Bottle of wine on a wood table

How to Make Wine

Making wine can be a fun and easy process. Especially if you’re using a wine kit.

I highly suggest using a kit to make your first batch of wine. This will give you a great education on how the process works. There are a lot of ins and outs of making wine. but a wine kit makes it fairly foolproof.

Wine kits are also a cheap and convenient way to get started in winemaking. Wine kits give you almost everything to make wine; equipment and starter juice. Usually, you’ll be buying your bottles separately. You can also save your wine bottles from the wine you’ve bought at the store.

We’ll go over how to make wine from a kit in this post.

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Gathering Your Supplies

Wine Kit

There are a lot of options for buying your first wine kit. Here’s a list of 10 home winemaking kits you could use from.

Items that usually come in a wine kit:

  • Primary fermenter- usually a white bucket
  • Secondary fermenter- glass bottle, also known as glass carboy
  • Food grade tubing- used to rack your wine
  • Racking cane- a device you use to rack your wine
  • Air lock- a device you put on top of your fermenter to make it air tight but allow air to escape
  • Hydrometer- an instrument used to measure liquid density
  • Long sturdy spoon- to give you wine an initial stir
  • Corker
Wine grapes on the vine in the vineyard.

Fruit

You can make wine from any kind of fruit. You can pick it wild, go to the grocery store, or your local fruit stand. 

Many kits come with fruit juice all ready for you. You can also buy a fruit juice made specifically for wine making, if you want a foolproof and easy process.

Bottles

If you’re making 6 gallons of wine you’ll need ~30 bottles. Most kits produce 6 gallons of wine.

Additional Items

These items might not be in your wine kit. 

  • Cleaners- Cleaning all items used in wine making is important to prevent dirty/debris build up on your equipment.
  • Corks- check if your kit comes with corks or not
  • Sanitizers- Sanitizing all wine making equipment is important so you’re not introducing bacteria and/or yeast into your batch.

Making Your Wine

All wine kits will come with instructions. Read through the instructions from start to finish before beginning. You’ll need to make sure you’re around to rack and bottle your time at the appropriate time. Make sure you’re not on vacation when you have to bottle your wine. Letting your wine go too long will affect the taste of your wine.

Your wine kit will show you exact steps for your wine batch.  

Step 1

Ensure all wine making equipment is sterilized and rinsed thoroughly. This is a great cleaner to use. Of course, use the instructions on the cleaner.

Step 2

Pour your fruit juice in your bucket(primary fermenter) and add your first ingredients. This could include water, sugar, any wine acids, grape tannins, or nutrients. Your kit will tell you what you’ll be adding. Top your bucket with water. Give it a good stir.

Step 3

Take a specific gravity reading using your hydrometer. Your kit might give this to you but it’s good practice for future batches. Specific gravity is the density of the liquid compared to water.

Wines will usually have a specific gravity of 0.990 – 0.960 when they are finished.

Step 4

Put the lid on with the airlock and let your batch ferment. This should take ~7 days.

Temperatures are important for wine making! During fermenting keep the room temperature 70° F and 80° F. Below 70° F you could stall out the ferment and anything above 80° F might produce different flavors and the yeast becomes less effective.

When the airlock is bubbling you know fermentation is happening.

Step 5 

Rack the wine to remove sediment. This is done after the specific gravity has dropped to or below 1.020. Racking the wine means to take your wine from the primary ferment and put it in the secondary fermenter. You’ll siphon the wine from the top down, careful not to get any of the sediment on the bottom. 

You’ll rack your wine batch 3 or 4 times with a wine kit. So if you accidentally get some sediment on the first rack you have another chance to get clear wine on the next rack.

Depending on your wine kit instructions, you may wait 7-10 days then rack again.

Then wait three to four weeks for the last rack. 

Step 6

Bottle your wine. Make sure your bottles are sterilized and rinsed. 

You’ll siphon the wine into the bottle in the same way as you racked the wine. Don’t fill your bottles all the way to the top, leave room for the cork. 

Cork your wine. 

Wine bottles on a rack.

Step 7

Age and enjoy your homemade wine. For best results, age your wine 7 days to a full month. I love opening a bottle and seeing how it changed from the last bottle or last month. As the wine ages the taste changes.

Ideally, you want to store your wine in a place that stays between under 55° F and 70° F without major fluctuations.

Three wine glasses lined up on a bar

Takeways

Wine making is fun and creative. You can make the process complex or simple. 

To keep it simple,  make wine from a kit. Once you buy a kit, all you need to do is buy the wine juice to make more batches.

You can be adventurous and use any kind of fruit you want. I’ve made wine from blackberries, mangoes, and apples. All give completely different challenges and flavors. Making wine from whole fruit gives a lot more steps but also can be fun.

I recommend keeping a wine journal with two sections. One section on the process of how you made the wine and another section on how the wine aged. This is a great way to recreate what went well and to stop mistakes from happening again.

What’s your experience with making wine? Have you tried different types of fruit?