How to make your own white wine or rosé - Step by step

• A good pair of harvesting shears with a blunt point and small scissors (not the same as pruning shears)
• Harvest crates (stackable and nestable) with handy trolley and lid .
• A scale 0-50 kilos
• A freezer or refrigerator with an external thermostat (optional)

• A bruiser - destemmer
• Potassium metabisulfite
• A precision scale
• Stainless steel bucket with lid or plastic bucket with lid to temporarily collect your bruised and destemmed grapes
• An open barrel for must treatment: fermentation bucket or stainless steel tank

• A siphon or pump
• Fermentation vessel with airlock: Stainless steel fermentation vessels with floating lid, Dame Jeanne, or a fermentation bucket .

• Wine thief to fill 250 ml measuring glass
• A 10 ml pipette to fill the acidometer
• An acidometer with blue lye
• 3 ml dropper pipettes for dripping
• A pH meter
• Funnel with fine sieve
• A wine thermometer
• A density meter or hydrometer
• 250 ml measuring tube or glass
• refractometer
• Deacidification: Precipitation lime (optional)
• Acidification: Tartaric acid (optional)

• Measuring cups 100 , 250 ml or 1 liter
  • For yeast starter (size = volume of juice divided by 100, e.g.: 20 liters of wine, measuring cup +/- 200 ml)
  • For yeast nutrition (size = same as for yeast starter)
• A wine thermometer
• Water at 30-35 degrees
• Wine yeast
• Yeast activator for yeast starter Vitadrive F3
• Yeast nutrition Vitaferm F3
• Cane sugar (optional to adjust potential alcohol)
• Tea or dish towel
• A freezer or refrigerator with an external thermostat (optional)

• Puro oxi for dirty bottles
• Clean water
• Bottle brush
• Bottle washer
• Potassium metabisulfite and citric acid
• Bottles
• A draining rack
• A filling lever or filling device
• Corks
• A corker
• Capsules
• A crimping device
• Labels

With red wine we add yeast to the must, with white wine we first press the must and do the fermentation afterwards

As your harvest date approaches, it's best to ensure all your equipment is clean and disinfected. From pruning shears to airlocks, I personally leave nothing to chance. Even after I've used something, I always rinse it before putting it away for next time. Residue from peels, juice, or seeds can contaminate your equipment, and we naturally want to work as cleanly as possible. There's a difference between cleaning and disinfecting. By cleaning, I mean removing any dust or residue from previous treatments. Definitely avoid perfumed or highly concentrated products. A neutral hand soap is ideal. Dish soap is usually quite harsh; you don't want a soapy smell in your wine.

Making white wine - clean everything that comes into contact with your must, juice, or wine. Disinfecting means removing all unwanted organisms from your winemaking equipment. Once your equipment is clean, you can immerse it again in a bath or bucket of water containing water, potassium metabisulfite , and citric acid. Use 20 grams of potassium metabisulfite and 5 grams of citric acid per 5 liters. 5 liters is usually enough to submerge everything and clean it hygienically. You can also use ready-made Puro oxi. After cleaning large equipment such as a destemming crusher or a stainless steel fermentation tank, I spray it with a spray bottle containing a solution of 2% hydrogen peroxide in water. The more the equipment or tools come into contact with your grapes, must, or wine, the more thoroughly everything needs to be disinfected. I clean the Veenmans crates in which I harvest with a strong jet of water and do not disinfect them. For example, I thoroughly clean and disinfect my pipette , which I use to dip into my juice during my measurements. The day or week before you start, go through the list at the beginning of this article and clean and disinfect everything you need in advance.

Ideally, harvest your grapes at least 24 hours after the last rain shower. Grapes soak up water during rain. I once performed a test and measured my Johanitter grapes at 61 Oechsele, or 7.8 degrees alcohol, before a rain shower. After a night of rain showers, I took further measurements, and my refractometer measured 7 Oechsele less, or 0.7 degrees of potential alcohol lost. After two beautiful sunny days, I measured 63 Oechsele. You see, rain can make all the difference. Sometimes a rainy spell in September/October is hopeless, and mold pressure is high, leaving you with difficult choices. But if at all possible, wait 24 hours after the last rainfall; 48 hours is even better.

