Experience the Thrill of Wine Making

“Welcome to Winemaking the simple and easy way through our help. You can produce top quality wines in just four to six weeks with little cost and effort by following our simple step by step instructions. We will guide you through the process of ‘On premise Do-It-Yourself Wine Making’, even if this is your first attempt.”

If you have experienced the thrill of making your own wine before, you will find the process varies little from the standard winemaking procedures. We at The Gilded Grape Winery will guide you each step of the way in producing a top quality wine and you enjoying the experience.

The importance of sanitation in the winemaking process can NOT be stressed enough. Everything that touches your wine (all equipment) must be sanitized with a recognized sanitizing solution. Just as important is thoroughly rinsing off all the equipment after the sanitation procedure. Please follow our instructions or the maker of the wine kit you have chosen in taking care to measure the specific gravity. This allows the wine to tell you when it is time to go to the next step in its production.

You can get as involved as you want in the making of your wine from the beginning to when you take it proudly home. You will start out with a Food-grade plastic container with a cover for your Fermentation process. After everything is mixed by you with our help, you must add the yeast, which we can not do, to the batch of wine you have chosen to make to start the fermentation. You cap the bucket with an airtight bung and a Airlock half filled with water, you will see the water bubbling over the next several days, 10 to 15, this is the gas escaping as the yeast is eating away the sugar from the grape juice.

At this point you go home and leave your wine in our care until it is ready to be bottled or we will give you a schedule of the days that you would need to come back to move the to the next step. If you do NOT return as instructed, we wait at most a couple days and take you to the next step so that your wine will not ruin.

Once the Specific Gravity has become 1.010 you proceed to the next step in your process of making the wine. This process is called Racking. The glass carboy will be sanitized along with the pumping equipment. Make sure everything is thoroughly rinsed before you begin. You very gently siphon from the bucket into the carboy, 23 liter (6 gallon) glass bottle, can be plastic. Make sure you do not disturb the sediment on the bottom of the bucket. We will instruct you adding the necessary items and mixing them. Then sealing off the top of the bottle with a airlock and bung. The wine needs to be stirred vigorously twice a day for the next three days to remove the carbon dioxide. Let the wine then sit for the next several days to allow the wine to clear.

When the wine is finished and it is ready to be bottled. You can bring your own wine bottles from home that you have saved or we have them that you can buy in the store starting at $1.00 each. After you sanitize and rinse each bottle you will pump wine into the your bottle (using equipment we have in the store), cork, label and shrink wrap. You have completed the process, you now 27 to 30 bottles of quality wine that you can be proud to serve with a very professional look

Come by The Gilded Grape Winery and Experience the thrill of wine making.

Credit: R J Spagnols, makers of many of our wine kits.