The wine-making process of red wine is fairly different than the making of white wine.
After a meticulous hand-picking of our grapes, it goes to the sorting table where unwanted elements like unripe grapes or leaves are removed. After this hand selection, we use a de-stemmer to avoid the greenish aromas and water that the stems give off.
Red grapes are delicately crushed and sent to the fermentation stainless steel tank without pressing. The juice is left in contact with its skins to garner colour, tannins and flavours. The juice produced thus goes through stabilisation.

Temperature stabilisation is done by cooling the juice at 22°C for 24 hours, conditions that are more suitable for the red wine fermentation. Stainless steel tanks are used for this. Yeast is added to induce alcoholic fermentation which starts at 22°C and stops around 27°C. A lot of CO2 is also produced and the tanks are left open until fermentation is completed.
Once the fermentation is complete, the maceration process begins. We leave the wine in contact with the pomace or marc: skins, pulp and seeds for 20 days in order to extract more colour and tannins. The tannins bring flavour and structure in red wines. During both fermentation and maceration, regular pumping is also done to ensure the optimum extraction of colour as well as tannins.

 

After the maceration process, skins and wine are separated. The first wine we obtain coming from the tank is called “free run juice” which is very light in terms of colour and tannins. All that remains in the tanks like skins, seeds, deposit, go to the pneumatic press. The wine thus obtained has a much deeper and darker red colour and has more tannin. This is called the “press juice”. Our winemakers blend those two wines together to obtain a more homogeneous wine.
Clarification, as in the case of white wines, is done to remove the natural deposit or lees. The process of ‘racking’ requires a transfer of fermented juice from one tank to another. Reds at Grover normally goes through 8 to 10 racking cycles until the wine is totally cleared.

 

The next step is the Malolactic fermentation. This fermentation is about transforming the Malic Acid, which gives the sensation of greenness in the wine, into Lactic Acid, which reduces the astringency of the wine and increases the colour of red wines. Malolactic fermentation reduces acidity and ‘softens’ the tannins of the wine.

 

The winemakers take care of the blending to give to our reds their distinctive style and taste.
Depending on the range, the wine ages for a period of 6 to 20 months in stainless steel tanks or oak barrels.
To ensure the finest taste, one more filtration is done.

Our red wine is now ready to be bottled.