Saturday, June 8, 2013

The Basics Of Wine And Wine Making

By Chris Saley


Wine can be an intimidating subject to tackle. Whether you're headed to a winery for your first wine tasting, talking to a waiter at a restaurant, or trying to pick up a bottle for a dinner with your significant other, the subject of wine can be overwhelming. While there are many subtleties, differences and unique qualities of wine, there are some general and simple characteristics too.

Below is a general description of wine and the winemaking process.

Red Wine

Red grapes are harvested from vineyards and put into a crushing machine to remove the stems. This process also bring out the red color of the skins. The dryness or sweetness of a particular red wine is determined by the fermentation process. Fermenting all the sugar into alcohol will give you dry red wine. Stopping the fermenting process before all the sugar is turned to alcohol will give you sweet red wine. Additional alchohol is then added to get the wine to a 13-15% alcohol content. The wine is then aged in wooden barrels.

White Wine

The process for white wine is very similar to that of red, but with a few key differences. White and red grapes are both fed into the crushing machines to remove the stems breaks free the grape pulp. For white wine, the crushing machine then removes the colored skins. After this, similarly to red wine, dry white wine is allowed to naturally ferment, while sweet white wine has unfermented sugars left in the liquid, and alcohol added. White wine is generally stored and aged in stainless steel as opposed to oak barrels and is generally served chilled.

Champagne

The "Champagne" region of France is technically where the only true champagne comes from. The main difference of champagne as opposed to wine is that there is a second fermentation process that actually occurs in the bottle. The crushing process of the grapes is similar to that of red and white wine.

These are some of the simplified aspects of wine and wine making. To make different types of wine requires specific grapes, such as the white grape of chardonnay, pinot grigio, riesling, or the red grape of cabernet, pinot noir, or Norton. It is the growing, harvesting, and aging process that differentiates the quality and cost of the wines.




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