Grape Wine Recipe - Tips For Your Success Using Grapes

This is a basic overview of a recipe is for the production of grape wines. The easy tips included will be sure to help you enjoy the wine making process as you implement your grape wine recipe. Slight adjustments to the ingredients used can yield an eclectic collection of tastes and flavors. I would recommend trying a basic fruit wine, such as grapes.

If you have never made a home made wine before, don't worry, these tips are designed to ensure your success, so that you don't end up wasting all your efforts.

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Below I have included a simple overview to the recipe and how it works to remove some of the "mystery" that surrounds it, and to help you get started. I think you will enjoy it.

Grape Wine Recipe - Tips For Your Success Using Grapes

What Ingredients To Use

For this recipe you will need some basic ingredients such as 2 teaspoons pectic enzyme, sugar, 15 pounds of white grapes, white wine yeast, and Campden tablets (or strong sulphite solution).

An Overview Of The Process

The first thing you will need to do is to pick the grapes, remove them from the stalks and place them in a plastic bucket. If the grapes are fully ripe they can be crushed easily by hand or with a sterilized wooden block.

Next, add the pectic enzyme, and one crushed Campden tablet or 1 teaspoon strong sulphite solution. Stir well, cover with an upturned plate, then cover the bucket and leave for 24 hours. Press the grapes or strain through a strong nylon straining bag, squeezing the bag to extract all the juice.

Take an S.G. (specific gravity) reading of the juice and adjust with sugar syrup to 1.080. Pour into a demijohn and add an active yeast starter. Plug the jar with cotton wool and when the fermentation is active replace with an airlock.

Leave in a warm place and when the fermentation is finished, in about 10-14 days, rack the clearing wine from the lees into a clean jar and remove to a cool place. After 2 days rack again. This time adding 2 Campden tablets or 2 teaspoons strong sulphite solution.

Now you let them age and mature in for 12 months before bottling.

Finding Good Grapes

When growing grapes you need good summer weather to enable the vine to produce grapes with a high sugar level, and a low acid content. A wine made from grapes that haven't had the chance to completely ripen will be of poor quality. It will usually have a low alcohol level with high acidity.

If the grapes can be left on the vine a far superior wine should be achieved. This is because the maximum sugar level in the grapes can be achieved, which in turn, produces a higher quality wine.

Although there are a number of fruits that be used to make wine, grapes are the standard choice, and will yield the best results for your grape wine recipe.

Grape Wine Recipe - Tips For Your Success Using Grapes

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How to Keep Grapes Longer

Proper Grape Storage

Grapes are a great snack to keep around. They are healthy, tangy, and juicy enough to satisfy your sweet tooth while keeping you fit as a fiddle. However, like all fresh fruits, storage is a bit of a problem with grapes.

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Learning how to keep grapes longer is essential if you want to enjoy a fresh snack minus the yucky taste or moldy patches, so read on to learn a thing or two about storing these grapes:

Choose fresh, firm grapes. The first thing to keep in mind when learning how to keep grapes longer in storage is to choose grapes that are fresh and firm. Their skins must be smooth and intact, the grape bunches tightly packed together, the stems strong and healthy, and the absence of any soft or battered spots in the fruits themselves.

Another thing you should be particularly careful about is hidden molds in the middle of the grape clusters. These molds have the potential to grow into large patches, even in the cold extremes of a refrigerator; resulting in ruined, inedible clusters of grapes.

Make sure to select clusters that are free from molds if you plan to keep them in your fridge.

Avoid washing before storing. Another mistake people make when storing grapes is washing them before storing.

While this may clean them and get rid of dirt on them, the water will have a negative effect on the skins of the grapes; making them mushier and promoting bacterial growth in the process.

This bacterial growth will eventually lead to decay, and that is one thing you do not want to happen when you want to happen. So if you want to learn how to keep grapes longer, leave the washing for when you are just about to serve the grapes.

That will clean them nicely without risking rot or decay in the refrigerator.

Use plastic bags to store grapes in your refrigerator. Another common mistake people make in storing grapes is simply shoving them unprotected into the fridge.

While the frigid air inside will slow down the growth of bacteria and molds, it will also dry up any fresh fruit or vegetables that are left exposed inside it.

If you want to learn how to keep grapes longer in your fridge, you have to keep them inside a zip-lock plastic bag to preserve their freshness and prevent the cold air from drying out the skins. This will help keep them fresh and juicy for up to a week.

One last thing about grapes: they bruise easily. Be very gentle when handling and storing grapes if you do not want them to be all soft and squishy when you pull them out of the refrigerator a few days later.

Also be careful when shoving things inside your fridge, especially when the grapes have been inside for a few days now. The longer the grapes are stored the more sensitive and prone to bruising they are.

Remember to keep all these pointers in mind, and you will be able to learn how to keep grapes longer, fresher, juicier and even a bit crunchier for up to a week at a time.

How to Keep Grapes Longer

Eddy Lee is grape growing and wine making expert. For more great tips on how to keep grapes longer and make wine visit http://www.winemakinganswers.com

Where Do Grapes Come From?

I imagine that most people immediately think of the hot Mediterranean countries such as France, Spain and Italy will grow the vast majority of grapes. And we get a tiny proportion from maybe California and Australia. While that assumption is largely right plenty more countries also produce the grapes that end up in your shopping basket or go into your next bottle of wine.

From my own knowledge of years in the business as a grower and from some research here is the top ten grape producers worldwide:

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1) Italy
2) France
3) USA
4) Spain
5) China
6) Turkey
7) Iran
8) Argentine
9) Chile
10) Australia

Now while this list is is only an approximation it can vary wildly according to the criteria used. For instance, a list can be based on amount of area given over to growing or the amount of produce grown each year. What I particularly wanted to illustrate is that many more countries than we take for granted have thriving vineyards. Who would have imagined places like China and Iran and not to mention Romania or Lebanon all growing vines and producing magnificent crops and wines.

My own country of England as history knows was conquered by the mighty Roman Empire and it was these same Roman's who introduced vine growing to this country. Admittedly the climate was warmer and more temperate around the first century and from the latter part of the sixteenth century temperatures began to decline.

Wine grape growing is however on the increase in England with over four hundred vineyards prospering at the present time. This news will I hope be a broad hint to you, I want you to realise that you can plant vines and grow your very own fruit right in your own garden almost anywhere. So why not give it a go? It is not only a fun and rewarding hobby but you can produce your own wine or you can sit back with a bunch of succulent grapes of your very own.

Where Do Grapes Come From?

Don't get disappointing results and waste all your time trying to learn how to grow grapes and make wine by trial and error. I,Ron Taylor have been an expert grower for over thirty years so why not get the benefit of my years of experience. Please visit my website where you can read articles, watch videos and grab a completely FREE 10 part email course.
And if all that's not enough I have a not to be missed offer for an grape growing and wine making book that will knock your socks off right here at http://www.vinetowineguide.com