Wine is more difficult than beer because you have to deal with grape juice and you can’t sanitize it by boiling. Most people, therefore, use Campden tablets (basically adding sulphites) to control unwanted yeasts and bacteria (which grow naturally on grapes). If you have never experimented with fermentation, I would suggest trying beer first.
If you decide to go with wine, I recommend visiting More Beer . They sell wine making kits if you want to get in easily. But either way, you will need to decide what your base material will be:
1) Juice from the store (lowest quality, but fun…get one WITHOUT preservatives)
2) Juice from pressed grapes (from a homebrew shop…you can get various varieties)
3) Grapes (this requires using a juice press and is a lot more work…you also need to mess with adding and removing skins at the appropriate times, which is an advanced skill).
I recommend NOT using balloons or condoms as airlocks. There are a couple of reasons for this:
1) They aren’t sterile.
2) They contribute flavors to the finished product (from personal experience).
Use an Airlock from More Beer or from a local homebrew store. They cost about $1.50 and are specifically designed for wine making. They can be sanitized which is very important.
In general, you need the following:
1) Juice
2) Wine yeast (don’t use bread yeast, it will taste doughy and won’t get the correct amout of alcohol before the yeast die)
3) Container (glass carboys are best, but a food grade bucket is acceptable as long as you have a way of inserting an airlock)
4) Airlock (you must keep oxygen out while allowing CO2 to escape, otherwise the juice just rots)
5) Sanitary Procedures (SUPER important. You are cultivating a living organism to make alcohol for you. 70% of good beer and wine making is sanitation. Buy some Iodophor or StarSan (cheap at a homebrew store or on More Beer) and sanitize everything that the raw juice will contact.)
6) Proper pH and Temperatures (this requires some measuring equipment- wine is very susceptible to pH levels and temperatures. Shoot for about 3.5 pH and use a temp that is suitable for your yeast variety (should be printed on package)).
This is all assuming that you want to do this right. There are a lot of wine making tutorials on the internet. If all else fails, you can post in the forums at More Beer for detailed information. There is a helpful crowd there. You can also search for a homebrew club or store in your city. That is a great place to get information and materials, and will help support the craft in your area.
Now, you can take some store-bought juice (organic is best to avoid preservatives that inhibit yeast), throw some wine yeast in there, cap it with a balloon, and wait. This will produce an alcoholic beverage assuming it doesn’t get infected with something else. But the drinkability and will never be what you could get by using the appropriate equipment. Still, if all of these instructions seem scary, just throw some juice in a jar with yeast and see what happens. Once you get the hang of it (and catch the love for making your own) you will probably want to invest in some equipment (at least an airlock).
Wine is not my specialty, so I defer to any experts that are here. I do make beer (somewhat regularly) and recently cider. I guess wine might be around the corner.
Good luck and cheers!
P.S. I forgot to mention that it’s definitely possible to make in 10 months. Fermentation itself only takes about a week or two. Complicated procedures maybe as long as a month. But drinkability goes way up when you condition the beverage…and this can take years. But you can make a tasty alcoholic beverage in 2 weeks if you play your cards right.
