Wine Made Simple

Why all the weird language surrounding wine?  That's so we can keep all the good stuff to ourselves!  Actually, in real plain English here's an introduction to wine.

How Wine is Made

Grape growing is like growing any other fruit.  Before an apple is ripe it's hard and tart tasting.  As the fruit ripens the tart acids become sugar.  When the grapes have the right amount of sugar-to-acids for making wine the bunches are picked.   The grapes are crushed to get the juice then go to into a fermentation process.   This is where a fungus (yeast) is added.  The yeast eats the sugar and excretes alcohol and carbon dioxide (kinda gross if you think about it).  If you think this is bad what do you think happens to all the bees and occasional sparrow that's hanging around the crushers?  Hey, it's an agricultural product.  Did you know it was OK to have rat hairs in your cereal?

At this point the wine is cleaned up.  If you were to taste it now the wine would taste like grape juice.  So the wine is aged, sometimes in oak barrels.  A wine is continually changing.  When its fermented and properly aged the wine maker decides it's time to put it into bottles.

The wine is still changing in the bottle.  At some point it will reach its best and "peak" then start a gradual downward slide into vinegar.

Wine Varieties 

Wine comes in many varieties, just like apples.  Some of the main ones you'll find in California are:

White

• Chardonnay (shar-dun-ai). From the French Burgundy region.  Considered an elegant white wine.  Not as fruity as others.  Most are turned into oaky and buttery wines by the winemakers because they can charge more for them.  A well made simpler, fruitier Chardonnay is a better complement to food.
• Sauvignon Blanc (so-vin-yohn blahnk). From the French Bordeaux region.  A fruitier less complicated wine than Chardonnay and usually better with food.  Also called Fume (foo-may) Blanc.
• Gewürztraminer (geh-vurtz-trah-meener).  From Germany.  Flowery, spicy, and at least a little sweet.  Good sipping wine.  Usually said to be good with spicy food, but I'd rather have a beer. Also made as a sweet dessert wine, but most California ones are too syrupy.    Not too much of this made.
• Riesling (reez-leeng).  From Germany.  Flowery.  The drier ones are best by themselves, not with food.  The sweeter with dessert.  Not much of this available.
• White Zinfandel.  Zinfandel is a red wine grape, but has been successfully marketed as white zin.  This is a pink sweet sort of wine that is easy for Pepsi drinkers to get accustomed to.  Made for sipping on a hot day, not for having with food.

Red

• Pinot Noir (pee-noh nwahr).  From the Burgundy region.  Lightest of the major red varieties, but can be an elegant wine.  Cherries, sometimes a bit of a cigar taste.  Most require little or no aging.  A good Pinot doesn't overpower with fruit, but has some"backbone" to stand up to a hearty meat dish.
• Merlot (mare-loh).  From Bordeaux. A lighter, softer cousin to Cabernet.  A good Merlot will have the same characteristics of a good Cabernet only not so tannic or astringent.  Most require little or no aging.  Lots of mediocre Merlots out there right now because of their popularity (a supply problem) so be careful.  The best Merlots have 10 or 20% Cabernet blended in, but those are hard to find.
• Cabernet Sauvignon (cab-er-nay saw-vin-yohn).  From Bordeaux.  The "king" of red wines. Big, heavy, fruity, dark colored wines needing anywhere from one to five years bottle aging.  When they are young, they are often tannic (that's what makes you pucker when you taste it).  A good Cab says "chocolate" or "sirloin."
• Zinfandel.  Raspberries, peppery, or sometimes inky (concentrated).  The best all-around red wine because it's good for just sipping, or with almost any meal (try with BBQ'ed chicken) and is still reasonably priced.  A good zin says "raviolis!"
• Syrah (sir-rah).  An "up-and-coming" full-flavored variety.  Fruity and will stand up to any food.  Similar to Australia's Shiraz, but not the same as Petite Sirah.
• Petite Sirah.  An old Italian-style heavy red that's not very popular any more.   Can be a hearty mouth-filling big, yet soft wine or can be like sucking on a sock.  The really good ones are worth finding and aging.

A zinfandel cluster

Tasting Wine

If you're sampling different wines it's best to taste the whites first, from driest to sweetest then reds from lightest to the  heaviest. Otherwise, it throws off your taste buds kind of like drinking milk and orange juice back-to-back.  Use bland crackers between tastes.

When you are tasting keep in mind wines will change over time and they will taste different with food.

Buying Wine

First decide what are you buying for?  Tonight's dinner? Something to store away?   A sipping wine for Saturday's picnic?

If you already have a favorite winery or region for a particular kind of wine then stick with that unless you get a trusted recommendation.  For instance, it's hard to find a bad Zinfandel from the Dry Creek Valley region or a bad Pinot Noir from Carneros.

Sometimes meaningless terms to watch out for:  Reserve, barrel select, special bottling, unfiltered, old vines, cuvee.  It doesn't mean the wine isn't better than another, but it's not a guarantee of quality.  Sometimes it's just marketing's way of charging more.

Price is not a guarantee of quality.  Even though wine reviewers will fall all over themselves to taste and rave about the latest $50 Napa Cabernet.  Don't buy just on price.

  Back to Visiting the Sonoma Wine Country page

This page last updated on 05/03/01