What's Done to Wine in the Cellar?

First off, I'm not a winemaker other than a bit of homemade stuff. Actually, if I was a winemaker, I wouldn't be telling you many of the things done to your wine. Second, nothing mentioned here will hurt you. Everything done in the cellar is to make the wine better, or sometimes to save time or money, in the opinion of the people making the wine. Sometimes it's for taste, sometimes for looks. The U.S. gov't, the TTB, controls what can legally be added. 

There are two groupings of wine manipulations, things added and processes done to the juice or wine.

Mega Purple is Everywhere!

Depending on your point-of-view, there is a secret ingredient to help many wines look better or there is fakery and dishonest business practices by many wineries. 

Mega Purple is concentrated grape juice added to wine. It's made from a hybrid grape called Rubired (sometimes called Tenturier).

A Successful Wine Tasting Trip

 Whether you are going for a day or a week, here are a few wine tasting tips to make things go well. As you'll see, there's a bit of prep work.

Hot Alcohol (in Sales)

What's hot in alcohol sales in the country? This is looking at growth over the past few years, not total sales. Info from Market Watch Mag.

In Depth: Acid, Tannins, Sweetness

The past few posts have covered individual elements that you taste in a wine: acidity, tannins, sweetness, alcohol, and body. If you remember, tannin isn't really sensed by taste, but actually by touch. This post will get a little nerdy with a bit of science (sorry).

Body in Wine

The term body is the weight, texture and richness of a wine. Weight is viscosity, or how thick and heavy it feels. Texture would be terms like silky, smooth, sharp, firm. Richness is full, round, sweet tasting, or not.

Alcohol in Wine

What? There's alcohol? Yep, because otherwise you have grape juice. In the olden days, let's say three decades ago or longer, the only thought given to alcohol was whether a European wine had enough because some years the fruit just didn't fully ripen. 

Sweetness in Wine

In the premium wine world, dessert wines and fortified wines are expected to be sweet. A few others, like Riesling and sparkling, can have various amounts of sweetness. The vast majority of table wines are meant to be dry with no discernible sweetness, but that's not always the case.

Tannin in Wine

Black teas have lots of tannins, and you feel it drying out your mouth when you drink it. Other foods, like all other teas, coffee, and nuts have tannins, though not the mouth-drying sensation of black tea. So our perception of tannins is a sensation and a feel, not a smell or taste.

Acidity in Wine

The easiest way to show acidity is to bite into a lemon. There's acidity! It's bright, it's refreshing, it's tart, it makes your mouth water and sometimes even your eyes. Ever try to make lemonade without sugar? Whoa, that will make you pucker. You want to get just the right amount of sweetness in your lemonade to balance the effects of the acid, but to not drown it out. Hmm, might some wines do the same thing? Some of the higher acid white wines, like Riesling, do this.

Suffer from acid reflux? Maybe keep to the lower acid wines.

The American Love Affair With French Wine

Top-selling French
premium wine in U.S.

In 1784 Thomas Jefferson, a Madeira and Port drinker, went to France. He came home a fan of Bordeaux and Burgundy. Part of this was probably political, as he switched from what the British drank to a buyer of wines from America's new ally.

France's largest exports in value are aerospace products. Number two is wine exports that were over $18b in 2022. This was up substantially from the two previous years, driven by inflation. More than one-forth of French wine and spirits exports are to the U.S.

The American market is huge. The French were the top wine consumers "forever" until about ten years ago, when the U.S. forged ahead as the largest wine consuming nation. France is still in the lead on the amount consumed per person. Wine consumption in France has been dropping for a number of years.

 

French exports in 2021 -- from Statista
Click on image to enlarge

 

No Reservations Required!

  At one time, only a handful of Sonoma County wineries required reservations for tasting. With the pandemic, almost everyone in Sonoma and Napa went to reservations as a means of crowd control and safety. Many have stayed that way.