Wine 101: July ’09 | The Beachside Resident

By: Ken Mageau

Article Category: Wine Life 1 Comment

Making Wine

How do grapes become wine? Great question.

I hope I can answer it without putting you to sleep. It’s an important question to answer so you can begin to understand the differences between the tastes of the same wine from the same vineyard made in different years.

The weather really determines the quality of the wine. Most winemakers hope to get nice, cool, sunny spring weather, a nice hot summer and a dry fall, with warm days and cool nights. Rain at harvest can speed up the picking process. A lot of rain can dilute the taste, which in turn makes for a watery wine. A great growing season doesn’t always produce great wines, though — it varies from vineyard to vineyard — but you can bet there are some fantastic wines being made during these conditions. When you see a vintage year on a bottle that’s the year the grapes were grown and picked. The winemaker hopes to pick their grapes at the highest level of sugars the grapes produce — the higher the sugars the better the fermentation process.

The high sugar content is important because when the yeast is added, it eats the sugars to produce alcohol and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide bubbles off, but the alcohol remains. Fermentation can last a few days to a few weeks. The wine is then aged in either stainless steel vats or oak barrels. If the wine is vat-aged, you really get the taste of the fruit shining through. If aged in oak, like many Chardonnay wines, the oak barrel will give the wine a toasty vanilla flavor. Some drinkers call this a “buttery oaky” flavor.

White wines are made from sort of a yellow to greenish red grape, which also means that it is possible to have a white Pinot Noir or Merlot. Red wine is made almost the same way with a few differences. After the grapes are crushed, the stems are removed but the skins are left on and the red color is obtained from the pigment in the skins of the grapes that are left in the juice during pressing. These provide both pigment and tannins, as do the oak barrels. Tannins are what gives the wine structure and preserve it for aging. Tannins also produce the dryness usually associated with red wines.

Oak barrels are used to age most red wines. The benefit of this is the flavor characteristics contained in new oak barrels, which are transferred to the wine while aging. New oak barrels are very expensive and are replaced every two years, so many high-end winemakers taught the use of new French or American oak barrels as an added incentive to get wine lovers to purchase their wines. If a winemaker can’t afford new barrels but want to add oaky flavor, they usually age the wine in stainless steel vats and add oak chips to the liquid. Strange, but true! This process results in the very inexpensive wines you see offered at the big box stores and other locations.

Winemaking is a true art form, taught over years and years in the fields and in the pressing rooms and wine cellars around the world. Obviously, I’ve really simplified the process, but it should help you gain a basic understanding of the craft.

Ken Mageau is the owner of The Flying Corkscrew, purveyors of fine wine, beer and cigars, located at 1877 S. Patrick Dr. in Indian Harbour Beach. Call (321) 773-8757, or visit www.brevardwines.com