This guide is written with the beginning, SMALL SCALE, HOME wine maker in mind and is an illustrated, master document tying together the wine making process described by other EDWG “summary” articles. You will notice some text coloured as follows, red wine making process; This is a link to another document. You can either read on, or click to be taken to another document for a more complete explanation of the concept or process.

Wine Making is a process beginning in the vineyard. This guide starts you off at the point where you pick the grapes and takes you through the individual steps to finally get your precious wine into its bottle.

The Guide presents low cost, sometimes home built equipment so that the beginner can get started with a relatively small financial commitment to expensive equipment.

It's true that wine making is a combination of practice, art and science. One selects the material based on its perceived qualities, then tweaks it based on measurement and taste. All the while you make sure that, through good practice and knowledge, only friendly microbes and yeasts visit your wine. You may give the process gentle pushes and nudges to protect it from microbes, enhance characters that are already present. You take particular care to make sure that the finished product will last for a reasonable time in the bottle until its finally consumed by you and your impressed family and guests.

There are some important differences between making red and white wines. Red wines are fermented with the skins and pulp. The whole lot is then pressed after the fermentation is complete or near complete. White wines on the other hand are normally fermented as a clear juice. That is, the grapes are first crushed, pressed with the resulting juice clarified lightly before fermentation is commenced. The Guide will point out other specific differences.

You may find it useful to refer to the diagrams summarising the red wine making process and the white wine making process.