A BEGINNERS GUIDE FOR HOME WINEMAKING IN BERRIEN COUNTY, MICHIGAN AND OTHER NORTH AND CENTRAL STATES (rev. 7/91, 2nd edition) Introduction Berrien County abounds in fruit of all kinds suitable for winemaking. Good wine can be made from virtually any fruit, although some make better wine than others. Fruits can even be combined, so that they compliment each other. Berrien and neighboring counties host Michigan's most famous wineries, including Tabor Hill and St. Julian. Therefore, wine grapes are also avail- able locally. An Italian hybrid, Vidal, and a French hybrid, DeChaunac, are two examples of premium wine grapes usually available the 1st week of October each year. Another red, Foch, is also sometimes available, but not every year. Other reds are becoming available (i.e., Chancellor and Chambourcin). Winemaking supplies are available locally as well. In St. Joseph, Lambrecht's liquor store has everything needed to set up a home winemaking operation. Additional supplies are available by mailorder, such as Ken's Wine Supply (now known as Diversions Inc.) in Traverse City, and Cask & Keg in Mattawan. Out-of-state suppliers are numerous. The Federal Government allows home winemakers to produce, tax-free, up to 150 gallons of wine per household per year. Wine may be used by the immediate family only, and may not be sold. Commercial wineries must be licensed and bonded, and are taxed by the Inernal Revenue department. Wine is a healthful beverage taken in moderation. It is probably man's oldest fermented drink, mentioned frequently in the Old and New Testament of the Bible. Its health benefits were confirmed by Apostles Luke and Paul, and are supported by modern medical science. Wine has anti-viral properties, and was used as an antiseptic in Biblical times. Everyone knows the enjoyment a good wine adds to meals. Wine can be made at home easily, and with great economy. The equivalent of a six-dollar bottle of fine table wine can be made at home for about 90 cents in materials cost. Equipment required is reusable indefinitely, and inexpensive. All else needed is a little space, instruction, and patience! Getting Started In the beginning, you will need to buy the following: o Five-gallon glass watercooler bottles, 2 minimum o Fermentation locks, one per bottle o Size 6 1/2 center-hole white rubber stoppers, for above o Plastic tubing, 4 feet, food grade vinyl (or syphon apparatus) o Brix or Balling hydrometer (saccharometer) o Liquid thermometer, immersion type o Cork inserter and wine bottle corks (no taper) It will also be very handy to have the following: o A sturdy bench or table (supporting 200 lbs or more) o A 20-gallon plastic bucket or trash can o A plastic yard-trash bag or Visqueen roll o A wooden spoon or paddle 2 feet long o Lots of empty (cleanable) wine bottles Obviously, you will need a place to set-up your equipment. The ancients used cellars and caves, and with good reason. The earth provided a constant- temperature environment: not too cold in winter, not too hot in summer. Modern man has his basement, which often is sufficient to provide the same function. What you want is as constant a temperature as practicable, between 60 and 80 degrees F. Why is this so? Because wine is a delicate thing that spoils in the heat, and quits fermenting in the cold. Average room temperature is therefore best. If you have a basement, put your equipment in it near a sink, such as found in the utility room, because you will need a source of hot running water handy to wash things out. Making the Wine So now you have all the equipment. Next, you must decide what kind of wine you want to make. The best way to start is to make wine from the clean juice of wine grapes. There still exist a few farmers who press, filter and cold-tank such juice from one or two varieties; for a few dollars a gallon, they will fill up your 5 gal. container. If special arrangements are made, a few wineries will do this also. Place your order well in advance! The easiest juice to get is Vidal. Others may also be available. NOTE: Get Concord juice only as a last resort, because it will not make good wine all by itself; it needs skillful blending, dilution, and manipulation to make it into something palatable (and then only as a dessert wine). You might try Niagara, though (Concord's white brother). Dilute the juice 25% first. Once you get the juice, you must immediately begin the winemaking process or else it will spoil, or produce inferior results. Therefore, before you go to the vineyard, be sure to stock up on these supplies: o Granulated sugar (cheapest available), 10 lbs or more o Montrachet or other wine-yeast packets, 1 per batch (Lambrechts) o Potassium Metabisulfite (Lambrechts) After you have all these things listed above, your equipment, and your juice, you are ready to begin- The Fermentation Fermentation is the process whereby the yeast cells change the sugars in the wine to alcohol, carbon dioxide, and esters. Many other chemical changes occur as well. Bacteria also accomplish a tertiary fermentation, discussed later. Right now we are concerned with the yeast. **Note: some feel that the Pasteur Champagne strain of yeast works best for white wines, and the Montrachet strain works best for reds. My experience does not bear this out, although Montrachet sometimes "flavors" a delicate wine. There are many other strains you can try, too numerous to mention. Ask your supplier for his recommendation! JUICE FERMENTATION PROCEDURE Step 1: Immerse the Brix hydrometer in the grape juice, which should be at about 60 degrees F. Read the number on the Brix scale which is at the liquid level. For Vidal, it will be about 18-20; for others, about 16. Transfer the juice to your Primary