Cold fruit will give us more control during the winemaking process. In the mornings of September or October, the grapes are around 6-10 degrees Celsius, depending on nighttime temperatures. This is better than grapes that have been hanging in the sun for a while, for example, at 22°C. At warmer temperatures, the fruit oxidizes more quickly, and acids and fruity aromas escape. Especially with early varieties like Siegerrebe and Solaris , which we sometimes harvest as early as August, we need to be early.

Both in the vineyard and later in your winery, it's best to ensure you have beautiful bunches with as many intact berries as possible. It's possible that some bunches are affected by botrytis, bird damage, sunburn, etc. It's best to remove the affected grapes or the affected parts of the bunch. The healthier the fruit, the fewer problems you'll have during winemaking. However, as a winemaker, we can prune away the bad grapes (botrytis, downy mildew, powdery mildew, Drosophila suzukii, wasp damage, sunburn, etc.). Be sure to take your time. Try to select only intact fruit, especially if you want to make wine as naturally as possible. After a thorough inspection of the vineyard, it's best to also check your winery for any leaves or twigs. We don't want those in our wine. Dense bunches, like those of my Johanitter, for example, also harbor many ladybugs. While crushing and destemming I always have a glass jar at hand with some twigs in it to save the ladybirds from the wine press .

Harvesting my third-year Regent vines for rosé

If you've enlisted help to harvest your grapes, give your pickers proper instructions about the harvest. Tell them about the selection you want and show them some examples of what you do and don't want in your harvest bins. If you have vines that aren't ready for harvest yet, inform your pickers. You can't hang back pruned bunches :) Provide them with clean, disinfected, and well-maintained equipment. Provide food and drinks, create a pleasant atmosphere, and keep an eye on everyone to ensure they're working efficiently.

In principle, you can also place your bunches in a plastic bag or bucket after harvesting. Personally, I'm a big fan of Veenmans crates, which are specially designed for harvesting. The low-lying crates can hold 10 kilos of grapes. Stacking the crates also prevents the grapes from being crushed. If you still have to drive to your winery, the stacked crates will remain nicely upright. You can also quickly weigh them on a scale; one Veenmans crate weighs 835 grams. This makes it easy to determine your net harvest weight.

As amateur winemakers, we often have children, work, other hobbies, and so on that require our attention. Because of this, we can't always pick in the morning to achieve the right temperature. Or we can pick in the morning, but we can't crush and destem. Once your grapes are harvested, you can easily store them for a day or two in the refrigerator at 6°C without losing their potency. I use an old chest freezer, a suitcase model. I use an external thermostat that connects the freezer's plug to the wall socket. A sensor is attached to the external thermostat, which I place inside the freezer. This ensures that the freezer only works when the temperature rises above a set point (for example, 8 degrees). The thermostat also cuts off the power to the freezer when the temperature falls below a certain point (for example, 6 degrees). This way, I can always control my temperature. I can easily cool 50 to 100 kilos of grapes in my chest freezer.

There are winegrowers who go much further before weighing the weight of the grape harvest. They also count the number of bunches, by variety, and by row. This allows them to map the yield per grape variety or per row of grapes. This gives them insight into the vineyard's productivity over the years. I wouldn't go quite that far.

Making wine - you know the harvested bunches. Then you can also calculate the juice yield . This display on my scale shows 9.070 kg; I still need to subtract 830 grams from the Veenmanskist. You can, of course, reset the scale to 0.000 with an empty Veenmanskist. I didn't have any empty ones left; everything was full :) I weigh my grapes immediately when they arrive at my urban winery, also known as the garden. I measure the weight per variety or possibly per wine if I combine multiple grapes at the start of the winemaking process. I find the weight useful for comparing with the must (the crushed and destemmed grapes). Years with a lot of budding will result in a lower must-to-bunch weight ratio because the stems then weigh proportionally more than the berries. In 2020, for example, I had 32 kilos of Johanitter grapes from 17 vines. I extracted 26.5 liters of must from them. This data may be interesting to compare with the 2021 harvest.

The logo already gives it away. Whether making white wine, rosé, or red wine, we destem and crush the berries. There are a few exceptions that require a separate article. In this article, we'll cover destemming and crushing for convenience. Exceptions include:

• Carbonic maceration
• Pressing in full bunches is often used for sparkling wine.

