The making of wine tends to be associated with grapes most of the time. People tend to think of vineyards with their crop of different grapes hanging in bunches and just waiting to be picked and made into their favorite red or white wines. The truth though, is that many other things may be used to make wine. You have wine made from berries of all kinds and even other fruits such as plums and cherries. If you visit the Japanese then you’ll have an opportunity of seeing a special wine that they make out of rice known as sake. Wine can also be made from other plants and in this strange case; wine can be made from the Huisache flower otherwise known as the Dandelion.

If you’re interested in the making of dandelion wine, then you should know that the process isn’t that complex at all and a number of simple recipes exist which will give you what you want, provided that you adhere to them. While most people in North America tend to regard these flowers as just weeds, American Indian tribes had been using this crop a long time before the Europeans came over with their own plants. When next you’re thinking of getting rid of those yellow weeds cum flowers which have invaded your front lawn, try to remember that they make very tasty wine as well. The wine is exclusively made from the flower and no other part of the wine, everything else is unnecessary and should be disposed off as soon as the flowers have been collected.

One surefire recipe for dandelion wine is the use of dandelions along with these ingredients: sugar, oranges, water and yeast. Harvesting of the dandelions should be at high noon so that they have opened up to their fullest. When you’re waiting for the gallon of water to start boiling, you should take out all the dandelions and make sure you have no stem or any other parts but just flowers. After this the boiling water should be placed over the flowers, you should then cover everything with a cloth and let it breathe. The ensemble should be left for 48 hours at most and after this time water should be poured back into the pot. After this orange peels should be added as well, but you should remember to remove as much of the white stuff that comes with the peels as possible, because it affects the flavor of the wine. After this you should boil everything again for ten minutes.

At the expiration of the boiling period, the entire mixture should be poured through a porous cloth and into a pail or large pot which already has a huge amount of sugar within it. You should permit everything to cool before you place the orange juice together with the yeast and yeast nutrients. Following this, everything should be added in a container for fermentation and this container must be sealed tightly.

After the wine has cleared properly, it should be placed into bottles for a two month period before rebottling. After this period it should be left for as much as six months to a year in order to give it a greater taste. Such wine tends to be very favorable and the best part of everything is that you would have succeeded in making everything entirely on your own.

Darren Williger is an over-caffeinated, low carbohydrate eating, winemaking salesmaker who writes for TopSalesmaker.com>, MyLowCarbPages.com, and WineMaking101.com.

During aging certain things are done to wine in order to promote its flavor. There is a need to affect the flavor of the wine in a way that will be pleasing to most. Expert wine makers have been doing all this for a very long time and you can do this too. One means that professionals and experts make use of is oak barrels and not just any oak barrels. It is what they do to the barrel which makes the difference. The interior of the barrel is usually toasted but lightly so. Despite this fact, this simple act goes a long way in adding to the flavor of the aging wine, giving it a taste that most people refer to as velvety.

Red wines are usually the ones reserved for this process. Regardless of this fact, not everyone has the ability to make use of oak barrels to age their wine. At least the average person doesn’t have the ability to make use of oak barrels. The point is that they do not make so much wine that they need a barrel to store it and with the limited availability of urban space, we’re least likely to use barrels. Despite all these things, other ways exist through which we can get the necessary flavoring in wine such as you would get with a toasted oak barrel. This is usually done by using oak chips in order to give your wine some flavor. They are called toasted oak chips because thy have been toasted somewhat like the oak barrels and they render the same flavor that the aging of wine in barrels does. These oak chips have also been dried for a huge number of years in order to ensure that no moisture remains in the chips. Two main types of oak chips exist and these are the French and the American versions.

Before using oak chips, you need to boil them for a ten minute period first. They shouldn’t be placed in wine until the wine is ready for aging. As soon as the wine has been placed in bottles and is ready to be racked, some oak chips should be added. Three ounces of oak chips should be placed per five gallons of wine. The wine should be aged for three to nine months depending on the flavor that is sought. Oak chips tend to add to the flavor and they lend it a much heartier taste. Winemakers also tend to recommend that a bottle should be sampled each month to determine how well the process is going.

If toasted American oak chips are being bought, you should expect to pay as much as sixty dollars for ten pounds worth. French chips cost somewhere above fifty dollars and they all come with instructions on how they can be properly used. Care should be taken with the use of oak chips because while some affect your wine positively others give your wine a rather bitter taste due to the presence of tannic acid.

Darren Williger is an over-caffeinated, low carbohydrate eating, winemaking salesmaker who writes for >TopSalesmaker.com>, >MyLowCarbPages.com>, and >HomemadeWine.com.

Wine is a very sensitive beverage which gets easily affected by temperature, lights, vibrations, and oxygen among others. Ordinarily speaking, one can use any type of bottle to bottle his/her wine as long as it can be sealed well (some inset a thin layer of nitrogen before sealing it to prevent any chance of oxygen reaching the wine and oxidizing it) and at the same time protect the wine from direct sunlight.

Easy identification of wine type and place of manufacture

All wine bottles are made of glass. Wines, such as Champagne are fermented in the same bottle they are sold in, while most other types are bottled after the fermentations process has totally stopped. Most of the times the wine is bottled in a certain type of bottle for two main reasons – (i) to identify the area from where it comes (manufacturers, vineyard, country, etc), (ii) type of wine.

In the early days wine was stored in wooden kegs. After a while it became fashionable to have wine in large amphorae. Then, with the advent of the popularity of wine and its transport throughout the world, it became commonly stored in glass bottles. These bottles are usually thick, dimpled at the bottom and dark in color. Thick because it should break during travel/ transport; dimpled at the bottom so it can have better stability and easier for stacking while transporting; lastly dark in color to prevent the access of direct sunlight which can destroy the wine within the glass.

Today, the wine bottles are normally of 750 ml and the shape of the bottles in which they are stored usually denote the type of wine and many times the place from where it is produced. This article will attempt to describe a few of the most popular wine bottles below:

1. Bordeaux – this bottle is usually tall with a small neck, light green in color. You will find this type of wine bottle in Italy, Spain, and in parts of the Northern Europe for bottling Bordeaux wines.
2. Burgundy – this type of bottle has slopping shoulders making it elegant and longish. The bottle is green too and also has a large dimple at the bottom. This bottle is mostly used for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.
3. Rhone – this bottle is much thinner than the burgundy one, but similar in shape otherwise.
4. Champagne – this bottle has very gentle sloping shoulders, is taller than any other bottle, thicker and has a deep dimple at the bottom. This particular shape is to protect the wine within, which ferments after being put in the bottle, and also prevents the bottle from breakage.
5. Rhine – this bottle usually comes in brown color, though they have green bottles too.

There is actually no real rules. The types of bottles have been adopted as a tradition rather than any other reason. There are places where the bottles of wine have been thus for hundreds of years. The main concern for wine bottles, remain to protect the wine. Hence, most of the bottles are thick, dark and longish. All these three attributes help in keeping the wine as healthy as can be till it is drank.

Darren Williger is an over-caffeinated, low carbohydrate eating, winemaking enthusiast who writes for CaffeineZone.com, MyLowCarbPages.com, and WineSatori.com