spend an amount of time aging on these oak barrels, where it will develop its tertiary aromas such as coffee, chocolate, vanilla or tobacco.

Like the whites, the reds will go through a process of clarification and filtering, as some smaller particles and micro-organisms can still be present in the wine. After this the wine is ready for bottling! Note that some red wines still require more aging in the bottle, before it is ready to be enjoyed!