How to Make Red Wine at Home [6-Gallon Red Wine Recipe] (2024)

Step #1: Equipment You Need to Make Wine

Step #2: Winemaking Ingredients

Step #3: Our 6 Gallon Red Wine Recipe

The key to making great wine is a thriving yeast. Give your yeast the best possible conditions by:

1. Keeping the temperature consistent (Red wine = 68-83°F, white wine = 59°F or less).

2. Providing plenty of energy (sugars).

3. Keeping it healthy with nutrients.

Don't worry, I'll explain how in the recipe down below!

Morewinemaking.com, Winegrapesdirect.com, and BrehmVineyards.com have a great selection of fresh and frozen grape musts ready to ship to your door.

They come in all your favorite grape varietals and save you the hassle of crushing, pressing, and de-stemming!

Sorry to start with something so boring but this step is absolutely crucial!

We need to clean and sanitize (disinfect) everything before we use it. Even if it has never been used.

A long brush will be needed to reach the bottom of the fermenters.

A scrub with some hot water and a brush is good enough to get everything clean (as long as it's not filthy).

How to Sanitize Winemaking Equipment

To sanitize we can either use heat or chemical agents.

To heat, we can use the oven or even the dishwasher (on a hot setting). A pressure cooker can work too.

The heat must be sustained for a period of time to kill off any pesky microorganisms.

If you're taking the chemical route, then you have a few options.

1. Sodium Metabisulfite and Potassium Bisulfite -these are the most commonly used sanitizers in winemaking. Sodium Metabisulfite is commonly know as Campden Tablets and is great for plastic and glass materials. Fifty grams is added to each gallon of water.
2. Bleach - but only a weak mixture of around 1 part bleach to 20 part water. We must rinse equipment after using bleach.
3. Acid sanitizers - these are products like Star San and SaniClean. They use phosphoric acid to clean. They are corrosive to soft metals though, so be careful!

It's always a good idea to give your equipment a final rinse with clean water after sanitizing. We don't wan't any chemical residue to remain.

Remember to check the care instructions for your carboys/fermenters just in case they have specific rules when it comes to cleaning.

A)The first thing you need to do is a bit of 'quality control'.

Sort through your fruit and remove any fruit that's not ripe. Any grapes that are old looking (especially rotten) or not ripe yet should be removed.

We also need to remove stalks and stems and sticks. Basically anything that's not ripe grapes shouldn't be there.

B) Next, we want to give the grapes a rinse.

This is to remove any dirt, residue, or pesticides.

We don't want to get them overly wet because grapes are great at absorbing moisture. Taking on more water isn't good for the flavor of our wine.

C) Next is the fun bit! Well, the hard bit anyway. All of our ripe fruit needs to be crushed.

There's no right or wrong way to do this to be honest, but we don't want to lose any delicious juice.

A potato masher or a wine crate are both useful for this. Hands and feet are good too!

We don't want to completely liquidize our fruit, just bust it up and release the juices.

We also want to get rid of the stems.

I know a blender sounds ideal for this purpose but it's not! It tends to make a more bitter juice as it contains much more skin and seed.

• For red wine, we want ALL of the fruit. Juice, skin, pulp, the lot! This is then transferred to the primary fermenter.
• For white wine, we need to strain the juice to separate it from the skins and pulp. This is done immediately and we can use a cloth or pressing bag to do so. This is then transferred to the secondary fermenter.

This step is really important or the wine could easily be spoiled by any bacteria existing in the fruit.

We want to do this straight after we've crushed our fruit. This is to limit the amount of oxidation our grapes receive.

If you're making wine from fruit concentrate, then you don't need to do this. The fruit juice has already been sanitized.

To kill any bacteria or unwanted wild yeasts in our fruit we add Campden tablets. The same thing we use to sterilize our equipment in 'step 1'.

These are made from potassium metabisulfite and are perfectly safe for human consumption in these doses.

How to Add Campden Tablets to Wine Must

The basic rule is 1 Campden tablet per gallon of fruit juice.

The tablets need to be crushed and dissolved in a small amount of fruit juice (or water first).

This is then added to the whole mixture and stirred thoroughly.

This must then rest for at least 24 hours.

The next step is adding wine yeast (and nutrients) and we may kill the yeast if it's added within 24 hours of the Campden tablets.

You can cover the fermenter with a cloth to keep anything from dropping inside but it should not be sealed with anything tightly. The sulfur dioxide released from the tablets needs somewhere to escape.

