I want to start a hobby making wine, how do I start?
I have been given a bottle of homemade wine from a friend, it is quite good and I have been wondering how I start making wine as hobby.
Tagged with: homemade wine
Filed under: All Things Wine
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First, you have to get good quality grapes. The grape you buy in the market are too diluted to make any decent wine.
The grape that will need to make wine are usually grown in a very dry environment, so they are small and concentrated. They are not juicy like the grape you buy in the supermarket. These grapes really don’t taste good, but because it is concentrated, the juice has a lot of flavor and sugar. As a result the wine have higher alcohol content (due to the sugar) as well as taste. If you seriously want to make home made grapes, you can buy grapes from vineyards all over the country.
Aside from grapes, you will need quality yeast, good barrels, storage site, and eventually bottles. It is a hefty investment, but it is fun. I know one of the guy here (Francis Audersirk) who buys grapes from Napa and makes wines himself, and he had made a name for himself by making wines without having to own a vineyard.
There are also a lot of books on how to make home made wines. The one I like is Jeff Cox’s "From Vines to Wines", which goes through some of the basic of not only grape growing but also wine making. It is a good detailed and somewhat technical manual of how to make wine. Look around to see whether it is worth the effort. Good luck.
Hope this helps! =)
First get home equipment kit and then I would recomend that for your first batch of wine get an ingredient kit becuase it has everything you need. You can get all this off ebay for pretty cheap.