Elevating Your Knowledge and Appreciation of Wine

Wine 101 Wine 101 - Basic Principles - What Is Wine?

Wine is an alcoholic drink made with fermented grapes. The grapes used for winemaking are not the same grapes you buy at the grocery store. Wine grapes are sweeter, smaller, and have seeds. There are over 10,000 varieties of grapes for wine. However, the number of grape varieties used for making commercial wine is around 1,300.

Wine Petals
Wine Petals

Harvest

Wine grapes usually ripen in one harvest season (the harvest season typically falls between August and October in the Northern Hemisphere and February and April in the Southern Hemisphere) and are usually produced or made into wine in just one year.

Origin

Wine first originated in South Caucasus, Georgia in 6,000 BC when archaeologists traced the world's first known wine creation back to the people of the South Caucasus in 6,000 BC. Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region, situated at the juncture of Western Asia and Eastern Europe.

Wine Lingo

When discussing wine, there are four key wine descriptors that will always surface. The descriptors help to understand the quality of the wine. Check them out and remember them:

Body

When someone asks about the body of a wine, they are referring to the wine’s texture, weight, and density that the wine has on the palate. In basic terms, it is how the wine feels in your mouth.

Acidity

The acidity level in a wine is what gives the wine its tart taste. In wine tasting, “acidity” refers to the fresh, tart, and sour attributes of the wine. The acidity level is determined by how well the acidity balances out the sweetness and bitter components of the wine such as tannins.

Wine Petals

Tannins

Tannins come from the grape skin, stem, and seeds. It can also come from the wood barrels used during the aging process. When talking tannins in wine, refer to the texture, weight, and feel in the mouth. Red wines have tannins.

  • Why are Tannins in my wine? Tannins are in your wine because the winemaker uses the skins from the grapes and lets them soak in the grape juice to ferment. This process also produces the color of the wine. Red wines ferment with the grape skins longer and that produces the rich burgundy color of the red wine. White wines don’t have much skin contact and produce little to no tannins. Pay attention to the acidity level for white wines and the tannins for red wine.
Wine Petals

Sweetness

Simply stated, this key descriptor refers to how sweet the wine tastes. Sugars and alcohol enhance a wine's sweetness. Wines above 5% sweetness are noticeably sweet. Also, in determining the sweetness of wine, it depends on the type of wine that you are drinking.