Our red wine mixture of juice, skins (some stems), and fruit pulp is now slowly beginning to naturally ferment due to the wild yeasts present on the grapes.

The potassium metabisulfite that we added is great for winemaking because it kills off the bad stuff and only allows the stronger natural wine yeasts to survive.

For red wine at this stage we want to maintain a temperature of about 70-75º F (21-24C).

However, the experienced winemakers do something called a 'cold soak'. This involves keeping the wine must at around 35-45°F.

It's important that we avoid the 50-55°F temperature range as this is where 'bad' yeasts thrive.

After a couple of days you'll start to notice the pieces of more solid fruit floating up and forming a layer on top.

This isn't ideal as we want the juice to mix with the fruit as much as possible to absorb the color. Therefore, we should gently stir the mixture 2 or 3 times a day.

The longer we leave the juice in contact with the skins and pulp, the more color and flavor our red wine will take on.

The color extraction will reach its peak between 5-8 days after the fruit was crushed.

You might find the juice will actually lose some color vibrancy if you wait longer than this.

We know our ripe grapes contain quite a lot of sugar but it's not enough. Not enough to make a wine with a typical ABV of 10-14% anyway.

So we must add sugar to our crushed fruit mixture.

We also want our grape must to be within a certain range of pH and TA (both measures of acidity).

So we might need to adjust the acidity levels of our wine must.

We discussed these measurements at length when we explained how to test wine grapes earlier (you can skip back to thathere).

It's critically important that we get these values within the desired operating ranges before we start fermentation.

Research has shown that correcting acidity levels now before fermentation starts give our wine much more prominent and pleasing aromas compared to correcting after fermentation.

How to Calculate How Much Sugar is Needed

a) We must first measure the sugar content of our freshly pressed grape juice.

Do you remember what we need to do this?

Our hydrometer!

Some hydrometers can take a few different readings butSpecific Gravity (SG)orBrix (°Bx) is what we need.

With your hydrometer, you should also receive a special measuring cylinder. This should be filled with a sample of our fruit juice.

It's important that our juice is at 68 °F (20 °C) because this is usually the temperature a hydrometer is calibrated at. But check your instructions for any variations.

We can usually adjust for +/- 9 °F (5 °C) by +/- 0.25 °Brix or 0.001 SG (source).

The measuring cylinder should be placed on a steady, flat surface.

The hydrometer is then placed carefully into the glass cylinder and allowed to bob around until it becomes perfectly still.

The hydrometer reading at the surface of our juice is what we need.

Write this down and don't lose it!

This reading is very important as it allows us to calculate exactly how much sugar we need to add to create a wine with our desired alcohol strength.

The table below is really helpful for conversions.

b) Now, you need to decide exactly how strong (alcoholic) you want your wine to be.

Something in the region of 10.5-13.5% ABV is probably ideal.

We don't want to go any lower because this gives microorganisms the chance to survive and ruin the wine.

A reasonably high ABV kills off anything we don't want and decreases the chances of spoilage.

Most home-winemakers aim for the 'holy grail' of 22 Brix which gives a wine of around ~12.5%.

We'll use these two numbers (the initial hydrometer reading and our target ABV) inn the next section to calculate how much sugar we need to add.

Measuring for Acidity (pH and TA)

TA or Titratable Acidity basically tells us how tart/acidic a wine is.

pH is a measure of the degree of acidity (or alkalinity).

If we can get our wine to fall within certain ranges of pH and TA, we have a much better chance of having a vibrant and fruity wine.

So what are we looking for and how do we measure it?

The Ideal pH for Red Wine Must

Our ideal window is the 3.4 - 3.6 pH range.

If we go lower than this our wine may taste vinegary and we will stress the yeast. If we go higher then our wine may be prone to spoiling and not last long.

To measure the pH of red wine we need a pH meter.

Test strips are an option for white wine but the color of red wine causes interference with the color coded results.

A pH meter typically costs between $10 - $40 and is the most accurate option.

The Ideal TA for Red Wine Must

The ideal Titratable Acidity range for a dry red wine is typically 6.0–7.0 g/L.

We can measure this using a specialist kit available from most wine making stores.

Before we add the yeast and really get things moving, it's critically important that we get our fruit juice in the correct ranges for sweetness (Brix) and acidity (pH and TA).

We stand a much greater chance of producing a well balanced and enjoyable wine if we make adjustments now.

