Wine Making Steps

Your wine. Our passion.

Experience the joy of making your very own award-winning wine. At The School of Wine at Kennedy Cellars, you are the winemaker. In our hands-on, interactive setting and state-of-the-art winemaking facility, we have the latest winemaking equipment and our expert staff will guide you through the steps to produce quality, award-winning wine.

How do you choose what type of wine to make? Contact us and one of our winemakers will walk you through your options and offer recommendations.

How it works.

Once you decide what varietal of wine you want to make, the winemaking process is divided into four sessions. Each session takes approximately one to two hours.

Session 1: Crushing
Grapes are crushed and destemmed. If you are making a white wine, you will also press. If you are making a red wine, the skins are left in contact with the juice.

Session 2: Pressing
The primary fermentation stage in winemaking usually takes one to two weeks. During this time, yeast will transform the majority of the sugars in the grape juice to ethanol, which is alcohol. After primary fermentation, you will press your grapes and then transfer the juice to your barrel or stainless steel tank.

Session 3: Racking
On one of our open racking days, you will join us to observe the process and sample your wine to taste its progression. Your wine is transferred from the barrel or tank into another vessel and separated from the lees (sediment). The barrel or tank is cleaned and then the wine is transferred back.

Session 4: Bottling
Your final class occurs nine months after pressing. During this session, you get to bottle, cork, cap and take home your wine! Custom labels are also available. One barrel (200 liters) of wine yields 240 bottles (750 ml) of wine.