Table of Contents
1. Rosé
The word rosé in French also means pink.
Rosé wine is made from black grapes and its colours range from pale pink to darker, like diluted strawberry Ribena.
You may ask, “Since rosé and red wine are both made from black grapes, why is there such a big colour difference?
In How is Wine Made, I mentioned that red wine’s dark colour comes from skin-on fermentation, during which dark pigments (anthocyanins) on the grape skins are released into the fermenting juice to have its colour darkened.
By this logic, you’d know that rosé is made from black grapes “without skins”.
For making rosé with a pale pink colour, after harvesting, black grapes are destemmed, deseeded, pressed to have skins removed and sent for fermentation. Rosé from Provence is made this way. The pale pink colour has become the signature of the Provencal rosé. But it’d be unwise to consider the wine light as its pale colour suggests. A Provancal rosé usually has at least 13% ABV and a pretty full body.
As for rosé with a darker pink colour, the destemmed and deseeded black grapes are soaked for a bit in the free-run juice produced by crushing and destemming. Then the grapes are pressed, skins removed. It is the process of soaking (called maceration) that extracts the anthocyanins on the skin, which results in a darker pink.
Rosé with a colour between pale pink and dark pink is made also with skin maceration, but for a shorter period of time than making the dark pink rosé.
In addition to the above, a simplest way of making rosé is blending red wine with white wine, which is forbidden in most European wine regions, with the Champagne region being one of a few exceptions.
Rosé are usually released right after being made. In some cases, post-fermentation maturation in stainless steel vats for a few months does take place. Very few are matured in wooden barrels.
2. Orange Wine
Unlike black grape skins containing anthocyanins that colour the wine red-purplish, green grape skins contain carotenoids that colour the wine orange, making it orange wine.
The earliest domesticated winemaking can be traced back to 8,000 years ago in today’s Central Asia. Back then there was no peeling technique, so wine was fermented skin-on, which means that the wine made from green grapes 8,000 years ago was not white wine, but orange wine. It’s fair to call orange wine the ancestor of white wine.
8,000 years ago was the Neolithic period, when terracotta already existed. People living in today’s Central Asia back then put grape juice into amphoras to make wine. Continuing this tradition, today many orange wine producers ferment their wine in amphoras too. Post-fermentation, the wine is usually matured in wooden barrels, concrete vats or amphoras.
Skin-on fermentation releases skin tannins into the wine, giving it a slightly astringent mouthfeel. With more other compounds released from the skins, orange wine is usually fuller-bodied than its white counterpart. Also, the flavours are no longer lime or green apple that are common in whites, but more on the hawthorn or black tea side.
Although orange wine has been around for a long time, the name “orange wine” was only coined in 2004 by a British wine merchant, David Harvey, for the simple reason that it was orange in colour.
Its unconventional colour and 8,000-year history make it stand out from other types of wine. No wonder orange wine has become so popular in recent years.
3. Sparkling Wine
There are many ways to make sparkling wine. In this article I’ll be talking about the most classic méthode champenoise.
The méthode champenoise, as the name suggests, is the method of making French champagne, but the use of this method to make sparkling wine is not limited to the Champagne region, but all over the world. The méthode champenoise is also known as traditional method or metodo classico, which involves two fermentations.
In the first fermentation, grape juice is made into a still wine, called “base wine”. After the wine has been made and the winemaker has done all the post-fermentation maturation, blending, clarifying and filtering, the base wine is bottled. Then a mixture of sugar and yeast (liqueur de tirage) is added into the bottle to commence the second fermentation.
The added sugar and yeast in the bottle work together to produce alcohol and CO2. The CO2 trapped in the bottle forms bubbles. The alcohol produced by the secondary fermentation usually adds one to two percent ABV to the base wine. In order to prevent the alcohol level of the final sparkling wine from going too high, the grapes used to make the base wine are usually harvested earlier, which are slightly lower in sugar, so that the resulting base wine is usually around 10-11% ABV.
During the second fermentation, after the yeast has done its job, it loses its vitality and becomes lees that can be seen and make the wine cloudy. But instead of removing the lees as soon as the second fermentation is done, the winemaker usually keeps the lees in the bottle for some time. Lees can release biscuit, croissant-like aromas into the wine, enriching the overall flavour of the final sparkling wine. Also, lees maturation can help stabilise the quality of the wine.
Take Champagne for example, on-lees maceration period is required to last for at least 12 months.
Then the lees should be removed. When the bottle is inverted, the lees sink to the neck due to their higher density than the that of the wine, making it easier to remove the lees when the bottle is opened.
To invert the bottle, it is placed on a riddling rack pictured above, initially horizontally, then turned little by little over a course of weeks till vertical. Turning it too fast stirs up the lees and results in partial removal in the end.
Today bottle turning can be done automatically with a machine called gyropalette, saving the winery time and labour.
After the lees have all gathered at the neck of the bottle, the neck is immersed in a brine solution at sub-zero degrees Celsius to freeze the lees that have accumulated right there. Then the cap of the bottle is removed, and the frozen lees are in the meantime pulled out by the pressure.
When the lees come out of the bottle, a small amount of wine also comes out, which can be made up by the addition of a mixture of sugar and alcohol called liqueur d’expédition. The winemaker can choose not to add sugar, but only alcohol. In this case, the resulting sparkling wine is labelled zero dosage or pas dosé.
The cork is then mechanically pressed into the bottle to seal it up. A wire cage mounted, a metal capsule too. Last but not least, a shiny, coloured aluminium wrapper.
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