If you're really lucky, your grape must is already hitting the right notes.

Remember we want:

If you're even slightly out we need to make adjustments.

Making corrections now gives our wine must a much greater chance of transforming into something delicious after fermentation.

How to Balance Sugar

To recap, continuing with the same example as before:

Example

I want my final bottled wine to be 12.5% ABV.

That means we need to raise the sugar content of our grape must to 22 Brix.

Again, our table from before is very useful for conversions.

a) First, we take our initial hydrometer reading (in Brix) and our target value (in Brix).

If we need to raise the sugar level from 14 Brix to 22 Brix, we have a shortfall of 8 Brix per gallon.

b) Second, we multiply our shortfall by the number of gallons of juice we have.

Continuing with the same example and our 5 gallon recipe, we have:

8 Brix * 5 gallons = 40

c) We know that 0.125 pounds of dextrose (corn sugar) raises 1 gallon by 1 Brix.

Therefore, we multiply our answer from (b) by 0.125

0.125 * 40 = 5 pounds of sugar

This gives us the information we need.

We must add 5 pounds of corn sugar (dextrose) to our fruit juice to raise the sugar concentration high enough to make 12.5% ABV wine.

How to Balance Acidity

Increasing the acidity of a wine is definitely easier than decreasing it. But, we can do both.

Changing TA or pH is very much a 'balancing' act as changing one directly affects the other.

It's really important to raise or lower TA or pH incrementally and test the effects on each other as you go.

You can estimate the proposed effects with the simple math below.

We have a problem if we have both high TA and pH. This is because we need to lower the pH (make it more acidic), and in doing so we increase the already high TA.

In this situation you can use calcium sulfate to lower pH and not affect TA too much at the same time.

For low pH and low TA, your best solution is a to blend with a wine that has higher TA.

Balancing TA

To raise the TA, we can add tartaric acid directly to our must in a relatively straightforward ratio.

Example

If our wine must measures 4.0g/L and our target is 7.0 g/L then we simply add 3 grams of tartaric acid per liter of wine must to make up the shortfall.

There are 3.78 liters in a gallon (US) so to correct for gallons we have:

3.78*3 = 11.3 grams per gallon.

If we have 5 gallons of wine must then:

5*11.3 = 56.5 grams

Therefore, 56.5 grams of tartaric acid needs to be added to our grape must to raise the TA from 4.0g/L to 7.0 g/L.

To lower the TA, blending with a wine or juice with a lower TA is the probably the best method.

You may also add water but this can make the wine feel thin and dilute the flavor if you add too much.

A final option (and last resort) is to add potassium carbonate or calcium carbonate.

They are added in the same ratios as tartaric acid (like a reverse procedure).

Potassium carbonate only works after the wine is kept in cold storage for a week or two. Calcium carbonate doesn't require cold storage but will probably have a negative affect on the taste of your wine.

You should always mix these with wine must instead of water.

Balancing pH

We alter pH using the same methods as we do to change TA.

Adding 1.0 g/L of tartaric acid will lower pH by around 0.1.

In theory, 1.0 g/L of potassium carbonate will raise the pH (make it less acidic) by 0.1 but it's best to test as you go.

Add your required dosage in increments and test the effects on TA as you go.

Ok, we're finished all the 'prep' work now. It's time to actually start the scientific process that makes wine.

Fermentation is what we need to happen, and the process can be explained a little like this:

We don't care much for the carbon dioxide and heat energy by-products, but we do care about that precious alcohol (ethanol)!

At this stage, we are going to activate the yeast. It's really important that we treat our yeast with care and respect and give it the ideal conditions to thrive. If not, we won't get that delicious wine at the end.

How to Activate Wine Yeast

You can do this in 3 slightly different ways. Your wine yeast will always come with instructions so you can always follow those too.

The most effective way to activate wine yeast takes a little bit of extra work. However, it stresses the yeast the least and gives the best conditions for fermentation. If you're a bread-maker you'll be familiar with the concept.

The following instructions are for a 5 gallon batch of wine, but you can multiply the proportions as required for larger batches.

a) Sprinkle one packet of wine yeast and a 1/4 teaspoon yeast nutrient to one pint of wine must. A glass jar (sanitized) is the perfect container. The top should be covered with plastic film wrap and held in place tightly with an elastic band.

b) We need to add a small hole in the plastic film for carbon dioxide to escape.

c) The benefit with this method is that the wine yeast is at its peak when it's added to the rest of the must. Therefore, fermentation starts immediately.

