Is it so easy to make your own wine? Be careful, beware of methanol poisoning...

Grape wine in luminous cup, a glass of homemade wine

Stop!

Don’t brew it yourself anymore !

Did you know?

Not all grapes can be used to make wine!

Did you know?

How much risk is there in making your own wine?

Do you know, do you know? "Do you know? Open the door" takes you into today's popular science time!

Can all grapes be used to make wine?

If you have the opportunity to visit a vineyard dedicated to winemaking, your first impression might be “Why are these grapes so small!”

I picked one and tasted it. It was sour and astringent, not tasty at all. I couldn't help wondering, can such grapes really be used to make high-quality, expensive wine? And what is the difference between this small grape for winemaking and the grapes we usually eat?

Key points:

Not all grapes are suitable for making wine!

Grape cultivation has a long history. There are 14-16 genera, about 600 species, and more than 8,000-10,000 varieties in the grape family. According to their uses, they can be divided into six categories: fresh food varieties, wine varieties, dried varieties, juice varieties, canning varieties and rootstock varieties.

In fact, theoretically, all grapes can be used to make wine, because all grapes contain sugar, and the sugar can be fermented into alcohol by yeast to become fermented wine. But it does not mean that all grapes are suitable for making wine. The color, aroma and taste of wine made from grapes used for fresh food, dried food, canning and rootstock are far from those of wine made from special "wine grapes". From this perspective, not all grapes can be used to make wine.

Among them, there are two most familiar categories: table grapes and wine grapes. Table grapes, as the name suggests, are used to satisfy people's appetite and are eaten raw, so it is more appropriate to call them "fruit grapes"; wine grapes are specifically used to make wine, and growers often call this category of grapes "wine grapes". Therefore, if you want to make wine, it is naturally better to choose "wine grapes" that are domesticated specifically for winemaking.

What are the differences between table grapes and wine grapes?

0 1 Table grapes have thin skins while wine grapes have thick skins;

0 2 Table grapes have more pulp, while wine grapes have more juice;

0 3 Table grapes generally have large bunches and large berries, and tend to have few or no seeds, while wine grapes generally have small bunches and small berries with many seeds.

The thin skin, flesh and seedless characteristics make the fresh grapes taste delicate, comfortable and free of impurities, and feel more refreshing. The thick skin, seed and juice of wine grapes will allow the wine to fully absorb the aroma and structural substances in the grape skin and grape seeds during the brewing process, making the brewed wine full of aroma, full body structure, and more flavorful and mellow.

As for Xinjiang, our local grapes: seedless white, mare's milk, munag, and the later introduced red grapes and glass green grapes are all fresh-eating grapes . Traditionally, seedless white, mare's milk, munag grapes are mainly enjoyed as fruits, and the rest are used to dry raisins, but there are many records in ancient books that people use mare's milk grapes to make wine.

What are the health benefits of wine?

The wine industry is familiar with a phenomenon called the French myth. The French love food and usually consume a lot of high-calorie and high-cholesterol foods, but because they often drink wine in their lives, their chances of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality are much lower than those of people in other countries of the same ethnicity.

Modern tests have confirmed that wine contains hundreds of compounds, including nutrients such as sugars, minerals, vitamins, amino acids, and complex mixtures of alcohols, esters, acids, aldehydes, ketones, phenols, etc., especially polyphenol compounds, which make wine have high health value .

Nowadays, many people generally believe that people who drink wine regularly and in moderation can reduce the level of low-density cholesterol in their blood and reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease. Some medical studies have also reported that wine has a certain effect in preventing colds, preventing tooth decay, and inhibiting Helicobacter pylori.

It’s so easy to make your own wine? Don’t make it yourself anymore!

Since wine has high nutritional value and certain health benefits, and commercial wine is relatively expensive, many wine lovers have started to make their own wine in recent years, and even formed a wine lovers' alliance to jointly explore wine making tips. Although it is popular for a while, here is a statement:

Home brewing is risky!

Home brewing is not recommended!

Drinking is not encouraged!

The details are as follows:

01. Improper selection of raw grapes for home brewing. Most enthusiasts tend to purchase fresh grapes from farmers' markets and supermarkets for winemaking. As explained in the article above, fresh grapes are not used for winemaking. Using them to make wine naturally has inherent deficiencies in quality, which often results in a bland taste, or an imbalance in the wine body due to mismatches in acid, alcohol, phenolic compounds, sugar, etc. Overall, the quality level is not high.

02. Home-brewed wine is prone to oxidation and rancidity, and is prone to breeding bacteria. When brewing wine at home, the freshness of the grapes cannot be guaranteed. In addition, since the containers used for home-brewed wine are relatively small, and some containers have poor oxygen isolation performance, it is easy to cause oxidation of the wine. At the same time, it is easy to breed acetic acid bacteria, leading to acetic acidification of home-brewed wine, which is what we often call rancidity. Oxidation and rancidity can easily make the wine lose its sensory pleasure, greatly reducing the good feeling of drinking wine.

If only common mold and E. coli are produced during home brewing, it is not a big problem. At most, it will cause the drinker to have a stomachache and some minor discomfort. However, if highly hazardous substances such as aflatoxin and ochratoxin are produced, it is not as simple as a stomachache. It will often cause irreversible physical damage, such as damage to the liver and kidneys or even death. The risk is huge!

03. Home-brewed wine has a high risk of producing methanol. Because grape cell walls contain pectin and cellulose, methanol will be produced under the action of fermentation microorganisms. Therefore, methanol will be produced whether it is home-brewed or standard factory-produced. However, home-brewed wine often lacks professional means of control, and its methanol content is unknown. If you drink home-brewed wine with excessive methanol, it will have certain toxic side effects on the body, and in severe cases it will cause blindness or even death. Of course, the methanol in home-brewed wine will not necessarily exceed the standard and cause poisoning, but the potential risk does exist.

04. Home-brewed wine is prone to explosion and other safety accidents. Because home-brewed wine is often not fermented completely, there is still sugar in the wine when the home-brewed enthusiasts seal it and store it. After sealing, the wine ferments again in the bottle, causing excessive pressure inside the container and causing it to explode, thus causing potential risks of injury. Not only that, if it explodes, the splashing wine will also make your beautiful home a mess.

In short, winemaking is a technical job that involves many aspects, and any omission in any link may cause great risks. Therefore, I still advise wine lovers not to try home brewing easily. If you really like it, go to a regular production factory to participate in the experience of home brewing under the guidance of professional technicians.

The cover image comes from Xinhuanet