Red Wine Fruit/Must Processing

The fruit should be clean and free of rot.  This is especially important as the juice will ferment in contact with the skins and mold is detrimental to red wine color stability.  Discard any rotten or unripe fruit as needed. 

The next step is to de-stem and crush the grapes.  If you crush the grapes without removing them from the stem, you may produce wine that has an undesirable "stemmy" taste.  You should also avoid crushing the seeds.  You can use a mechanized stemmer/crusher for speed, but for smaller lots, you can de-stem and crush manually.  Manual crushing will work as long as there is enough crush to get the fermentation going.  The fruit will break down further as the must ferments and the cap is pushed down daily.

Add 30 ppm SO₂ to the must.  Add SO₂ to an estimated volume.  Estimate that every 15 pounds of fruit will yield 1 gallon of liquid.  Enzymes can be used to promote color extraction.  Only enzymes suggested for use with red wines should be used.