Homemade Wine Guide

Homemade wine is wine you make yourself, for your own table, from grapes, juice, other fruit or honey. In the United States it is legal within federal limits, it is safe when your equipment is clean and the fermentation is sound, and it can be as strong as a commercial table wine. Once the equipment is paid for, it usually costs less per bottle than wine from the store.

Homemade wine is a deep tradition in Portugal, France and Italy, and making it is a hobby that pays you back in bottles. This guide answers the questions people ask before they start, then shows the five easiest ways in, each with its own step-by-step guide.

What Is Homemade Wine?

Any wine made at home for personal use. The process is the same one wineries use, scaled down: yeast eats the sugar in fruit juice and turns it into alcohol and carbon dioxide, the new wine is separated from its sediment, and it is bottled and aged. You will also hear it called homebrew wine, a term that comes from beer brewers.

What makes homemade wine yours is that every choice is in your hands: the fruit, the yeast, how dry or sweet it ends, how long it ages. North Dakota State University Extension’s Getting Started With Home Winemaking (FN1638) sums up the work in three steps: extract the juice (or buy juice with no preservatives), ferment it and then clarify and stabilize the wine, and finally bottle and store it properly.

Five Decisions Before You Start

Is Homemade Wine Legal?

In the United States, yes, within limits. The federal rule is 27 CFR 24.75: any adult may produce wine for personal or family use, without paying tax, up to 200 gallons a calendar year in a household with two or more adults, or 100 gallons where only one adult lives. NDSU translates that into bottles: about 500 bottles a year for one adult and about 1,000 for two or more. For this rule an adult is 18 or older, unless your locality sets a higher legal age for buying wine.

What You Cannot Do

The same section says the wine is for personal or family use and not for sale. Selling it, even in small amounts or at a farmers market, needs a bonded winery and the permits that go with it. Distilling homemade wine into brandy is a separate matter and is not allowed at home: the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau’s page on home distilling notes that a distilled spirits plant may not be located in a residence.

State, Local and International Rules

The federal limit is a ceiling, not a guarantee. State and local laws can be stricter, and a few places restrict home production or the transport of homemade wine further, so check your state’s alcohol control agency before you scale up. Outside the US the rules vary by country: some allow home winemaking freely, others cap the amount or require a license.

Is Homemade Wine Safe to Drink?

Wine made from sound fruit, clean equipment and a proper fermentation is a low-risk food. NDSU points out that most wine has a pH between 3.3 and 3.7, acidic enough to prevent the growth of most types of microorganisms, and alcohol adds a second barrier. The University of Georgia Extension bulletin Winemaking at Home (Circular 717, reviewed 2013) sets 11% alcohol as the level that protects wine from bacterial spoilage, and warns that wine under 10% will be thin and sour and will not keep. The risks come from shortcuts.

Sanitation and Spoilage

Most failed batches fail because bacteria or wild yeast got in through dirty equipment, or because the wine sat with too much air. Sanitize everything that touches the wine, keep carboys topped up and under an airlock, and use Campden tablets as the recipes describe. Spoiled wine usually announces itself: a smell of vinegar or nail polish remover, or a film or fuzzy mold on the surface. Our wine faults guide covers each one.

Ingredients That Need Care

A few plants carry their own risks. Elderberry stems, leaves and unripe berries must never go in the bucket: in 1984 the CDC reported a group of people who became ill after drinking juice pressed from berries crushed with their leaves and branches. Our elderberry wine recipe covers the safe method. NDSU also warns not to break the pits of stone fruit such as cherries and plums, which contain a cyanide-forming compound that adds a bitter taste.

Bottles That Burst

The other real hazard is pressure. Wine bottled before fermentation has finished, or sweetened without a stabilizer, can start fermenting again in the bottle; Clemson Cooperative Extension’s Basics of Home Winemaking warns that the trapped carbon dioxide can shatter the glass. Bottle only after the hydrometer reads the same for several days, and add potassium sorbate before you sweeten.

What About Methanol?

Every fermented drink contains a little methanol, and homemade wine is no exception. The poisoning outbreaks that make the news are something else: the World Health Organization traces them to methanol added to illicit or informally produced drinks and to badly managed distillation. Our guide to how long homemade wine lasts covers storage safety in more detail.

How Strong Is Homemade Wine?

As strong as the sugar allows. UGA’s rule of thumb is that fermented sugar yields about half its amount as alcohol, so juice at 22 percent sugar becomes a wine of about 11 percent. It adds that most yeasts struggle to finish above 24 percent sugar, so anything beyond that stays in the wine as sweetness. That is why winemakers measure the juice with a hydrometer before they start, aiming for a starting gravity around 1.090.

Potential alcohol uses the standard hydrometer formula, (start minus finish) × 131.25, assuming the wine ferments down to 1.000. Measure your own wine with two readings in our wine ABV calculator, and see how to make wine stronger if you want more.

Is Homemade Wine Cheaper?

Usually, from the second batch on. The costs split into two kinds:

• Once: the equipment. A fermenting bucket, a carboy, an airlock, a siphon, a hydrometer and a corker last for years.
• Every batch: the fruit or juice, sugar, yeast, a few additives and corks. NDSU notes that commercial wine bottles can be reused once they are thoroughly cleaned and sanitized; corks never can.

The first batch carries the cost of all the gear, so it is the expensive one. After that, the cheapest bottles come from garden fruit or supermarket juice, and the most expensive from premium ingredient kits, which trade price for convenience and predictable results. A six-gallon batch fills about 30 bottles, which spreads the per-batch costs thin. Our wine making kit guide compares the starting options.

Money is not the only return. You choose exactly what goes into the bottle, you can make styles you cannot buy, and there is real satisfaction in sharing a wine you made yourself.

Types of Homemade Wine and Where to Start

Grape wine is the classic, but it is not the only option, and it is not the easiest one. These are the routes this site covers, from the most traditional to the most forgiving.

Grape Wine

Red and white wine from fresh grapes is the most traditional homemade wine and the most rewarding when it works. It is also the one most often made badly, because shortcuts at harvest, during fermentation or at bottling show up in the glass. Our step-by-step guide to making wine at home covers red and white in 13 steps, with the numbers to aim for at each one.

Wine from Grape Juice

The fastest way to a first bottle. Store-bought 100% grape juice or frozen concentrate, sugar and a packet of wine yeast make a light, clean wine with almost no equipment. See how to make wine from grape juice.

Fruit Wine

Country wines from blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, black currants, apples or even bananas give colors and flavors you will not find in a store. The process is the same for nearly every fruit; only the recipe changes. Start with how to make wine from fruit and pick one of our homemade wine recipes.

Mead and Cider

Honey wine and hard cider use the same equipment and skills. See how to make mead and how to make hard cider.

• How to Make Wine at HomeThe full grape method, red and white
• How to Make Wine from Grape JuiceThe easiest first batch
• How to Make Homemade Wine from FruitCountry wines from any fruit
• Best Homemade Wine RecipesFruit wine recipes, one gallon at a time
• Home Wine Making Equipment & SuppliesEvery piece of equipment explained
• Best Wine Making KitsEquipment and ingredient kits compared

Homemade Wine Questions