Fermenter (new trash can). Step 2: Stir-in sugar to raise the Brix (sugar %) reading to about 24. This will take up to 1 pound per gallon of juice for initial Brix of 16. Do it gradually, and check the reading frequently during sugar addition. It may take up to 15 minutes of continuous stirring to dissolve 5 lbs of sugar in 5 gallons of juice. Alternatively, you could heat the juice up to about 94 degrees F (in a new pot) to speed this process. Step 3: Once the Brix is at 24 or thereabouts, add 1 packet Montrachet wine yeast per 5 gallons of juice. Follow directions on the packet. Do not use common baker's yeast. Stir well for five minutes, and cover with a sheet of plastic. Clear sheet, such as Visqueen, lets you observe the action. Alternatively, use the lid that came with the trash can. Within 24 hours, something very exciting begins to happen. The mixture of juice, sugar, and yeast, now referred to as "must", is now in primary fermentation. The must fizzes like an Alka-Seltzer tablet, and gives off fascinating aromas. It may even "boil", tossing up blankets of foam. Once this process begins, you must stir the must twice daily to keep the yeast cells in suspension and add oxygen. After the end of five days, discontinue stirring. You will find the action has quieted down: the must is going into secondary fermentation. Step 4: Wash out your 5-gal glass water bottle with a strong solution of Potassium Metabisulfite in hot water. Drain the solution out completely, but do not rinse. Transfer the contents of the primary fermenter to your 5-gal glass water-bottle. Do this by syphoning with the clear plastic tubing, keeping the end of the hose about one inch off the bottom of the Primary Fermenter. This avoids transferring unwanted sediments into the bottle. This syphoning/transfer process is called "racking". Make sure must is no more than 2 inches from the top of the bottleneck. Step 5: Attach Fermentation Lock, with white-rubber plug, to the top of the bottleneck. Wash the plug and Fermentation Lock (bubbler) in the Potassium Metabisulfite solution (mentioned above) first. Fill the "bubbler" 1/3 full with water, adding a few crystals of Potassium Meta- bisulfite to the bubbler to avoid molds. Step 6: Place the Secondary Fermenter (the above apparatus) in a place where the temperature will remain between 60 and 85 degrees F for the next nine months (closet, basement, etc.) but near a sink. The secondary fermentation will continue unassisted for at least three months. Observe the action of the "bubbler". You will notice it is slowing, and may even stop completely. You will also notice a layer of sediment has built up on the bottom, up to an inch thick. This is dead yeast and suspended matter from the juice, and is called "lees". It's not a good idea to leave the must "resting on its lees" for a long time though, which brings us to the next stage of the winemaking process. Purification This stage is what takes the longest and is definitely the most frus- trating part of winemaking. There is nothing the amateur can do to hasten this process, without the end result being something less than real wine. It will take at least a year for must to be transformed into something drinkable. Many wines need an additional year in a corked bottle to be at their best; some, two years or more. Commercial wineries use filtration under pressure, centrifuging, and even ion-exchange to hasten wine development. This can remove character, and is why good home-made wine will often taste better than commercial. Chilling clear wine at 25 degrees F may buy you a month or two, and helps remove harsh tartaric acid by crystallization. Put the bottle in the garage in wintertime for a week or two, but watch the temperature! If it gets colder that 15 degrees, it may freeze and crack your bottle, thus losing the batch. Time is the best purification method for home winemaking, coupled with regular, careful, racking. NOTE: WAIT UNTIL AFTER SUMMER TO BOTTLE YOUR WINE, OR THE BOTTLES MAY EXPLODE IN THE SPRING, WHEN TERTIARY FERMENTATION BEGINS. More on this later. Step 7: After the wine has nearly cleared itself (after about three months), place the secondary fermenter on a table. Try not to jostle it and stir up the lees; if this happens, let it sit awhile until it settles. Remove the bubbler & plug assembly, and carefully insert your plastic racking tubing. Make sure the end is not in the lees, but over it. Start the syphon at the other end by suction, and rack all the clear must to an identical bottle that has been washed-out with Metabisulfite solution as in Step 5, and re-attach the bubbler as before. Make sure it has water in it. At this point you will have a bottle of clear or nearly-clear must. It might look good enough to drink, but it isn't. There is far too much harsh acid and bitter yeast cells in it to be tasty. Taste a little and see; you won't believe the difference six months from now. By the way, make sure after racking that all semidents and lees are washed-out of the first bottle as soon as possible after it is emptied. Also, make sure the liquid level in the new bottle is two inches from the bottom of the stopper. The secondary fermenter must have as little airspace as possible in it, while allowing room for expansion due to temperature changes. It is OK to add some storebought white wine to the bottle to make-up for any lost during racking (or, plain water can be used if less than a pint). The above racking steps will need to be repeated about three times more before bottling, as follows: Step 8: If you chill the must during winter, rack it again just before spring to get rid of the crystallized excess acid ("gravel"). Step 9: Watch the liquid level carefully when Springtime