All About Wine And Its Goodness!

What is wine?

For millennia, wine has been made from only two incredients. They are grape juice and yeast. Any fruit juice can be used, as a matter of fact, but grape juice is the most frequently used.

Historically wine was the drink of choice because of the sometimes poor quality of the drinking water in so many regions. Today, of course, we tend to open a bottle of fine wine at times of celebration or offer it as a welcome gift as part of a wine giftbasket.

Since there are yeast spores in the air, wine could be made without effort simply by allowing grape juice to stay in an open container for an extended period of time. You probably wouldn’t find that so enjoyable, though.

Yeast is a living organism. In wine making, the yeast feeds off the sugars. That process is called fermentation. The action of fermentation converts the sugars in the juice into alcohol with a biproduct of carbon dioxide. In contemporary times, special types of yeast have been cultured solely for their use in wine making. The particular strain of the yeast, along with other factors, determines the flavor of the wine.

Once all of the fermentable sugars have been consumed, the yeast will fall to the bottom of the container. The wine is removed from the container, leaving the yeast, and is trasferred to another container to mature while waiting to be bottled.

You probably know that there are green grapes and black grapes and different grapes are used to make different wines. The color of the wine, however, does not directly reflect the color of the grape. In fact, grape juice is largely clear no matter the color of the original grape. The color of wine is determined by whether (and for how long) the skin is allowed to remain in the juice during the fermentation process.

Many factors contribute to the eventual flavor of any wine. They include the strain of yeast, the type of grape, the soil conditions, the weather during the growing season, the technique and temperature during fermentation and even the nature of the oak barrels in which the wine matures.

Never fear, with all of these factors considered even the most avid wine drinker would ever be able to experience all of the different varieties of wine on the market today. Let the treasure hunting begin!

What is tannin?

Tannin is a substance in wine that causes a firm, mouth-drying feeling in your mouth. It is extracted from the skins, seeds and stems of the grapes so red wines will contain more tannin than whites. White wines will get a degree of tannin when oak barrels are used for fermentation or aging. Eat just the skins of grapes or drink strongly brewed, unsweetened tea for a good idea of what tannin feels like in your mouth.

Because of the brevity of this description, this has been only a tiny overview of what there is to know about wine. Hopefully, though, it has given you a few nuggets for your conversation at the next wine and cheese tasting that you attend.

Tags: wine, wine basket, wine gift basket, wine making

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 at 12:11 am and is filed under food and wine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.