How to Make Sparkling Wine

To make sparkling wine, follow the steps for making white wine - then include these steps at the end of the process.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• homemade white wines
• Champagne bottles, corks and wire
• siphon hoses
• wine yeasts
• ice baths and/or freezer
• Wine Yeasts
• Siphon Hoses
• Ice Baths And/or Freezer
• Homemade White Wines
• Champagne bottles, corks and wire

Starting Bottle Fermentation

1. Follow the process of making white wine, but omit final addition of campden tablet (sulfite) during final racking. (See "How to Make White Wine from Fresh Grapes.")

2. Figure out how much sugar you'll need to add to wine to create 4 pounds of atmospheric pressure after fermentation. Usually, 4 grams of sugar for each liter of wine will make 1 atmosphere of pressure.

3. Dissolve the sugar in a small amount of wine to make sugar syrup.

4. Rehydrate yeast in warm water and add to sugar syrup. Let sit for 10 minutes.

5. Add syrup/yeast mixture to wine. Stir thoroughly and shake to aerate.

6. Siphon wine into bottles. (See "How to Bottle Wine.")

7. Insert corks and secure with wire.

8. Lay bottles on sides to ferment.

Removing Sediment

9. When sediment has formed, give each bottle a slight, 1/2-inch twist and invert about 2 inches. Do this every two to three days until bottles are upside down and sediment sits on the corks.

10. When wine is clear, place bottles, upside down, in a deep-freeze with tops of bottles inserted in a freezing mixture.

11. Remove cork and sediment when sediment freezes.

12. Add 1 tsp. sugar syrup per bottle as quickly as possible and immediately recork. Fit cork with wire.

13. Let age or serve. Chill wine to about 55 degrees F before serving.

Tips & Warnings

• Bubbles form when yeast ferments in the bottle.
• Use a white wine that has been fermented to absolute dry.

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[Imker]

on 1/6/2008 I don't think this sentence is clear: Figure out how much sugar you'll need to add to wine to create 4 pounds of atmospheric pressure after fermentation. Usually, 4 grams of sugar for each liter of wine will make 1 atmosphere of pressure.

First, you're asking me to figure it out? Your job is to explain how to do it.

Secondly, you refer to the pressure as "pounds" of pressure and later as "atmospheres".

Uh uh.