How can I make my grape wine darker?

[Eren M.]

Hello wine enthusiasts. I’m a student and we’re doing a project about making wine. We decided to use black grapes for the wine. The process we did to make it was we used a juicer to extract the juice from the grapes, then we sifted it back and forth and what was left was this kind of frothy grape juice that’s very very purple. As the title says, I want to know if there’s any way to make the juice darker.

For additional info, the juicer we used discarded the grape skins, which were black.

Also, is it normal for the juice to be kind of frothy? It’s still very liquid-y and it doesn’t have the consistency of a smoothie but when you let the juice sit, there are these kinds of solid stuff setting.

 

[Johnd]

Leaving the skins with the fermenting wine makes it darker, as well as pre fermentation cold soaking, post fermentation extended maceration, fermenting enzymes, to name a few activities. Simply using darker grapes will also improve the color, and the resulting wine may be blended with lighter colored wines to improve their color.

 

[salcoco]

the solid stuff are pieces of the grape skins when using your juicer. normal red grape fermentation requires the grapes to be lightly crushed, basically just enough to release juice. enzymes can be added to improve color retention.

 

[NorCal]

Frothy is fine. Red wine is typically made by fermenting on the skins, as noted above. You can also make wine darker post ferment by blending with a little petite sirah or petit verdot.