Many people are not aware of the enormous (and at the same time exciting) work required to obtain red wine from its raw material: the grape. The work is even harder if we want to obtain very good quality red wine.
The process of making fine wine starts with harvesting the grapes. This process is done manually with shears and by placing bunches in small containers so that grapes are not squashed. These containers are loaded on trucks and immediately taken to the winery.
Once in the winery, the grapes are dumped into pools equipped with a stainless steel auger at the bottom, that when it rotates, transports grape bunches to a crushing machine. The crusher first eliminates the stalks, which are small sticks that grape bunches have, and then moves just the berries, separating them. These berries are then moved to tanks that nowadays are usually made of stainless steel.
At this stage of the process, we have in the tanks the berries, which by now have turned into grape juice and skins, also called must. The skins remaining with the grape juice allows the extraction of color and tannins. The following stage in the process is the alcoholic fermentation, which is controlled by means of temperature. Fermentation is the process by means of which yeasts convert the sugar in the grape juice to alcohol. We could say that this is the exact moment when the wine is born, to continue growing and evolving, over time. It is very interesting to be able to taste a wine when its fermentation process is completed; it is practically undrinkable. A month later, a great change can be noticed, and over time, it improves more and more. This does nothing but to show that wine is something that is alive, that is continually evolving, changing.
The following stage is called “pump over,” where we seek that skins which have decanted into the tanks move to extract the tannins and the anthocyanins that are on the “skin” of the grape, and are in themselves the color and body of the red wine.
Meanwhile, the temperature must be monitored, keeping it between 25-30 °C (77-85 °F) to extract and obtain the best aromas possible.
Once the alcoholic fermentation is completed, comes the separation, where we separate the wine from the skins. During this stage, we also do the pressing of skins by means of automatic presses, to extract any wine they may contain.
The following step is the so-called malolactic fermentation, which takes place under special conditions, transforming the malic acid into lactic acid. This makes wines more mellow and pleasant in the mouth. Racking is also performed during this stage, which is separating the wine from its lees (sediments) to avoid strange flavors.
In very good quality wines, the following step is to deposit them in casks made of oak (generally French oak with 225-liter capacity) for maturation and to achieve greater complexity through micro-oxygenation allowed by the wood. This step takes between 6 and 18 months, depending on how much wood we want the wine to have.
One of the final steps is the filtration, to give the wine brilliance and to withhold bacteria and yeasts that may harm its quality in the future. This is done by means of special filters that do not cause any stress for the product, to avoid losing aroma and quality.
After this stage, the wine is ready to be bottled, taking care to preserve the qualities of the product. The labeling and foiling can be done manually or by means of automatic machines. Generally, in high quality wines, everything is done by hand and with lots of care so that the wine has an excellent presence.