People never understand the difference between wine and beer. Although they are all alcoholic drinks, there is a difference.

All of them go through the fermentation process. Wine is made from fruits and berries, while beer is made from grains.

Hard ciders, on the other hand, are wine made from specifically apple juice. The rest is made from grapes.

Harvesting: The process begins at the farm. You can choose to use a machine or handpick.

The latter is preferable to maintain the nutritive value of the grapes. What to look out for in the harvesting process

• The acidity of the grapes that affect the fermentation process

• The tannins

• Whether they are ripe or not

• The sweetness of the grapes. At the winery, we store them in bunches as we sort to remove the rotten and unripe grapes.

Crushing:  While in bunches, they are mechanically crashed. For white wine, we remove the impurities- skin, seeds, and stems, while for the red wine, they are left intact.

Mechanization is highly advised to enhance hygiene when handling the grapes. Suppose you opt for manual crushing, it’s done by feet. I guess you don’t want to hear of that. At Black Bear Winery, our process is digitalized hence the high quality of our wine brands.

Fermentation: This is the core business of wine processing. The procedure involves the conversion of sugar to alcohol. The difference in sweet wine and bitter wine is that in the former, all sugar isn’t left to ferment while in sour wine, there are no sugar traces at all. The sugars are got from cultured yeast or wild yeast. The duration also determines the sweetness and value of the stimulant. It takes a minimum of 12 hours and a maximum of a month. Although, at times, it takes more- the expensive wines you see on the shelves. Wine lovers tell you that the longer the fermentation process, the better the wine. You pay for that time.

Clarification: In short, this is the filtration process. At this stage, all the particles are still intact. You need to have the liquid only. Therefore you need to add wine filters to remove the large particles to give you time to take the wine to the last stage. Traditional wine brewers added clay to trap the excess yeast and tannins as their clarification process.

Bottling and Aging:  You have two options based on your brand. You can sore the wine directly in the bottles ready for use. However, there is power and strength in aging wines. The difference lies in the taste and quality of the wine. For the aging process, the wine is further taken to stainless steel tanks of old barrels for these two reasons; first, it adds flavor and improves the wines’ taste. All these are a result of lower oxygen levels to the wine to let them reach an optimum flavor level. We are yet to give scientific proof of stainless steel and white one when it comes to taste and flavor. Once the aging process is done, we are ready to put the wines in bottles to receive it at your favorite joint.