finally warms-up the bottle. It may have to be lowered slightly to avoid having it go up into the bubbler and spoil. Insurance: add a little Meta- bisulfite to the water in the bubbler after racking each time. When the bottle warms-up in late spring or early summer, it will "come alive" again with renewed action. This almost always happens. This can be caused by leftover sugar in the must, or by what is called "Malolactic Fermentation"; the must having gone through Primary and Secondary, it is now going through a Tertiary Fermentation. Malolactic fermentation is a process whereby certain bacteria in the must convert excess malic acid to lactic acid. Lactic acid is much smoother tasting in the wine than either malic or tartaric, present in the beginning. This process creates gas, which can cause prematurely sealed bottles of wine to explode. This is what the earlier warning was for. How can you tell when malolactic is over? The scientific way is to perform a total acidity titration several times over the course of the fermentation. When the reading falls and remains low, then malolactic is presumed finished. But the amateur need not do it this way; it is possible to determine by observation (when the springtime bubbles stop) and tasting (when the harsh sourness disappears). The final stage in purification is called "fining". This may or may not be required. If some slight cloudiness remains after all fermentation is complete and the new wine is completely quiet, then fining is in order. In old times, the cellarmaster used the "candle test". This involved placing a clear bottle of new wine in front of a lit candle on a stand, in a darkened room. If the candle flame could be clearly perceived, with sharp edges all around, the wine was deemed fine and ready to bottle. Modern man can use a narrow-beam flashlight. The beam should not be seen in the bottle as it is shone through for the wine to be judged "perfect". If the wine fails the above tests, it can be fined for maximum enjoyment. Many fining agents are available: Gelatin, egg-white, isinglass, powdered nonfat milk, Bentonite. Special gelatin from the winemaker's supply shop is probably the safest thing to use. Follow the directions on the package, and wait two weeks for the wine to settle. NOTE: if you don't care about sediment forming in your bottles, omit this troublesome step. Or, you could buy a filter for about $80. Commercial wineries usually filter the wine rather that go through the delicate fining process. But filtering can be tricky. Step 10: Rack the wine one last time after fining to ensure purity. Follow previous procedure. After a week or two of observation, the wine is finally ready for- The Bottling Process There is some discussion on this subject. Some say it is essential for all wine to be bottled with corks, and some say it's OK to use screw-cap bottles. The writer believes in both: premium wine for long-term aging should always be in a corked bottle, but fruit wines, white wines, and wines to be consumed within a year of bottling should have no problems with screw-cap bottles. Evidently, the cork acts as a semi-permeable filter, releasing volatile components to the atmosphere, but preventing air from re-entering. Step 11: Obtain enough wine bottles for the entire amount of the batch. A standard 750ml bottle is one-fifth gallon, so you would need 25 of these for a 5-gal batch. Wash the bottles with a non-scented detergent, rinse thoroughly, with hot water and Metabisulfite as a final rinse. Remove labels from bottles before washing! Step 12: Make or buy your own labels, and attach to clean bottles. Set up the racking syphon, as before, and fill each bottle to within 1/2 inch of the bottom of the cork (or stopper, or screw-cap). A tubing pinchcock is handy to stop the flow while maintaining the syphon. Note: a special syphoning apparatus is available with a spring-loaded foot valve, which makes this bottling quick and easy. You simply release pressure on the valve and the flow stops. NOTE: Corks must be soaked overnight prior to insertion; other closures should be dipped in a bowl of hot Metabisulfite solution before use. Immediately after each bottle is filled, insert corks to 1/8 inch below top of bottleneck (a lever corker makes this easy) or attach screw-caps tightly. You're done! NOTE: Corks must be allowed to dry for a few days. You may wish to put covers on them for a final touch. Then, the bottles must be stored on their sides, so that wine may contact the cork. Screw-cap bottles can be stored upright. Check for leaks before putting on the covers! RECOMMENDED READING WINE MAKING AT HOME by Homer Hardwicke No longer in print, but usually found in public libraries. Dated methods and procedures. Features 200 recipes for wines of all types, many fruits. It's a good, fundamental study in the art. Author prefers late bottling and mostly natural methods. Glass jugs were not widely used at the time of writing. GRAPES INTO WINE by Philip Wagner Modern, revised text. Author is a professional winemaker and has his own large-scale operation. Tremendous amount of information; a good "reference book". Author advocates heavy use of chemicals and early bottling. Written from a California winemaking perspective, notably differing from North Central and Eastern climates. Book is available in bookstores at the time of this writing. A FINAL NOTE TO NON-MICHIGANDERS: All the things you've just read apply to your state as well. Winemaking supply stores can be found in most major cities; start by looking in your Yellow Pages. Your supplier, once you've found him, will be glad to tell you where grapes and juice can be found. He will also be happy to share his experiences in the art with you.