If blue-skinned grapes are WHITE inside, how do they make RED wine?

Gather round, children, and I’ll tell you a story.

It’s a bit confusing. You all thought that they pressed white grapes for white whine, red grapes for red wine and rosé grapes for rosé wine ..er. you mix red and white to make rosé wine….er..did something else.

Champagne is made mostly of red grapes (pinot noir and pinot meunier) with only chardonnay delivering the white bit.

So how do they do it?. Magic?

Almost – you press the grapes and separate the skins from the juice straight away. Juice stays clear, with perhaps just the slightest tinge of pink.

Leave them a bit longer and you’ve got rosé

Leave them a LOT longer and you’ve red wine, with all the tannins and stuff from the skin.

Easy, innit?

 

 

15 Oct This entry was published on 15 October, 2012 at 13:00 and is filed under Agriculture, Mainz. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.