Modern Wine Making
Making wine is a tradition that has been practiced for centuries. While modernization has changed the face of most industries, it's comforting to find that wine is still made today in much the same fashion as it always has been. Modern wine-makers have refined the process and employed a few simplifying inventions, but nothing can take the place of aging a barrel of wine until its peak before bottling. Does this Spark an idea?
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All in the Grapes
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One advantage modern oenologists have over their predecessors is access to a wider variety of grapes, thanks to advancements in hybridization and cultivation techniques. Growers also know more about the soil requirements of different varietals and have access to a wide array of irrigation methods as well as harvesting equipment that makes getting the grapes from the vine to the presses easier.
Pressing the Grapes
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While some small operations still no doubt use the "I Love Lucy"-style of pressing grapes with their feet, most wine-makers have evolved the pressing process over the years. Hand-crank presses have given way to electric cranks that mash the grapes into pulp and juice. Further advancements have even yielded air-bladder presses that treat the grapes with more care in an effort to prevent the seeds from cracking and releasing bitter-tasting chemicals. Each new level of technology has also brought more efficiency, so less juice is left in the vat and more and more makes it into bottles.
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Fermentation
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Fermenting the wine is a technique that has been refined over the centuries, but it still closely resembles techniques employed by vintners past. Adding yeast to the juice enables it to begin fermenting the sugar into alcohol. This process slowly kills the yeast, as it is bathed in the alcohol. But more resilient wine yeast is now available, which means the alcohol content can increase before fermentation ceases from all the dead yeast. Especially in the early stages, most wineries ferment in large steel vats as opposed to the individual casks used in years gone by.
Other than the sheer size of vessels available for wine fermentation and slightly more advanced yeast, the only significant advantage modern wine-makers have over their predecessors is access to advanced hydrometers. Hydrometers, which can be analog or digital, measure the specific gravity of a liquid. In wine-making, knowing the specific gravity can allow you to measure how much sugar has already been fermented. As the sugar is metabolized by the yeast, the specific gravity drops.
Racking Equipment
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During the fermentation process, grape particles and dead yeast cells settle out of the wine. This sediment is known as the wine lees. Wine lees are beneficial for a time to the wine, but they have to be removed after a while. The process of drawing the wine from the lees is known as racking the wine; it is done by siphoning the wine into a new container and leaving the wine lees behind. This process today is done mostly by automated siphons, where the feed hose is dipped to a level just above the lees and the wine is siphoned into a fresh container.
Aging the Wine
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Wine is a topic beloved by food chemists, for the intricacies of the organic molecules in the wine give each wine its desired flavors. However, the concentration of these chemicals changes over time. Aging is the process of letting the chemicals interact and ultimately decay by simply waiting. This can be done in sterile stainless vats or in more traditional casks, but it continues after the bottling process as well. The casks, most often made of oak, can impart subtle flavors to the wine that a stainless steel vat cannot duplicate.
Wine-growing Areas
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With globalization, the areas of the world cultivating grapes and making wine is growing. While some still argue that the best wine comes from France, many countries, including America, Australia, Italy, Spain and Germany, among others, have thriving wine industries. Some of this is due to the hardier grape varieties that can grow in a variety of environments. California, which has a hotter climate than most grape-growing areas, has yielded many grape varieties that cannot be successfully grown anywhere else, and countries such as Canada and Germany have perfected alternative wine-making procedures, like those for ice wine.
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