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I’m Terry Thomas. I’m here on ExpertVillage.com to bring you a little about the appreciation
of wine. When wine is made the grapes are actually harvested and their brought in and
crushed, with the white wines the skins are not left long on the grape juice and thus
there are components in the skin that really give a lot of character to the wine. On the
reds the skins are left, they’re left in the fermentation and they actually have instruments
that break up - the skins float and they have instruments that break up the cap, the big
layer of skins and keep them kind of mixed up, stirred up so that a lot of – as the
alcohol begins to form from fermentation, it takes a lot out of the skins. The skins
again give a lot of character and a lot of tanning to the wine. When a wine is brand
new, especially if it has been fermented with some skin, there’s some tanning, a kind
of astringency, kind of a – it’s a feel not a taste that you can get in your mouth.