Making Wine

The making of a basic table wine can be divided into three stages. In the first, the ripe grapes are crushed to free their juice. In the second, the grape juice is fermented by sugar-consuming, alcohol-producing yeasts into new wine. The third stage is the aging or maturing of the new wine. This is a period during which the chemical constituents of the grape and the products of fermentation react with each other and with oxygen to form a relatively stable ensemble of flavor molecules.