Scandinavian vinification

Scandinavian wine making has adopted best practice from traditional wine countries and will continue to develop its own traditions.
At the peak of maturity, depending on wine style, grapes are picked and carefully sorted. By the time of harvest temperature is often quite cold which is good thing as the fruit is brought to the winery.

There are five basic stages to the winemaking process beginning with the harvest, or picking. After the harvest, the grapes are taken into the winery and prepared for primary fermentation. At this stage red wine making diverges from white wine making. Red wine is made fermenting on the skins from blue grapes and the wine is pressed of when the sugar is converted to alcohol. Green grapes are pressed after no or only a few hours of skin contact and the juice fermented. Occasionally white wine is made from red grapes; this is done by extracting their juice without contact with the grapes' skins. Some winemakers ferment green grapes with their skins which results in a deeply yellow or orange colour. This is an old method with a renewed interest and the wines are often called orange wines. Rosé wines are made with only minimum if any skin contact since the blue grapes grown in Scandinavia a rich in pigment, or (less commonly) by blending juice from blue grapes with juice from green grapes. White and rosé wines with short or no skin contact will have low levels of tannins which originates from the skins.