Simple Tips on How To Make Merlot Wine At Home

During the 90’s era, did you know that Merlot was “in” among the American wine consumers? It inspired them to learn how to make wine at home because it was “it” among all the other wines available in the market. It was at that time that wine consumption had an economic surge and the consumers started moving away from what’s typical, to what’s new, proven and “hot” — the California wine grapes back in the 70’s. Actually, these California wine grapes only appeared as a varietal label in the 70’s. But it was in the 80’s that they really started selling big until they dominated the wine market.

They call Merlot wine as an insurance for the vineyard just because its ripening period is a week earlier than other varietals such as the Cabernet. This means that rain is very important in the process of its harvest.

Serving Merlot wine is best when done in a slightly below the room temperature. Otherwise, if the alcohol hits 74 degrees F, your wine might taste a bit sharper than usual and you wouldn’t want that. Therefore, make sure that in learning how to make wine at home, you cool your bottle of wine first for about 15 minutes up to twenty minutes maximum inside the refrigerator. This way, you will be able to serve it at the best temperature possible and you can be sure that it will taste very good.

Learning about how to make wine at home, particularly when it comes to Merlot wine making instructions, is practically the same with any basic homemade wine making recipe. You of course have to prepare all the equipment needed which I have detailed on a separate post on this site. You also have to gather all the basic ingredients which were also listed in detail at a separate post. On how to make wine at home, particularly Merlot wine, aside from the usual wine ingredients, you will also need to add the following: 22 liters of merlot juice and 1 liter of blackberry juice.

Here is a list of  simple instructions on how to make wine at home that you need to follow in order to create great tasting Merlot wine. After you go through everything, you will know for sure that it’s so easy learning about how to make wine at home and eventually, how you too can make a simple winemaking recipe for your own pleasure.

  1. In a bucket, combine potassium metabisulphate and 1 gallon of water. Get the cloth and soak it in the solution for five minutes. Afterwards, you use the same cloth in cleaning the fermenters.
  2. In one of the fermenters, pour the blackberry and merlot juices and mix them together by stirring them well.
  3. This time, you add the yeast and Lalvin EC1118 champage yeast right on top. Set it aside for one hour after which, you stir them well.
  4. For the next 5 days, stir the mixture once each day. Then leave it again for another 2 days.
  5. Have the fermenter sealed and leave the mixture for another 21 days.
  6. Siphon the mixture by transferring it from the first fermenter to the second. Then leave it again for 28 more days.
  7. At this time, the Merlot wine  is now ready for bottling. Then leave it for the next 30-90 days to make sure it has aged well. Isn’t it easy… knowing how to make wine at home?

That’s it on how to make wine at home… Merlot wine that is!