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| Making wine |
| Alok Chandra / New Delhi Oct 17, 2009, 00:52 IST |
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While quite a few people are starting to imbibe wine in India, not too many really know how wine is made, or what constitutes “good” wine. Since I’ve been carrying on about the stuff for some time now, it’s high time I delved into the subject, on the principle that to appreciate anything one needs to understand it a little.
Wine grapes...
Wine is made from wine grapes. Wine grapes are different from table grapes — they have an acid-sugar balance that provides that essential “crispness” and natural aromas derived from the skin and juice. About 80 per cent of the quality of a wine is due to the grape — it’s possible to make poor wine from good grapes, but there’s no way anyone can make good wine from poor-quality grapes.
...are grown in vineyards
Wine grapes (Vitis vinifera) are best grown in temperate climates, between 30 degree and 50 degree North and South — that’s where most of the vineyards of the world are located. The grapes are harvested once a year, before the onset of winter: in September/October in the northern hemisphere and March/April in the southern. The exception is India, where we have adapted viticulture techniques to suit the terroir (soil + climate): grapes ripen in our sunny winter months and are harvested in February-April (and the vine bush is pruned twice a year).
Juice is fermented...
Grape juice contains sugar, which is converted to alcohol by yeast, a catalyst. The resulting beverage is clarified and matured to give wine. The colour in red wine comes from the grape skins, not the juice, so it’s possible to make white wine from black grapes (like in Champagne, which is classically a blend of wines from Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay). Rose wines are made either with a shorter period of skin contact, or by blending a red and a white.
...into wine
The aromas and flavours of wines are derived from the grape varietals and the terroir where they are grown. White wines have sugar, acidity and alcohol; red wines also have tannins (from the skins and pips) and hence are more complex than whites. If all these components are in harmony, the wine is “balanced”.
All wines start off as “still” wine — that is when the process of fermentation and clarification is complete. About 95 per cent of all wines are finally consumed as still wine. However, if one changes the nature of the wine — either by a process change or by adding herbs and spices, then we get variants.
“Sparkling” wine is generally made by re-starting fermentation in a closed container — either a bottle or a tank — so that the carbon dioxide produced remains in solution. Champagne is sparkling wine produced by the “Methode Champenoise” in the Champagne district of France; in Spain the sparkling wine is called Cava, in Italy it’s Prosecco or Spumante, and the Germans call it Sekt.
Other wine categories include Port, Sherry, Vermouths, and many types of aromatised and fortified wines found in Europe and indeed, wherever wine is produced.
Okay, that’s the unsentimental version of winemaking. From time immemorial, writers and poets have waxed eloquent on the romance of wine — and so would you, dear reader, provided you had a drop (or two) of “the cup that cheers” inside. “Wine is bottled poetry,” said RL Stevenson; Ernest Hemmingway maintained, “Wine is the most civilised thing in the world”. Me, I think that “a glass of wine a day keeps the doctor away”!
Wines I’ve been drinking: At another tasting, this time at the Taj Coromandel (Chennai), we had a superlative Riesling: the Fritz Haag, Brauneberger Juffer, Riesling Kabinett, Mosel 2006.
This 92-point wine from Germany was beautifully balanced, with lime, mineral and pineapple aromas and a taste that started off as sweet and ended dry, with terrific complexity. Lovely!
German wine labels seem complex till you understand the logic used: in this present instance: name of the producer, town and vineyard, grape and type of wine, region and vintage. Simple, isn’t it?
Prost!
(al.chandra@gmail.com)
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