Believe it or not, wine making is a very simple process. Your job as the vintner (wine maker) is to supervise and control what nature wants to do. As it turns out, fruit wants to ferment, especially grapes. There are millions of naturally occurring bacteria, but one strain in specific, Botrytis Cinerea, occurs on grapes and has been used for centuries to ferment wine. The trick is that fermented fruit wants to turn to vinegar, so your job is to allow the fruit to ferment and become wine, then stop the process before it turns to vinegar.

The first thing you have to decide is if you want to make your wine from scratch or from a kit. If you want to start from scratch, the process is outlined below:

1. Prepare the fruit by cleaning and culling (you only want to use good sound fruit).
2. Crush, press and/or mash the fruit to extract the juice (this becomes the "Must").
3. Put the juice and sometimes the pulp from the fruit into the fermenting bucket.
4. Balance the must for the proper levels of sugar, pH and acid.
5. Add yeast, referred to as "pitching the yeast".
6. When the Specific Gravity (S.G.) lowers to the 1.03 to 1.04 range (usually 3-5 days), transfer (rack) the must into another vessel to which you can attach an airlock.
7. When the S.G. reaches .995, your must has finished fermentation and is now wine.
8. At this point, stabilizing agents are added to make sure your wine does not start fermentation again and does not spoil. You can also add fining agents to clarify your wine (Nobody want stuff floating in their glass of wine).
9. Your wine is now ready for aging.
10. Over the next few months, you rack your wine several times to continue to clear your wine while it ages.
11. When the wine tastes right to you, put it in bottles!

If you are using a wine kit, you perform the following steps:

1. Pour the juice from the bag into the fermenting bucket, add water and other flavorings (like oak and elderberries), if included in your kit. This is your "Must".
2. Stir the must and add (pitch) the yeast.
3. After 6 days, transfer (rack) your wine to a 6 or 3-gallon carboy and attach an airlock.
4. After 10-21 days (depending upon which kit you use), add the stabilizing and fining agents included with your wine kit.
5. After 7 more days, rack the wine again to help clarify the wine or with some kits, you can bottle now.
6. After 14-28 more days, bottle your wine!

As you can see, a kit is much easier, as the manufacturer has already cleaned and culled the fruit and has balanced the must. All you have to do is add water and go. With the All Juice kits, you don't even have to add water.

From a time standpoint, the wine kit takes about 2-4 hours per batch of wine. If you decide to put labels and fancy closures on the top, you should allow an additional hour.