Wine Production
Winemaking is an age-old activity. Man is thought to have discovered fermentation thousands of years ago, and the result of transforming the natural sugars in grapes into alcohol created a new sensation and experience for those who drank the juice of the Gods.
Winemaking is at least 8,000 years old, but we can say that it was the Romans who refined the making of wine and who carried it with them across Europe.
How Is Wine Produced?
Wine is produced through several stages. I consider the most important and challenging to be the one that is the beginning of everything: the growing of the vine. It is at this stage that quality is determined in the wine production process.
The vine is a plant with an annual cycle, in which Man prunes it during its dormancy and tends it throughout the rest of the year until the harvest. This stage reflects a year of dedication and effort, aimed at achieving the best possible quality in the making of the wine.
Viticulture is the origin of any wine, because it is in the vineyard that everything begins and it is in the vineyard that the grapes ripen until the producer or the winemaker takes the decision to harvest for wine production.
What Are the Stages of Wine Production?
How do you make wine? The stages of wine production are: ripening, harvest, destemming, crushing, pressing, fermentation, maturation or ageing, fining, filtration and bottling, after which a new stage begins, namely bottle ageing until the wine is sold.
1. Ripening
The ripening of the grapes is the sole objective of a good grower. For winemaking, we need well-tended, healthy and ripe grapes, which is what any producer longs for. And it is for their sake that, year after year, the grower contends with the conditions nature hands out, which, as we know, are never the same.
Ripening the grapes is not just about reaching the sugars that will allow the minimum alcohol content we need to have a wine. It serves far more than that.
During their time on the vine, a series of compounds develop and challenge us to reach the balance between sugars and acidity and, just as importantly, to reach the ripeness of the phenolic compounds, whose main protagonists are the well-known tannins, the compounds that give rise to aromas and flavours, as well as being responsible for colour, so important in the making of red wines.
2. Harvest
The harvest is perhaps the most liberating operation and, at the same time, the most stressful for a grower. It is at this stage of wine production that a year’s work comes to a head, and it is also the stage at which you cannot risk ruining all of that work.
Today, mechanical harvesting is the most common worldwide, using harvesting machines to do the work of picking. There are still regions where mechanical harvesting is not possible, because of the conditions of the terrain, so it is done by hand. And there are still certain vineyards where, for oenological reasons, hand-harvesting is used.
The debate over the quality of one method versus the other is still lively, but as labour grows scarce, the most widely used way of picking is increasingly the mechanical one, reserving hand-harvesting only for very specific wines that require greater precision in the picking of the grapes.
3. Destemming and Crushing
Destemming and crushing the grapes is the first operation on the grapes’ arrival at the cellar. As soon as the grapes are received, the winemaker sets them to be destemmed and crushed, so as to separate the stalk (the stem of the bunch) from the berries and, at the same time, usually in the same machine, to crush the berries so as to burst them and force the juice enclosed within them to come out more easily.
These operations, although frequently done as I describe, are also capable of being reversed in their sequence. They may not even be carried out, or only one of them may take place. This will depend on the wine the winemaker wants or intends as a result — in other words, it depends on how the wine is to be made.
4. Pressing
Pressing is one of the stages that is carried out both at the start of the wine production process and after fermentation, depending on the type of wine we want to make. Pressing serves to extract the greatest possible amount of liquid present in the grapes, whether they are fresh or already fermented.
The way white wine or rosé wine is made is normally called “bica aberta” (free-run). This means that the moment the grapes enter the cellar, they are crushed and then pressed, with minimal contact between the juice of the grapes and their skins.
The way red wine is made is normally called “curtimenta”. That is, in red wine production the grapes, once destemmed and crushed, go to the fermentation tank where the curtimenta takes place, that is, the maceration of the grape skins with their juice, which we call must. After fermentation, the now-fermented and macerated grapes go to pressing, where the wine still held within them is extracted.
5. Fermentation
Fermentation is the transformation of the sugar present in the grapes into alcohol. In winemaking this is carried out by yeasts, which can be indigenous, that is, present on the grapes, or selected yeasts, which are bought to have greater control over fermentation, and this decision depends on how the wine is to be made. During fermentation, carbon dioxide is released and a countless number of chemical reactions take place.
The fermentation of white wines normally happens when we already have only the juice, or must, of the grapes, whereas in red wines fermentation happens while the juice, or must, is in contact with the grapes. Within each of these methods of fermenting there are countless variations that depend on how we want to make the wine.
There is also what is known as malolactic fermentation, which in truth is not really a fermentation, since the microorganisms responsible for this process are bacteria and not yeasts. Malolactic fermentation normally happens during the ageing of wines and consists of transforming malic acid into lactic acid, and it is very important in winemaking.
6. Ageing or Maturation
Ageing, or maturation, begins when fermentation ends. From here on, the winemaker takes decisions according to how they wish to age the wine produced. They may want a wine with no influence from wood, ageing only in tank, or they may mature it for long periods in wood, usually oak.
It is a highly defining stage in wine production and in the style and type of wine that will emerge in the end and, of course, it depends greatly on the time and the place where the wine is aged.
7. Fining and Filtration
The fining and filtration of wines take place after ageing. Fining is the stage in wine production at which the winemaker prepares the wine for bottling, and it precedes filtration. It is normally at these stages that wines cease to be vegan, since for fining, proteins of animal origin are normally used, with the main aim of “cleaning” the natural cloudiness of the wines. After fining, we have filtration, which is responsible for brightening the wine and stabilising it microbiologically.
In the production of natural or minimal-intervention wines, these stages do not exist.
8. Bottling
Bottling is the most traumatic stage for any wine. There is even the expression “bottle sickness”, which is the phase right after bottling, in which the wine suffers from the bottling process and its quality drops because of this stage. Bottling consists of placing the wine that has been ageing in a tank into bottles. As it is a process of dividing a large volume into many small ones, it brings about qualitative changes that, by the end of 2 to 3 months, disappear, with all its characteristics returning to the wine and leaving it ready to be drunk or to age further.
Now that you know how wine is made, I am sure you will go on delighting in the work of the growers and winemakers behind this industry. The wine we have at home is the fruit of the hard work of everyone involved, and that is something that, even unconsciously, is felt in every bottle we taste.
From the page to the glass
- Cascale Petroleiro Palhete em Talha — White and red varieties together in clay talha, sealed for eight months.
- 1808 Espumante Brut Nature — Traditional method, twenty months on lees, no sugar at disgorgement.
- Cascale T Tinto — Spontaneously fermented at 690 metres, 18 months in French oak. Organic.
