Organic Wine Do you ever worry about what additives, preservatives and pesticides are in your food? What about the effect on the environment of the manufacturing process? When you make your own wine you don’t need to worry! Every ingredient has been put in the wine personally so you know exactly what you’re putting in to your body. Whether you are using fruit you have grown yourself (or been given) or you’ve been able to source locally grown organic beauties – you can now make your own organic wine at fraction of the cost of store-bought organic wine. You can also buy organic sugar fair trade sugar from the makewine.co.nz shop. This sugar has been sustainably and ethically sourced. Sulphite (Sulfite) Free Wine It is impossible to make a sulfite-free wine, because wine yeast produces sulfur dioxide (SO2) during the fermentation process. However, you can reduce and control the amount of sulphites in your wine by how much / whether you use metabisulphite in your home winemaking. It is true that metabisulphite is an effective and safe method of sterilising both your must and equipment, but if you don’t mind taking a little bit of risk you can make wine without it. Using boiling water to sterlise your equipment and must, whilst a bit more risky in terms of your wine getting an infection, may be a worthwhile trade-off in your opinion especially if you have a sensitivity to sulphites. You can also choose to rinse your equipment that has been sterlised with metabisulphite with cooled boiled water to reduce the amount of sulphites you are adding to your wine. Also, if you are planning on drinking your wine young, the alcohol in the wine will act as a preservative, negating the need to add metabisulphite throughout the winemaking process as a preservative. Some people use chlorine bleach to sterlise their equipment rather than metabisulphite. Also some homebrew stores sell a pink powder as a sanitiser which is a chlorinated product. This is NOT recommended. Chlorine is quite a dangerous product to have around wine. With improper use and insufficient rinsing chlorine residue may get into the wine. If it does, it could easily be converted to trichloroanisole (TCA) the major chemical found in cork taint (mustiness). For this reason, chlorine is almost never used in wineries.