BLOG #2: Wine 101 .... What is wine?

Let's start right at the beginning...you have send in the first blog, that there is a great deal of history involved in the creation of wine. Now let us look at what is actually in the glass? What is wine?

Ever wondered why we swirl wine in the glass? Do you know how best to smell a wine? Why does wine have so many different flavours? What is the difference between white and red wine? How do you tell if a wine is corked? What are wine 'legs' ? What is a tannin?

All very viable questions and ones which we will ensure we discuss in the coming blogs. But for today, lets focus on what is wine?

What are the constituents that make up wine?

I hear you shouting already....GRAPE JUICE. Well yes, of course it is made up of grape juice but upto 85% of the liquid in that bottle of Chateauneuf de Pape, or that Pinot Noir you just opened is WATER. Wine is predominantly water. Great, good news, water is needed to survive and now I can get all my water intake for the day through drinking wine...if only that were true!

Ethanol - or alcohol, is clearly a decent chunk too, now depending on what wine you have in front of you, will have a different level of ABV - or alcohol by volume. Some of the sweet wines which have been deliberately or naturally, stopped early during fermentation will be as low as 7% ABV - something like a German Riesling springs to mind or a Moscato which still has a little residual sugar in the wine. To the other extreme, of a big, powerful red wine which thanks to improved wine making techniques now pushes the 15% boundary, although to go further would be tricky for the yeast consuming the sugars, hence why fortified wines are fortified in the first place.

Sugars or Carbohydrates - clearly this also depends o the style of wine, some of the lusciously sweet wines will hold over 200g per litre of sugar still within the wine, where as a very dry wine will typically only contain between 0-10g/L. These sugars are typically natural fruit sugars - a portion of this is likely to be unfermented sugars from the alcoholic fermentation process when making the wine and leave residual sugars.

Acids - yes there is acid in wine. You will maybe notice it more these days from big bold hitting wines like the NZ Sauvignon Blanc that sparks with fresh, high acidity in the mouth, but in fact acidity is relevant in all wines. Typically if you were getting out the pH scale, acidity in wine would measure somewhere between 3 and 4 - which to give you a clue is more than say an orange or apple juice that you drink for breakfast. The acid is typically mostly made up of tartaric acid - this is generated within the vineyard on the vine. Whilst you may expect this to ease off as grapes ripen, the tartaric acid remains versus that of malic acid which is also present in the grape juice and does decline (malolactic fermentation can held change tartaric acid to malic acid within the winery). There is a reference here to why people suggest there is more acidity in grapes if you pick them early though as malic acid is present at higher levels and this does decrease as the sun ripening of the grapes takes place.

If you add up the above, so water makes up, upto 85% of the bottle, plus an average of lets say 13% alcohol and acids making up 0.5% you are left with 1.5%! From that last piece of the puzzle come organic acids, tannins and phenolics. These will vary depending on style of wine being used. Depending on the winemaking techniques there will be also be marginal localised rulings too.

This gives you a very brief overview of what makes up the wine in your glass. Stay tuned for more in depth analysis in the coming weeks.