My first attempt at making wine at home is a Winexpert Vintners Reserve Coastal White Wine kit. I picked this up from Midwest Supplies. I can't recall how I chose this kit; I think it got pretty good reviews. It's advertised as a white burgundy, medium body and dry. Sure, why not. Plus, it's wine.
For kit wines, you need only some very basic equipment, all of which can be obtained from local homebrewing shops or online vendors. From years of homebrewing, I had most of the stuff necessary to prepare the kit. I only needed to add a larger (~8 gallon) fermenter. As far as the contents of the box, it contained a 10 liter bag of grape juice concentrate, various stabilizing and fining agents (used to clear the wine after it's fermented) and a package of wine yeast. The process also requires you to provide water to bring the volume up to 6 gallons. I needed a little over 3 gallons and used spring water.
The first stage of kit winemaking is the primary fermentation. This is how it goes: I added about a half gallon of hot water to the fermentation bucket and stirred in the package of bentonite.
Next I added the grape juice concentrate. Once the bag was emptied I rinsed it with some of the bottled water to make sure all of the sugar made it into the fermenter. That will make the yeast happy. With the remaining bottled water, I topped up the bucket to 6 gallons and gave the mixture a good stir for 30 seconds or so.
Using a hydrometer, I took a specific gravity (S.G.) reading. It came in at 1.095. Time for some science. The specific gravity of a liquid is a measure of its relative density compared to water, which the hydrometer will measure as 0. In the case of this grape juice (more formally referred to as the "must"), the increased density is largely dependent on its sugar content. As the yeast consume the sugar and convert it to alcohol, the S.G. will decrease. The alcohol content of the wine can be determined by comparing the initial gravity reading with the final gravity reading.
I also took the temperature of the solution, which was around 77 degrees F, so I went ahead and pitched the yeast. All that means is that you add the yeast to the must, in this case by sprinkling it on top. I then covered the fermenter with a towel, to allow oxygen in but keep anything larger out. I've located the fermentation bucket in a space that is a pretty consistent temp of around 72 degrees, which is the temperature recommended by the kit maker.
So that's it for getting a primary fermentation started for a kit wine. This step should take about 5-7 days, and I'll stir the must and check the S.G. probably once a day to see how things are going.
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