How to Make Wine

Chris Pearmund: Hi, I am Chris Pearmund and today we are here at the winery La Grange in Haymarket Virginia to talk about wine making both commercial and home wine making, their relevance to each other and a lot of similarities between the two. Basically in a commercial production facility, we grow grapes by the acre, produce wine by the barrel in thousands of gallons and bottle-wine 10,000 bottles a day, but for home wine makers is actually quite simple. A lot of the similarities involved, we are here to show you today those similarities to hopefully help you become a better home wine maker if you choose or to maybe appreciate a little bit more of the nuances of wine making and the adult product that it represents.

In wine production, the art of wine making has been around about 8000 years and the only thing you really need are grapes, a vessel to ferment them in and an appreciation of the final beverage. As a commercial production facility one can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in lab equipment or you just use the very basics to make wine. I am a basic kind of guy, our winery is very simple. We have four primary things to use in wine making of which a home wine maker can have as well and the total investment is only about $500, that is basically a refractometer which measures the sugar content of grape juice before fermentation. We also need a pH Meter. The pH will measure an acid-type relationship of the wine. You want a thermometer to measure the temperature of the wine during storage, during fermentation and the most important, most crucial element in the wine laboratory is your palate. So you can taste the wine, you know where it is evolving and you can taste if there is any direction that you don't want the wine to go into. The nice thing about wine is there are no products in wine fermentation or wine storage that can develop to have the wine dangerous to you. As a consumer the only danger is over consumption and there are no off-flavors that can harm anybody. So, if the wine goes bad, it's not going to hurt you, you are just not going like it as much. Prohibition in this country was from 1920 to 1933. Since 1933 many laws have evolved to protect consumers from abuses of alcohol and to help maintain the profitability of alcohol producers to the states in Federal governments. As a home producer, one can make 200 gallons per year of wine in your own household and not be liable for the taxes. You are not allowed to sell the wine, you are not allowed to do much else and basically consume it with your friends and family in your own home. But it's a lot of fun and 200 gallons per year if you do the math is nearly a bottle per day. So, it's more than enough for any home wine maker to really appreciate. I little bit about myself, I started in the restaurant industry, I was trained as a chef and worked back-of-house and worked front-of-house in nice restaurants with good wine list. I really had a passion for the product and how the wine integrates with food. Over the course of time I was lucky enough to become a wine maker about 18 years ago. I have been a wine distributor, a wine importer and a wine educator and also in the politics of wine. I really have a deep rooted passion for this product at many different levels and if you are ready, I am ready to get started to show you a little about home wine making, commercial wine production, maybe few wine secrets as well.