How To Make Wine

Being a wine maker, I am occasionally asked how to make wine. I usually give people the story about how I came about this hobby. When my older brother and I were going to the same university, he would make his own mead in his basement. Mead is an alcoholic drink made from honey. My brother had a simple kit that he bought somewhere and it worked great. Six weeks after beginning the process, he had 24 bottles of homemade mead that tasted great. This was one of my first introduction to making homemade alcoholic beverages.
Unfortunately, my brother is now at Western Michigan getting his PHD, so I no longer have access to his mead. I decided to take the hobby up myself and make my own great tasting wine.
I decided for myself that I would focus on making red wine instead of mead. Now, I will say that I have since made mead, but I started out with making red wine because I thought it would be a lot more challenging and fun. What I realized was that it is a lot of fun, but there isn't nearly as much work as I had imagined.
For those of you interested in taking up this hobby, I want you to understand that it doesn't have to be a major project that you have to watch constantly. Set aside 10 minutes of your day and you'll have great wine in a few weeks. I recommend all wine lovers to try making wine at least once in their lives. It is truly a fulfilling hobby.
The first thing I do before starting a new hobby or project is research. I hit the web and try to learn as much as I can while taking notes. During my research, I came across and bought multiple wine guides that had great ratings from people that had purchased them. They can cost anywhere from $10-$50 each and some were way better than others.
One of the online books that I bought worked out great for a complete novice like myself. It's a 100 page manual that teaches everything from building your own wine kit to selecting the right types of fruit to the bottling process. The author is an avid wine maker who releases new videos every month for free to people that have bought his guide. It's great! If you know absolutely nothing about making your own wine, then this is the guide I recommend you to look into.
The most important process in wine making is definitely the fruit selection. I had no idea how important it was until I read about it in the guide. The fruit you choose needs to be perfect. No bruises, scratches, or anything. This guide shows you how to go about finding local vineyards so that you can get the best, most freshest grapes possible. This is by far the easiest to follow guide for wine making that I have ever come across. Since it is an ebook, you can download it, print it, highlight parts that you want to remember, print pictures of the fruit you want, etc.
It is also important that you learn which materials to buy to get you started on your own kit. I think I paid around $50 to have a complete setup. You can also buy kits at a few stores out there if you do not want to build your own. I started with 5 gallons and I recommend you do the same. Don't start with 1 gallon because you will be out of that 1 gallon of wine before you know it.