When you are crushing the grapes for making wine, why is it important to be gentle with the grapes?

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extrudedcow | 2 years, 7 months ago

The goal is to avoid overly damaging the skins, and to avoid introducing the contents of the seeds to the juice. Excessive crushing can release tannins and colors that may not be desirable in some wines.

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lgalatea | 2 years, 7 months ago

Basically when they get squished too early, they end up getting oxidized. That means, the juice and pulp can turn brown and start to taste like prune juice. It's disgusting. You can also end up with stem and seed bits and unsorted unripe grapes that are really bitter and nasty. In other words, the wine tastes unpredictable. Vineyards prefer a very predictable tasting wine without the worry of a little too much of one or another flavor interrupting things. They have to have standard so that people can become fans and know what to expect. They want the juice to go from squished to the fermentor fast.

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mayalocke | 2 years, 6 months ago

The first stage in the wine making process is to crush the grapes. In days gone by the grapes would be loaded into a large vat and the wine maker(s) would gently tread on them to break the grapes' skins to release the juice.

Nowadays this procedure is almost invariably carried out using a machine called, unsurprisingly, a crusher.

In the case of white wines, after crushing, the juice is separated immediately from the pulp of skins and stalks and fermentation commences.

http://www.craft-kits.net/how-wine-is-made.htm

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