So we want to see it foam up and then after the foaming has reached its peak and begun to slow, it is ready to be added to the rest of the wine batch. You'll need to wait at least 12 hours for this.

We need to get the starter within 10°F of our fruit juice before we add it.

This is just so we don't shock the yeast too much.

2) The Easiest Method - Add it Straight in

This one really is easy and it's the one most people do.

Just sprinkle the wine yeast straight in!

You can give it a gentle stir but it's not really necessary.

This method is easy but the wine yeast won't 'kick in' immediately like the previous method. It might take 6 hours for fermentation to actually begin.

3) The Method on the Instructions - Rehydration

This is the method you'll commonly find on your yeast packet.

Wine yeast has been dehydrated before it is put into packets. This is to stop it becoming active.

Therefore, to 'wake it up' it needs water.

These are the instructions for Red Star wine yeast (5g sachet):

- Pour the wine yeast into a 1/4 cup (50ml) of water at 95-100°F.

- Wait for 20 minutes.

It's really that simple!

The important thing here is to measure the water temperature accurately. If you operate outside of the stated temperature range then you will kill the yeast. So, a thermometer is required for this method.

Ideal Storage Conditions for Fermentation

We need to provide our yeast with its favorite conditions for an effective fermentation to take place.

We need to make sure these three things are taken care of:

1. 1

   Temperature - For red wine we want to keep our wine must between 68-83°F (20-28°C). For white wine we want a maximum of 59°F (15°C).

2. 2

   Sugar - We can't make alcohol without sugar.

3. 3

   Nutrition - we need to keep our yeast healthy by adding yeast nutrients regularly.

It's also important that we don't seal the fermenter. We need to allow carbon dioxide to escape.

Therefore, covering it something like cheesecloth is a great idea. A double layer is perfect. It can be held in place with elastic or string.

Our wine is now sitting in the secondary fermenter, plugged with an airlock.

We want to rack our wine shortly after pressing. Around 24 hours after pressing is the ideal time for our sediment to settle at the bottom.

There will be a noticable layer of what we call the gross lees (the bigger bits) lying at the bottom of the fermenter.

To rack we use our racking cane (auto-siphon) to suck the grape must out of the fermenter and into another fermenter (carboy).

The destination fermenter should be positioned below the one we are draining.

The hole in the racking cane into which the grape must is sucked, is positioned an inch or two from the end. This means it doesn't sit directly in the sediment.

It's important that the opposite end (where the grape must exits into the new fermenter) sits at the bottom of the new vessel. We want to minimize air contact so we want to feed our wine into the liquid instead of pouring or splashing.

Like before, we fill as close to the top as possible. Your overall volume will be less because we have left some sediment and a little wine behind (it's a loss you're just going to need to accept!).

Top up with a decent wine of the same grape varietal. You can also use a dense gas like argon to blanket your containers and prevent oxygen from reaching your wine.

Our freshly racked wine is now ready to age. But, first there's the small matter of malolactic fermentation.

But, what is it and why do we need it?

If you want to skip MLF you can skip this section.

Our wine may go through MLF naturally but we can add a malolactic culture just to make sure.

There are a few measurements we should take just to make sure we have the right conditions for MLF.

Ideal conditions for MLF are:

If our wine exceeds 16% ABV, has a pH below 3.2, contains residual sugar, or has SO2 levels exceeding 40 mg/L then you should probably skip MLF. Though certain strains of MLF starter culture can withstand high alcohol levels.

Measuring SO2 (Sulphur Dioxide) is a difficult (and expensive) task for red wines so we recommend just leaving that one be.

If we hit all the marks when balancing our grape must earlier, we should be in prime condition for MLF.

How to Perform Malolactic Fermentation

It's best to prepare our malolactic culture with a nutrient blend before adding it to our grape must.

Something like Acti-ML works really well and will give our culture a great start to life.

Once the culture is well-fed and prepared according to the instructions, it's time to add to the grape must.

The malolactic fermentation will take between 1 and 3 months.

We can speed the process up by increasing the temperature and feeding our culture. Conversely, we can slow it down by doing the opposite. A slower MLF will enhance those buttery notes.

If possible, we want to stir the remaining lees once a week. We also want to monitor our pH and keep it in the desired range.

It's important to limit oxidation when performing these tasks though. So, only perform them if you have some inert gas or if your vessel it topped up really close to the top.

