I make homemade grapes wine in 2013. Experiences, errors and corrections using Oinoli

Wine making experiences from 2013. Today I will share with you my experience from my attempt to make homemade wine in 2013. How I went from near disaster to making a good wine.

For the previous 3 years, I had been making home wine with no others help.

I was crushing the grapes. I put the grapes puree along with the grapes in a plastic container and left it for a few days stirring it.

Then I used a grape press to get all the must from the grapes.

I put the resulting must into stainless steel containers and left it until the alcoholic fermentation was complete.

I then transferred it back into the stainless steel containers and sealed it.

The whole process took about 40 days.

The home wine I was producing was good and without additives, but lacked what we call a “body”. It didn’t have that something that stays with you. This observation was made to me by my friend Yiannis Kongalidis when he tasted my wine.

In 2013, I decided to make two drastic changes

To separate the must from the grape rinds
To consult an oenologist

27 August 2013 – Crushing the grapes

I picked the grapes and crushed them. I took only the must. Not the grapes rind.

I put the grapes in the crushing trough.

I pressed them and got the must.

I put the must in stainless steel containers. It contains no grape marcs.

I poured Mustol 1 into the must as I was told by the oenology lab.

2 September 2013 – Mold develops – Things go bad

It has been 6 days and the must has not started to “boil”. The alcoholic fermentation hasn’t started.

In previous years, when I put the grape rinds together with the must and I did not add Mustol 1, the must started boiling immediately. But this year nothing was happening.

Do you think that’s all the bad news? Of course not!

The must develops white mold on its surface and smells very bad, like a rotten egg.

Panic and disappointment were the first feelings. A year of work and a lot of expectations are wasted. Or not…

I turn to the internet to find out why fermentation hasn’t started and why the mold has developed.

I find that it is because there are not enough yeasts because I have not put in the grape rinds and that I may have put in a higher dose of Mustol 1 which contains sodium metabisulfite. Sodium metabisulfite can kill the yeasts.

Without yeast, the fermentation can’t start.

I immediately begin aerating the must while helping it come into contact with copper which helps neutralize the sodium metabisulfite.

What does aeration of the must means in my case?

I take must out of the stainless steel container and pour it with a splash into basins. Splashing helps more oxygen to come in contact with must.

In the basins I have placed two copper water pipes that I have scraped well to give them a shiny copper color.

I repeat the process several times to bring the must into contact with the oxygen and copper.

After this process the mold is gone and the stale egg smell in the must disappears. But the must has not yet started to boil.

3 September 2013 – Back to oenology lab

Back to the oenology lab. I tell them the symptoms about the mold, the smell of the rotten egg and that the must has not started to boil. The alcoholic fermentation hasn’t started yet.

They tell me that I poured more than I needed of Mustol 1.