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Want to Make Some Red Wine?
from: Maxx Guide to WineOf all the types of wine, red is one of the best. There are actually many types of red wine, with many different names, though most are made by the same methods.
Red wine is an exhilarating wine made from black grapes. It's the skins of these grapes that gives the wine its color.
At the beginning stage of red wine making, the grapes are placed into a crusher, which gently break the skins of the grapes. It will depend on the type of wine you're making and the tannin required whether the stalks are going to be used or discarded. Once completed, the grapes are put into a fermentation vat with the skins, which is a long process which takes several weeks to finish. If you use a higher temperature, more tannin and color is extracted from the grapes.
If you're going to make soft wines, the whole grapes are fermented using sealed vats. Carbon dioxide that becomes trapped in the sealed vats ferments the grapes under pressure -- usually a quick process of just a few days. But remember, color and tannin content of the wine is based on how long the fermenting process requires. If this process takes a long time, the wine will generally retain more flavor and color.
What's left of the bulk of the grapes goes through a press and is crushed to create a tannic wine. This tannic wine is sometimes added with a free run wine in order to add a bit more structure to the wine blend. You then mix the press and vat wine and transfer to tanks or barrels for a second fermentation, which takes the longest, though this process will bring out the quality and taste from the wine.
Fine red wine of all types spend a minimum of a year in the barrels, but some spend much more time -- sometimes several years. Red wine is also fine tuned using egg whites which suspend the yeast and other solids found in the wine downwards, before the wine is racked, filtered, and then bottled.
Once red wine has been bottled, it can be shipped to wine outlets and sold. Some wine, however, is stored for another period of time in the bottle before being available for sale.
How much time a wine spends in the bottle is important, although not every wine need a lot of time in the bottle. The more complex and expensive types of red wine benefit the most from aging in the bottle to preserve its flavor and color. Simpler types of red wine, however, don't require much time at all in the bottle.
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