We don't want to rack again until the MLF is finished.

We know it's finished when it stops producing CO2 bubbles, but this could also indicate that the fermentation has stalled and not finished completely.

To get a definite result you need to use a test kit like this one.

Upon Completing MLF

• Stabilize with SO2
• Check/balance acidity
• Measure SO2 and balance

When MLF is finished we want to immediately add sulfites to our wine.

Sulfites stabilize our wine and stop any remaining fermentation.

Potassium metabisulfite (campden tablets) can be used for this. One tablet per gallon is needed. You should crush them into powder before adding to the must.

We also want to check our pH and TA again at this stage. Make any adjustments if needed.

Calculating S02 Required (Optional)

We've just added SO2 to stabilize our grape must.

However, we may still be short of the optimal amount.

With the aging process coming soon, we want to make sure we have enough sulfites in our wine to protect it from premature aging and spoiling.

The amount of SO2 we need depends on our pH and also our ABV. If you want to get the amount of sulfites just right then we need to consult a chart.

Here's the chart for 12% ABV and a pH within our range of 3.4 - 3.6.

We can measure the amount of free SO2 in our grape must using a few different tests.

The kits made by Accuvin are the most cost effective way to test for SO2. However, they're not as accurate as the more expensive options.

As an example, if we know our grape must has pH of 3.4 then we can see from the table that we require 32 mg/Ln of free SO2.

If we test our grape must and find we have free SO2 of 20 mg/L (20 ppm) then we have a deficit of 32-20 = 12 mg/L

If we currently have 5.5 gallons of wine must then we need to do a bit of converting.

12 mg/L = 0.012 g/L

Potassium metabisulfite is 57% SO2 = 0.57g SO2 in every 1 gram potassium metabisulfite

(Target SO2 * 3.785 * Gallons of wine) / 0.57

(0.012 * 3.785 * 5.5)/0.57 = 0.44 grams

Therefore, to reach 32 mg/L of free SO2 we must add 0.44 grams of potassium. metabisulfite.

For ultimate accuracy you should check again in a couple of days. Our calculation is theoretical and some SO2 will become 'bound' instead of remaining 'free' and useful to us.

At this point a second racking is a good idea.

It's been a while since our last racking and it's time to get rid of some of the lees.

Our next stage is aging and we don't want our wine to be sitting on a large pile of lees for a long period of time.

If you don't have a lot of lees (less than 1/3 of an inch) then you could skip this racking.

After racking we can add any oak, if desired.

Degassing is the process of removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from our wine.

CO2 was produced during fermentation and though most of it escaped, some still remains in our wine.

This step doesn't need to happen right now, but it should happen before bottling.

CO2 is particularly unwelcome in a red wine because it produces 'fizz'. It also stops our wine from clearing properly. Therefore, at some stage after fermentation we must remove it.

It should be said that most commercial wineries don't perform this step and it's not essential for you to either.

Carbon dioxide will naturally disappear if left long enough. Commercial wineries just age their wines for long enough that carbon dioxide disappears naturally. If you plan on letting CO2 disappear on its own like this then it's important to keep racking when you see the lees.

There are a few ways to degas wine, but my favorite method is detailed below.

How to Degas Wine

This is something we only want to do once (if at all) as we are exposing our wine to oxygen while we remove CO2.

It also works best if we can have the temperature above 70°F. Around 75°F is perfect for this. It will take much longer at lower temperatures.

I recommend using something called a 'wine whip' for this. It's a purpose built tool that will gently agitate your wine to remove CO2. It does this in a way that prevents splashing (splashing is really bad for oxygen exposure).

It fits to a standard 3/8" variable speed drill and is designed for use in a carboy.

It's time to wait. When making red wine, that can be for a long time.

However, you still need to keep a close eye on how your wine is progressing.

I recommend leaving your red wine to age for 12 months minimum but that's just my preference.

Here's what you need to be looking out for over the next 8-12+ months.

