WINE VOCABULARY, STEP BY STEP - 8

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Affordable styles, self-development, how-to do’s, learn to divine and describe your own taste. Wine is a personal preference; everybody taste different and likes or dislikes some smell or taste impressions.

FOR THE SELF-MADE PERSON

My impression is that a lot of wine critics sound like a doctor. Using wine terms if everybody knows them. To understand this better, I will take you, in the coming time, step by step through those words in a normal way.

By AD Wines, Dannis Apeldoorn

From A to Z —> C

Carbon dioxide (CO2)

A hot topic nowadays but in the wine industry it appears too.

What a vine needs - Once the growing season has started the vine uses sunlight to combine carbon dioxide (CO2) and water to produce glucose and oxygen (O2). This process is known as and called photosynthesis.  This is during daytime. During night time the opposite. That’s why you must have not all type of plants and not to many plants in the bedroom. Plants also use this process. When not enough ventilation and to many plants that can course not enough oxygen (O2) in the bedroom.

Also used in a method of winemaking

Carbonic maceration

This is a wine making method where only whole uncrushed bunches are placed into vats that are filled with CO2 to remove the oxygen. This causes the intracellular (from inside the grape cells inside the still closed skin) fermentation to start. Once the level of alcohol in the grape reaches 2% the grape skin starts to split and the grape release their juice. The grapes are generally pressed at this stage to separate the juice from the skins. Yeast then complete the fermentation of the skins. Importantly, this method extracts colour from the grapes, but little tannin. And the resulting wines are soft and full of fruit, with distinctive notes of kirsch, banana, bubble gum and cinnamon.

Clarification

The majority of customers expect their wines to be clear. There are 3 main techniques to do that; sedimentation(*), fining(**) and filtration(***). Some of the premium wines do not undergo those techniques because those winemaker believe that it can harm the wine. 

(*) Sedimentation

Most wines will undergo sedimentation after the fermentation has finished. Once the gross lees have settled in a deposit, the wine can slowly been pumped into a different vessel leaving the sediment behind, a process known as racking. The wine will continue to throw a deposit of fine lees during maturation and the clarity of the wine can be gradually improved by repeated racking.  Sedimentation relies on gravity to the natural proces acts slow. This process can be speed up by centrifuge the wine, however this piece of equipment is very expensive.

(**) Fining

Sometimes hazes or deposits may only appear in wine after a period of time in the bottle. This is because some wine constituents slowly clump together over the time. Fining is a process that speeds up this process so that these particles can be removed from the wine before it goes into the bottles. It involves adding a fining agent to the wine a substance that forms bonds with certain wine components and cause visible clumps. These clumps can be removed by filtering. 

Fining is widely practised and is generally considered an important step in ensuring the stability of the wine. But some winemakers choose not to fine their wines as they think it can affect the flavour and texture of their wines.

(***) Filtration

This is a process that physically removes particles from a wine as it is passed through a filter. Wines can be filtered after fermentation and during maturation to remove the gross and fine lees in a pretty quick way, and are usually filtered before bottling to ensure that the wine is clear. And of course there i not one way. But there are 2 methods.

1. Depth filtration - The filters used in depth filtration are made from a thick layer of material. As the wine passes through the filter the solid parts become trapped inside this material. These filters are able to handle very cloudy wines and can be used to remove the gross lees.

2. Surface filtration - The filters used for this type of filtration are resembled from very fine sieves. The solid particles are trapped on the surface of the filters as the wine flows through it. The filters are very expensive and clog up very easily, so are generally used for wines that have already been passed through a depth filter(1). Where the pore size is small enough to remove yeast and bacteria that might still be present in the wine, this is referred to as sterile filtration. This can be used as a final treatment before bottling.

Most white wines will undergo some of fining and/or filtration to improve the clarity and stability of the wine. The relatively pale colour of most white wines compared with red ones makes any haze or sediment quicker visible. 

The following week we continue with the letter - C.

Next week, same day, Saturday, and same time, 9:30 am CET, the next two words.