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Many people will know about their favourite type of white wine, but one of the things that still remains a mystery to avid white wine drinkers around the world, is how the popular beverage is made. There are eight steps in the process to making white wine.

To start with the grapes are carefully picked and selected.  The type of white wine that will be made depends on where the grapes come from. As many people already know, there are seven main types of white wine; each one having different grapes, and variations to the taste and purpose of the beverage.

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The grapes are then washed, and crushed. Most wine makers will remove the stems from the grapes. This helps to ensure that the quality of the drink is high. Although it’s not necessary to remove the stems at this stage, it can be done later on in the wine making process, when the wine has fermented it will have to be sieved anyway. This process will automatically eliminate any remnants of grape vines. Some will argue that the vines actually make for tastier wine, and offer a hint of originality to the drink. This is very much down to the individual than anything else.

The next port of call is to press the grapes, making sure that all the skin is removed. The juice is then placed inside a tank. By pressing what is basically meant is squashing then squeezing them making sure that the once round fruit is totally squashed flat, and all the juice is squeezed from within.

Next step – yeast is added to concoction. The yeast is part of the process that helps to bring out the alcohol. Those individuals who have a better understanding of the wine making process will be aware that the yeast is what forms the alcohol.

After the yeast is added, the next step is for fermentation to kick start. Fermentation can take weeks; in fact the longer the wine is left to ferment, the higher the alcohol presence will be. It mustn’t be left too long though, as the alcohol content in each bottle will need to be at a specific level.

When the fermentation has taken place, the wine is left to stew. The yeast that remains after the process will then settle to the bottom of the tank. The next step is to sieve the wine, making sure that all the stray bits that may have been left are eliminated.  If the grape vines were removed prior to the brewing process, then there won’t be a lot of remnants present in the mixture.

The next step is bottling the wine and after bottling, the wine is labelled. A great way to define when the wine was made is to always add the date to the label - an extremely common mistake that wine enthusiasts make.