Wine Maturation Checklist

• Lees - watch out for too much sediment forming. We want to rack as little as possible but if you see more than 1/2 an inch forming then it's time to rack again. Learn more about aging wine on lees in our guide.
• Taste - have a taste every 4-6 weeks. Check how the oak (if used) is interacting with the wine. Also, check tannin, aromas, acidity, and flavors. Add more oak or tannin if necessary. But be gentle! We can only lower tannin or oak effects by blending.
• Check pH/TA/SO2 - compare your tasting notes with actual measurements of acidity. If it's too flat you can add tartaric acid (3.8 grams per gallon = +0.1 g/L TA). If it's too acidic you can add potassium carbonate (3.8 grams per gallon = +0.1 pH). You then need to chill at around 32°F for 2 weeks and then rack. Checking SO2 levels after adding tartaric acid or potassium carbonate is always a good idea. Wine really likes turning into vinegar and maintaining the correct level of SO2 is your best defence against this.
• Maintain a steady temperature. Wines age best at around 57-72°F. Cold is better than hot. You really don't want to expose your wine to overly hot summer heat.
• Reduce the temperature for a while. Lower the temperature to below 50°F for a period of 2 weeks (or between 27°F and 35°F for about a week). The naturally lower winter temperatures a great for this. This will allow tartrate crystals to drop to the bottom of the carboy (tartaric acid crystals). They don't affect the taste of the wine so you can easily miss this stage. They just look unprofessional when in the bottle.
• Check the airlock or stopper. Make sure it's still airtight.
• Keep away from light. Strong light like sunlight will affect the color saturation.
• Keep it topped up. Make sure the level remains full to the top (as near as possible). This helps limit oxidation of the wine. It's best to top up with a quality wine of the same variety. Expect to need to do this after racking especially.

How Do I Know When My Wine is Ready?

There's no exact answer. It really depends on each batch of wine.

There are a few tell tale signals that can help you decide though.

1. 1

   Taste - for red wine you are looking for the tannins to start rounding off and the wine to find some balance.

2. 2

   Clarity - you're looking for a crystal clear liquid, free of any suspended particles. This should happen naturally but you can use fining agents too. This can be hard to check with red wine because it's so dark. You can shine a light through to help.

3. 3

   Rate of maturation slowing - if you're finding that the wine has stopped developing at the same rate, then it could be time to bottle.

When the wine is sufficiently aged, stable, clear, and free of CO2 it is ready to bottle.

Your first task here is ensuring everything is thoroughly clean and sanitized.

Step #1 - Clean & Sanitize

Rinse everything really well after sanitizing it.

The bottles can have a final rinse with a solution of potassium metabisulfite and citric acid. A quart of distilled water combined with a teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite and a pinch of citric acid should do it.

This solution helps to protect the wine from organisms that want to spoil your wine. It also helps to protect the wine from oxygen in the air (during filling) as the citric acid turns the sulfur into gas. While in its gaseous form it won't absorbed by the wine either.

Step #2 - Prepare the Corks

I always use traditional corks. They are the best option for long time storage. If you plan on drinking your wine within a year then screw tops are just fine.

To use traditional corks you need to treat them first. Cork taint is a real thing and it's more common than you think, even with wines you buy.

Treating them also lubricates them so they're easier to insert into the bottles.

You want to soak your corks in a dilute potassium metabisulfite solution. The tricky bit here is making sure they are submerged. The solution will kill any bacteria that could spoil the wine. Soak them for 30-60 minutes right before corking.

Step #3 - Bottling

Attach the bottle filler to your tubing at one end and to the racking cane (auto-siphon) at the other.

Place the bottle filler into your bottles and the racking can in the carboy.

It's important the bottles fill from the bottom to limit splashing and oxidation.

We want the wine to be filled to about an inch below where the cork will sit. Bottle fillers are designed to fill to this level. So as you remove the bottle filler it will leave the correct headroom.

You can cork each bottle as you go or fill them all up first, it's really up to you. It doesn't take that long to fill them so they won't be getting too much air contact.

Step #4 - Corking

You've got a few options here when it comes to corkers. It really depends on how often you plan on making wine as to which one suits you best.

Hand/mini corkers are fine in combination with a rubber mallet, but it's pretty hard work.

Floor corkers are great and make light work of the task. But, they are expensive and take up lots of room.

Double lever corkers are a good middle ground and can be good value for money.

Aftercare

The bottles should be left upright for 5 days after bottling.

This allows the corks to dry from their soak in step #1. It also allows the pressure inside the bottle to settle.

After a few days the corks will expand into the bottle neck and make that airtight seal that we love them for.

Keep them in a cool, dark place like a cellar. Just as you would with store bought wine.

Now it's in the bottle, red wine really benefits from some more aging. This anaerobic maturation stage involves small, delicate chemical changes that produce complex aromas and flavors.

You should leave it for at least another 3 months before drinking, but it's really up to you how long it matures for.