Wine 101: The Basics
What’s the difference between White, Red and Rosé Wines?
The Wall of Wine. We’ve been there. A large wall with copious amounts of bottles, colors, countries and grape styles. Isn’t it amazing to see how many variations there are for a grape? Us, too. :)
To help get your comfort level, we put a little how-to together on the basics. Don’t worry, we’ll continue to be writing our picks, tips and tricks to the wonderful world of wino, along with beers, cocktails and more! We spoke with our Co-Founder and Head Sommelier, Michael Bottigliero, about the basics.
Ok, let’s start with WHAT is wine exactly?
Wine is made from the juice of fruit - you need sugars to start a fermentation. From there, yeast is added, which eats the sugar.
How is Sparkling Wine made?
Carbon dioxide is made from the sugar, along with the alcohol.
There are two ways to make sparkling wine:
Traditional Method: take wine with no bubbles (still wine) and fill your bottles. Add a measured amount of sugar and yeast, cap it off, a secondary fermentation happens right in the bottle creating CO2- there's your bubbles!
Tank Method: create the wine in a large stainless steel container, trapping the carbon dioxide, then fill your bottles from there, capping or adding the cork and cage.
Now What About White Wine?
White wine is easy enough to make- 95% of all grape vines (there are over 10,000 different kinds- Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Chardonnay, etc) produce grapes with a clear pulp. To make white wine, make sure nothing influences that clear juice (skins, seeds, stems, etc). To make Orange wine, allow the clear juice to sit with light colored skins. You didn’t know that orange wine is possible to make, did you? Now you know! :)
Let’s Talk About Rosé All Day! For rosé wine, allow the skins to sit with the juice for 1-24 hours. That will give it a nice light pink color.
So That Leaves Us with Red Wine. How Does it Become Red?
For red wine, allow the skins to sit with the juice for 5-30+ days. This will give either a vibrant red or dark purple color depending upon the type of grape. The longer you leave the skins on will not only influence the color, but also allow more microscopic grapeskin material to bleed into the wine and that is where your tannins come out. They will grip at your gums and that is how you tell if they are light to heavy tannins.
The longer you leave your grapes on the vine, the more sugars they will build up, which can be fully fermented into higher alcohol by volume (ABV) wines, or create sweet or dessert wines.
There you have it! The basics behind each type of wine type.