Wine has been around for thousands of years, but unless you’ve visited a vineyard or taken a class at a café, you probably aren’t familiar with the process of making it. Mainstreet Coffee & Wine Bar serves Farmington, Apple Valley, Burnsville, and Prior Lake in Minnesota, and pulls people in with their specialty drinks and product knowledge. When selecting the right wine for you at your local café, it helps to understand the winemaking process and some of the stages required to produce this delightful drink.

3 Steps of Winemaking

1. Harvesting

Harvesting the grapes is the very first step in winemaking and involves taste-testing, timing, and consultation between the winemakers and vineyard owners to determine the right time to begin picking. Harvesting can be done by hand or mechanically, but many vineyards stick to hand picking because of how delicate the fruit can be.

2. Crushing & Pressing

Once harvested, the next step in the winemaking process entails crushing and pressing the fruit clusters. A mechanical crusher is generally used and must be properly timed to make sure the fruit is sufficiently pressed, but not so much so that it damages the flavor.

3. Fermentation

Fermentation is the step in winemaking where the juice of the fruit begins to turn into alcohol. Because the natural climate can be difficult to control or predict, most winemakers opt to kill natural yeast and introduce their own strain of yeast that yields more consistent results. Fermentation usually lasts 10 days to a month or more, depending on the flavor, style, and alcohol strength wanted. Once fermentation is complete, most wines will have a 10-15% alcohol level.

With a number of different wine variations and flavors, it’s important to learn more about the bottle you select to ensure you will enjoy it. With more than 30 wines from countries all over the world, the staff at Mainstreet Coffee & Wine Bar is ready and capable of answering your questions about the drink. This café also makes specialty coffee drinks, sandwiches, soups, and salads. To learn more about the café or the products they serve, call (952) 985-7650 or visit their website.