Wine Course Part 2 White Wine PDF
Wine Course Part 2 White Wine PDF
Wine Course Part 2 White Wine PDF
pdf
Saved to Dropbox • 31 Jan 2020 at 16:22
Search
! " # $
% Site Search
Home Forum Tasted News & Events Features Wine School Columnists Food & Travel Advertise About
! "
TWEET SHARE 0
The grape
To begin to understand how any wine is made we
must first look at the composition of the grape.If
you take any grape – black, red or green – and
slice it through the middle, it looks much the
same:
The stalk
is woody and full of a substance called tannin.
Tannin is a preservative with a bitter flavour.
The skin
is covered in a whitish bloom which is a dusting
of wild yeasts and bacteria. The skin itself contains more tannin and, in black grapes, a
colouring pigment.
The pips
contain bitter oils and are never desirable
We use cookies toin whiteyou
ensure wine making.
enjoy the best experience on our website. Click OK to continue. OK
The pulp
is the most interesting part of the grape in white wine making. Over 70% of the pulp is just
water, but the remaining 30% contains most of the elements which give a wine character,
flavour and interest. These elements include various fruit sugars and acids, trace elements
absorbed from the earth and pectin, a gelling agent. The pulp of almost all grapes is the
same colour: a pale green/yellow. Since the juice of almost all grapes is the same pale,
almost clear colour, white wines can be made from any colour of grapes. If using black
grapes to make a white wine, the winemaker must separate the juice from the skins
immediately after pressing and before the fermentation stage, so that no colour is picked up
from the skins. Some examples of white wine made from black grapes are Champagne, blanc
de noirs and white zinfandel.
Most whites are actually made from green grapes. There is, therefore, no hurry to separate
juice from skins since there is no danger of them picking up colour, but most winemakers
prefer to separate anyway, to prevent tannin leaching from the skins into the juice. Though
there is an insignificant group of black grapes whose flesh and juice is actually dark, almost
all red wines extract their colour only from the skins of black grapes. Red wines therefore,
can only be made from black (or red) grapes.
Temperature is the bugbear of white wine makers. Hot countries struggled to make quality
white wines because these require long, cool fermentation (at around 15°C). The act of
fermentation itself creates heat, and in a hot climate with uncontrolled tanks, the result is a
very violent fermentation with temperatures rising to 35° or more and yeasts dying off
quickly.
Perhaps the greatest innovation in the history of white wine making has been the introduction
of temperature controlled stainless steel tanks for fermentation. Introduced first in Australia
and California, these huge, refrigerated tanks have taken the winemaking world by storm.
Even in the hottest climates, white wines of distinction can now be produced. Countries like
Spain, Greece and southern Italy can, for the first time, produce whites of world class quality.
This use of new technology has also led to a new breed of expert, known as the “flying
winemaker”. Largely from Australia and California, these winemakers travel the world to
advise old-fashioned wineries on new technology (like stainless steel) that can bring them up
to date.
Some white wines are fermented in old wooden vats. These will also have some method of
cooling applied, such as being surrounded by a coil of pipes through which cold water is
pumped. These vats are less reliable than steel, but some winemakers swear that fermenting
in oak is the only method to use.
Maturing wine in barrels is an expensive and labour intensive process, as we will see next
week when we look more closely at the process in relation to red wines. Often, the taste we
notice most in a chardonnay has come from the oak, not from the grapes. In the cheapest
chardonnays, handfuls of oak chips are added to the wine to impart a commercially desirable
oaky flavour. Whilst tasty, these wines are rarely subtle or sufficiently well-balanced for
ageing and further development in bottle.
Finally, prior to bottling, the wine must be filtered to leave it crystal clear. This process can be
carried out by many methods. Use of filters and centrifuges to eliminate all solid matter are
effective, but some people claim these methods also remove body and character from the
wine. A more traditional method is fining. Fining uses a gelatinous substance that is stirred
into a barrel of wine. The fining agent gradually sinks to the bottom of the barrel, dragging all
particles with it. Traditionally, fining is done with whisked egg whites. Other common
substances are bentonite (a clay) and isinglass (made from fish bladders!). Once the wine is
perfectly clear and bright it can be bottled, labelled and shipped.
Wines might also undergo a process of “cold stabilisation” before filtering, when they are
chilled in order to force tartaric acids naturally present in the wine to form into tiny crystals.
These crystals can then be removed during filtration. This is done mostly for cosmetic
reasons: white wines that are not stabilised might throw these crystals naturally during
storage or transportation. When the consumer sees tiny white crystals in the bottom of a
bottle it can be very off-putting, though in fact they are harmless and tasteless.
The winemaker can also decide how much residual sugar to leave behind in the wine. If
fermentation is stopped early, before the yeasts eat all the sugars, then a certain amount of
sugar is left behind. For very ripe wines from hot climates it is perfectly possible to produce a
wine that has 13 or 14 degrees of alcohol yet still has some residual sugar. In some countries
the addition of extra sugar is allowed during the fermentation stage – a process known as
chaptalisation – but this is done to boost alcohol to a minimum standard, not to sweeten the
finished wine.
Maturing the wine ‘on the lees’ – keeping the skins and dead yeast cells in contact in the
barrel – can add a creaminess and complexity to a wine. Again, this is done at the
winemaker’s discretion and is a process that requires care and attention: the ‘soup’ of wine
and lees can spoil if scrupulous hygiene is not practised.