The easiest option is a destalker that removes the berries from the stems and crushes the grapes. If you have a small number of vines and are brave enough to remove all the berries from the stems with your hands or a fork, you can do that too. But if you have 10 vines (easily 160 bunches) or more, definitely consider investing in a destalker. Trust me, your desire to make wine will quickly fade after spending a few hours struggling to destalk and crush your grapes. And if you can spare a few vines, choose a stainless steel destalker. A painted one will always rust a bit if the paint is damaged or if it rubs along the seams.

In my first year, 2018, I worked with a hard sieve that I could place on a bucket. I had 20 kilos of grapes, and at dusk, I pushed them through the screen by hand, crushing, destemming, and pressing all at once. It was pitch black when I finished, and my hands were bright red (from the friction, not from the grapes, which were white Johanniter grapes) and were incredibly painful. The following year, 2019, I inherited an electric motor-driven crusher from Joseph (who had since passed away) with two rotating cylinders with a rough surface. These cylinders were spaced 0.5 cm apart, and I could throw my bunches through them. But then I had a bucket full of must, but with the stems still clinging to the stems. It was another hassle to pick out those stems and shake off the last few grapes. In 2020, I invested in a de-stalker with a sliding surface , and I have to say: "A world of difference." It's motorless, but it's very easy to operate. The stems come out the side of the device, and the must comes out the bottom. Here's a video:

To neutralize any wild yeasts and bacteria present in the must, we add a small dose of potassium metabisulfite to the must treatment vat where the crushed grapes are placed. We do this before we start crushing. You can assume you'll have 90% of the weight of your grapes in must. 100 liters of wine yields 90 liters of must. Practically speaking: add 0.5 grams of potassium metabisulfite (KDS) per 10 liters of must to the receiving vat. Note that this is only half, or +/- 0.25 grams per 10 liters of sulfite, since potassium metabisulfite also contains potassium molecules. I always list the amounts in grams of potassium metabisulfite or KDS per 10 liters; some websites list them differently. If you expect 90 liters of must, add 4.5 grams of potassium metabisulfite to your receiving vat. Or divide that amount if you have several smaller vats.

If your grapes are too heavy to move after destemming and crushing, it's best to place a temporary bucket under your crusher/destalker. This way, you don't have to lug barrels weighing tens of kilos. I collect the crushed grapes in a 30-liter plastic fermentation bucket, which I regularly pour into a must treatment vessel. This contains the 0.5 grams per 10 liters of potassium metabisulfite. Your wine is now temporarily protected; the sulfur will bind with the oxygen in the wine, preventing oxidation. It will also silence some wild yeasts and (acetic acid) bacteria.

Here you have a choice to make. Do I do a must treatment or not? I'll tell you later what factors will influence your choices. The question is: "Do I do something with the destemmed and crushed grapes, or do I move straight on to the next steps?" This is also the final step, which applies to white, red, and rosé wine. After this, the paths diverge. White and rosé wine will be pressed after the (optional) must treatment, while red wine will ferment in contact with the skins. Now that your grapes are neatly separated from the stems and your berries are also crushed, you have must. The skins and seeds are still in your juice, and now is the time to treat your must if you wish. Thanks to the sulfites from the previous step, your wine is now protected from oxidation. It's best to place a (floating) lid on your receiving vessel during the must treatment to prevent flies and ensure a constant supply of oxygen. Possible treatments include:

After destemming and crushing, you can chill your must for another 24 hours to 7 days. This is called cold maceration. A prerequisite for cold maceration is healthy fruit. With a poor harvest, it's best to skip this step. Besides the beneficial components in the skins, poor or damaged harvests contain too many harmful components in your must. With good fruit, the following factors can be a reason to definitely do a cold maceration. Cold maceration is done at 2 to 6 degrees Celsius. This prevents spontaneous yeasts and bacteria from attacking your must.

A cold maceration draws color from the skins of your wine. If you want to make red wine or orange wine, it makes sense to use a cold maceration. Anthocyanins, which give your wine color, are more soluble in the must at colder temperatures. Tannins are extracted during alcoholic fermentation. So, if you want a lot of color in your wine but no tannins, choose a longer cold maceration and a faster alcoholic fermentation.

winemaking - destemmed and crushed grapes can be given a cold maceration or treatment for juice yield Second reason: Flavor and aroma components Just like color, cold maceration also brings out the flavor and aroma in your wine without the harsh tannins. The flavor and aroma components from cold maceration enhance fruitiness and add complexity to your wine.

During a cold maceration, tannins are indeed extracted from the grape skins, but care must be taken