Nowadays, people around the world are making their own wine. It’s a fun way to enjoy a particular type of fruit wine that you may not normally find in your local wine shop. Many folks who decide to try winemaking, experience the pride of serving their own bouquet to friends, family, and neighbors.

With home wine making you can be assured of the wine’s ingredients.  With all the confusion today over organic, biodynamic, and semi-organic wines, you’re never quite sure what you’re getting. If you decide to make organic wine from home, you know exactly how your grapes were grown, and what kind of preservatives and sulfites were added in the winemaking process.

When you make wine from scratch, you have several choices about how to get your grapes.  You can grow them yourself, which can take years, and require lots of work.  You can buy organic grapes from a vineyard, which is less effort, but may not give you the full satisfaction of the complete winemaking process.  And, lastly you can buy grape concentrates which may not yield the flavor you were looking for.

Home wine makers can add various ingredients to enhance the flavor of the grapes, to create a higher alcohol content, and to preserve the freshness of the wine and prevent oxidation. You can ferment grape juice in its own yeast, but most wine makers don’t want to take the chance.

You can also choose to add sugar or honey to grapes with lower sugar content. Some home winemakers add wood chips to get the woody flavor without storing the wine in wood barrels for long periods of time. And of course, every organic wine maker must ask him or herself whether to add sulfites, and if so how much. 

Sulfites prevent oxidation and spoiling of the wine.  But most wines that are certified organics are limited in the amount of sulfites that can be added in the wine making process. The fermentation process naturally creates sulfites, so you’ll need to be careful in your assessment.

If you want to make your own wine without all the hassle, you can buy home winemaking kits that include grape concentrate, yeast, nutrients, and preservatives, as well as the basic equipment you’ll need like a bucket, carboy, hydrometer, a siphon, and corks.  Some kits come with organic ingredients and limited additives.  These kits usually only require adding water and sugar. So they are handy, and come in several different wine types including Chardonnay, Reisling, Sherry, Port, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chianti, Merlot, Shiraz, and White Zinfandel.

All kits come with some sort of wine making instructions, and will generally yield a good bottle of wine in about three weeks.

With the movement towards organic winemaking, regular people are challenging themselves to get back to nature and to create a wine that is rich, flavorful, and aromatic without compromising the holistic values of organics.

Sulfite free organic wine does not exist in nature.  It’s physically impossible.  But, organic wines low in sulfites or no-sulfites-added organic wines are becoming more popular in some circles.  There is a movement in the organic wine making industry that wants to rid wine of added sulfites. Why? It’s a chemical preservative. But let’s look at what it actually does.

What are Sulfites?

Sulfites are typically added during winemaking to prevent bacterial growth and oxidation. In sulfite-free wine, no sulfites can be added to the wine during the winemaking process, although they are naturally produced in the fermentation process. So, there is technically no such thing as a sulfite-free organic wine.

These days non-organic winemakers have often overused them to mask odors from the wine or a poor quality crop of grapes. Sulfites have been linked to headaches, respiratory problems, rashes, and other allergic reactions. The sulfites that are added cause these allergic reactions, whereas the naturally occurring sulfites usually cause no side effects. 

The biggest complaint about sulfites is the side effect of headaches.  While added sulfites can cause headaches, naturally occurring tannins released from the skins of the grapes are more likely the cause of headaches. But people are unsure and no conclusive testing has been done to demonstrate the harmful side effects of sulfites. So for now, organic proponents will say that if it isn’t naturally occurring, it shouldn’t be added.

What about Organic Wine and Sulfites?

Organic wine has no added sulfites, but sulfites are a naturally occurring result of fermentation, coming from the skin of the grapes. So, organic wines must maintain a level of sulfites less than 100 parts per million (ppm), as opposed to the 350 ppm limit for non-organic wine makers.

If you are concerned with added sulfites, you should be aware that European wines have significantly more sulfites than American wines. Also, white wines need twice the sulfites red wines do.

Taste of Sulfite-Free Wines

Many people have complained over the years about the taste of wines with no added sulfites. This is what has prevented organic wines from flying off the shelves.  But organic vineyards are doing better with this. 

Although sulfite-free wines have a brown tint to them, organic wine lovers are touting the rich, true flavor of the wine when no sulfites are added. But, still others will swear that sulfite-free wine tastes like battery acid.

Since wine tasting is such a personal thing, only you can decide if you like the flavor of truly organic wine with no added sulfites. Many times the good organics never get to the wine shop shelves, but can be found at local restaurants and wineries.  Since the nature of sulfite free wine is that it cannot sit for long periods of time without some spoilage, these untainted bouquets may never be for mass consumption.