Stage 1 - Sorting

Good grapes are needed for good wine, so ideally, any diseased, immature or rotten grapes are discarded at the outset.

Stage 2 - Into the Winery

Because of the rich of bacterial infection, the sooner the processing of the grapes starts the better.

Stage 3 - Crushing

The winemaker chooses a crushing method that suits the grape variety and the intended wine. Varieties with relatively tough skins are usually crushed by faster more powerful machines.

Stage 4 - Into Fermentation

All wines need yeast to ferment. The changing of sugar into alcohol is accomplished by yeast. If a white wine is being made, only the separated juice is fermented and the rest is removed. For red wines, the juice and skins are fermented together to give the wines their colour.

Stage 5 - Filtering

After fermentation, the resulting wine is usually cloudy. To make the wine stable - and look more appealing - winemakers use various methods to clarify the wine including cold stabilization.

Stage 6 - Oak aging

Many wines never come into contact with oak and are bottled immediately after filtering. But others both red and white, are aged in oak barrels to give them more complex flavours and a richer texture.