Paul Franson

When you live in prime winemaking territory, it’s tempting to make your own and fortunately, it’s easy to make good wine. You can legally make 200 gallons if you’re the head of a household, 100 gallons for individuals.

You need to start with good grapes. Fortunately, that’s simple in Napa and other Coastal California counties where fine wine grapes flourish. Excellent grapes are available from many sources and you can also grow your own. UC Davis has many one-day classes that explain how to do it right, and the community colleges in Napa and Santa Rosa have classes in viticulture (and winemaking), too.

You can also buy grapes. Local winemaking stores and societies can help you find grapes, but many home winemakers just get to know growers who will sell them small quantities or even let them pick leftovers and the “second crop” that ripens late for free. You can tell when they’re ready to pick with an inexpensive refractometer that measures their sugar content. 

It’s easiest to make red wine. You crush the grapes, removing the stems that contribute harsh tannic flavors while opening the grapes so the juice is accessible to the yeasts that convert sugar to alcohol. For almost all red grapes, the juice is clear (called white) and only turns red as it dissolves pigments from the skins. Most small batches of wine are made in food-grade plastic containers that look much like garbage cans, though you can also use stainless steel tanks.

Most winemakers add a little sulfur dioxide in the form of potassium or sodium metabisulfite to kill wild bacteria, then inoculate the soupy mixture of crushed grapes and juice with cultured wine yeast and perhaps a little yeast nutrient. After a day or so, the mixture will start to bubble as the yeast converts the sugar in the grapes into alcohol and gives off carbon dioxide. You “punch” down the cap of floating grapes regularly to help extract color and flavor and discourage bacteria from contaminating dried grapes, and when the conversion is almost complete, you drain off the red juice, pressing it to extract most of the cloudy wine. You only need a press for a few days, so you can buy, borrow or rent a basket press for this operation. 

At this point, you generally place the new wine in 5-gallon water carboys with an air lock that lets carbon dioxide out but excludes air and bacteria. Over time, the wine will clarify as solids such as spent yeast and grape particles settle to the bottom and you can  siphon the clear juice into another carboy, topping up with reserved wine to maintain a full jug.

It’s possible to age the wine in small oak barrels but these barrels are expensive, can impart excessive oak and need careful care to keep from spoiling. Heretical as it seems, it’s probably best to use oak chips if you want to add oak flavor; many big wineries do.

The wine can be ready in a few months if it’s light, or age for decades if heavy and tannic.

The process for white wine is a little different, and more demanding. You crush and press the grapes immediately, then ferment only the juices. Some producers ferment Chardonnay in oak barrels for richer flavors, but I wouldn’t try that unless you get some experience first and you are making at least a 55-gallon barrel’s worth (About 23 cases or 275 bottles). Like red wine, white wine also needs to be “racked” to remove deposits, though some winemakers stir these lees to impart toasty flavors and thicker mouth feel. It’s best to keep the fermenting white must at 55 to 65 degrees for freshest flavor -- and that's the challenge for home winemakers. That's too warm for a refrigerator, too cool for most other places unless it's a cool fall. It's possible to add a thermostat to an old refrigerator to accomplish this, but that's beyond the scope of this primer.

If a wine, red or white, doesn’t clarify naturally, you can add a small amount of fining agent such as egg white, gelatin or bentonite to make the impurities settle. Filtering isn’t practical or necessary for most home winemakers. After suitable aging, it’s time to bottle the wine. An inexpensive siphon attachment simplifies the process, which also requires a “corker” that you can buy or borrow. Enlisting friends is recommended, for corking manually is very tedious. You can pay them with a few bottles but most people turn it into a bit of a party. The wine is ready to drink after it settles a few weeks, though most wine makers design and print labels, some rather fanciful.   The wild names many homewinemakers choose and their often clever labels are a key part of the judging of the wines at amateurs' competitions.

Of course, if you want more details, you can take a class or two, find a mentor, or at least read a good book on the subject. One of the best is free: UC Davis has an excellent publication on home winemaking that you can download from wineserver.ucdavis.edu/content.php?category=Winemaking. You can also buy a bound copy.

If the wine bug hits hard, I recommend you attend some home winemakers’ competitions where you can meet other enthusiasts who are valuable contacts for grapes, advice and equipment. You can locate them on the Internet, but one of the best is held each year at St. Supéry Winery in Rutherford. You can learn more at www.homewine.com.

One good source of winemaking supplies and advice is Napa Fermentation Supplies, 575 Third St, Bldg. A in the Napa Expo grounds in Napa. The phone number is (707) 255-6372 and web site  is www.napafermentation.com.

You obviously can't sell this homemade wine, but it is possible to get into the wine business in a small way. For more information, see___.

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