What I tend to do for a dry red:
-Get a kit that comes with grape skins or buy some to add (Mosti Mondiali has a grape pack that you can buy at a homebrew store or online.)
-Add oak powder during fermentation, which doesn't add a lot of flavor.
-Add oak chips/cubes/spirals during clearing and aging, and leave them in until you like the oak flavor. For my taste that's two weeks for something like Zinfandel and maybe six weeks for Petit Syrah.
-If you want more tannins after those other steps are done, buy some tannin powder to add. I like Tannin Riche Extra from Scott Labs (
http://www.scottlab.com/product-132.aspx)
-Give everything time to integrate before you bottle, like 2-3 weeks.
This works for me because I extend the time frames on the kit instructions. For fermentation, I use my hydrometer to know when its done at around 0.990ish for three days; I don't stress if it's a bit more. Then I add the potassium metabisulfite to stabilize. I stir to help it degass - this also occurs over time. I extend the clearing phase to bulk age the wine for 12 months, adding potassium metabisulfite at three, six, nine, and twelve months. Then I wait a couple weeks to bottle. Some folks rack on those intervals but I just rack when bottling, only transferring the completely clear wine to my clean/sanitized fermentation bucket, and then transferring all of that into my bottles. I don't add potassium sorbate to dry wines, and I don't use clarifyers very often because the initial bentonite and time do the trick. Gas is less likely to be present at 12 months, but I always taste my wine before I bottle to check for gas, which will be a "zippy" effervescent taste; when that does happen, I give it a good stir and some more time.
Scott Labs is a great source of knowledge. They have articles and videos as well as great product descriptions on their tannins.
http://www.scottlab.com/products-169.aspx http://www.scottlab.com/forms-downloads-60.aspx
