The Fundamental to understand about wine

It is not possible to explain everything about wine just in a few hours. Indeed some people study wines in all their life.

There are many kinds of wines, but, here, in order to make it simple, I will only pick a few of them to show you:

1.      White

2.      Red

3.      Rose

4.      Sparkling

All of them are made from grapes and sometimes with the same grapes; the difference in their aspect or taste comes from the way the wine maker makes his wine.

Fermentation

 Each time, if you let some fruits in a special recipient at a nice temperature, they will start to ferment. The fermentation is due to the action of bacteria that attack all the cells of the fruit using the residual sugar of them and producing:

1.      Gas

2.      Alcohol

3.      Aromas

If you want to stop the fermentation, you have to kill the bacteria (temperature), the bacteria can run out of sugar as well and then cannot continue, when the alcohol level reaches 15%, the reaction will stop.

The way the fermentation will be controlled and done will make the wine specification.

RED WINE 

All red wines are done with grapes that have red skins. In fact the grape skin gives the colour to the wine.

-Once the grapes are collected, they are place in the maceration tank where they start to ferment a bit and also were they are pretty packed together so some liquid is going out of the grain and is getting coloured by the skins. The maceration can last a few days to a few weeks (depending if you want to have a wine with a strong colour and smell or if you want to push forward the quality of the juice).

-Once the maceration is completed, the grapes are squeezed in a press to keep the liquid only. At this time, the liquid has already alcohol in it but the fermentation will continue as this first wine is placed in a big container where the temperature is controlled.

-Once the fermentation is completed, the wine is transferred into barrels for a certain period where it will gain more aromas; It is then bottled and stored before to be sold.

WHITE WINE

Basically, it is the same process. One step is just avoided: The maceration. White wine is squeezed just after being picked-up. The fermentation comes immediately after the collection. Everybody understands now that it is possible to make white wine out of red grapes, as the liquid will not have time to gain the colours of the grapes skin.

The maceration takes place in a tank and afterwards people can put it in a barrel or just bottle it (white wine is much more acid than red so the barrel step is sometimes very complicated).

ROSE WINE

Rosé wine is between red and white, in fact the rosé is a red wine with a short maceration. The wine does not gain the colour of the skin too much (it doesn’t get the full aromas as well…).

Fermentation / Barrel &/or bottle…

SPARKLING WINES

There are many sparkling wines but only those produced in Champagne region can be called Champagne.

Many people think that to make Champagne, you just have to have gas and white wine but it is not true…

As we said over, the fermentation produces alcohol, aromas and gas. To do champagne the persons in charge squeezes the grapes and bottles the wine when the fermentation is process. The bottles is closed firmly so the gas produced by the fermentation stay in the bottle and remains in the wine.

Then comes the difficult part, get rid of the remains of the bacteria that stays in the liquid after the fermentation. This operation is called “degorgeage” and requires lots of skills. Nowadays people are turning the bottles upside down and freeze the lees at the top of the bottle, they open the bottle and the gas will blow the frozen part away. People add just after a small amount of liqueur (which will make the difference between brut and demi-sec) to have a full bottle and the cork is replaced quickly. All these operation should be done in the shortest time possible.

Champagne can be white and rose. A few red sparkling wines are available but they are not very popular.

The champagne technique was discovered by mistake by a monk called DOM PERIGNON, he was producing white wine in the Champagne area in France and he forgot to wait until the fermentation was over in the tank and bottled the wine straight away. The pressure broke most of the bottles after a few days, but some of them resist and the result was very good (it is indeed the best way to drink this wine as it is already produced in the north of France where the climate is not very good.