school project

1. Grapes harvest

2. It all starts with grapes on the vine: and it's important that these
are properly ripe. Not ripe enough, or too ripe, and the wine will
suffer. The grapes as they are harvested contain the potential of
the wine: you can make a bad wine from good grapes, but not a
good wine from bad grapes.

3. Teams of pickers head into the vineyard. This is the exciting time
of year, and all winegrowers hope for good weather conditions
during harvest. Bad weather can ruin things completely.

4. Hand-picked grapes being loaded into a half-ton bin.

5. in warm regions quality can be preserved by picking at night, when it
is cooler. This is much easier to do by machine.

6. These are machine-picked grapes being sorted for quality.

7. Sorting hand-picked grapes for quality. Any rotten or raisined grapes,
along with leaves and petioles, are removed.

8. These sorted grapes go to a machine that removes the stems. They may
also be crushed, either just a little, or completely.

9. These are the stems that have been separated from the grape in the
destemmer.

10. Here grapes are going to be loaded and then taken by conveyor belt to a
tank, from where they are being pumped into the fermentation vessel.

11. This is where red wine making differs from whites. Red wines are
fermented on their skins, while white wines are pressed, separating
juice from skins, before fermentation. This fermentation vessel - a
shallow stone tank from Portugal's Douro region - will be filled up
and then the grapes will be foot trodden, so that the juice can extract
colour and other components from the skins.

12. The red grapes have been foottrodden, and fermentation has begun
naturally. These men are mixing up the skins and juice by hand: this
process is carried out many times a day to help with extraction, and
also to stop bacteria from growing on the cap of grape skins that
naturally would float to the surface.

13. These red grapes are being fermented in a stainless steel tank. During
fermentation, carbon dioxide is released so it is OK to leave the
surface exposed. Sometimes, however, fermentation takes place in
closed tanks with a vent to let the carbon dioxide escape.

14. In this small tank the cap of skins is being punched down using a
robotic cap plunger. In some wineries this is done by hand, using
poles.

15. An alternative to punch downs is to pump wine from the bottom of the
tank back over the skins.

16. Here, fermenting red wine is being pumped out of the tank, and then
pumped back in again. The idea is to introduce oxygen in the wine to
help the yeasts in their growth. At other stages in winemaking care is
taken to protect wine from oxygen, but at this stage it's needed.

17. Once fermentation has finished, most red wines are then moved to
barrels to complete their maturation. Barrels come in all shapes and
sizes. Above is the most common size: 225-250 litres. The source of
the oak, and whether or not the barrel has been used previously, is
important in the effect it has on the developing wine.

18. This is a basket press: once fermentation has completed and the young
wine has been drained off the skins, the remaining skins and stems
are pressed to extract the last of the wine that they contain.

19. And this is what is left at the end - the marc. It can be used to make
compost.

20. The inside of a tank that has been used to ferment white wine: the
residue consists of dead yeasts cells.

21. Barrel halls can still look quite traditional. Cool underground cellars
are perfect for maturing wines - a process that takes anything from
six months to three years.

22. Some wines see no oak at all, but are kept in stainless steel tanks to
preserve the fresh fruity characteristics.

23. Finally, the wine is ready and is prepared for bottling. Often, filtration
is used to make the wine bright and clear, and to remove any risk of
microbial spoilage. The glass on the left has been filtered; on the right
you can see what it was like just before the process.