Wine 101 · Chapter 5

Winemaking

Every bottle is a set of decisions.

The flight · Blind

Four techniques

  1. Wine 1
  2. Wine 2
  3. Wine 3
  4. Wine 4

Smell for something beyond fruit: bread, bubbles, banana, honey.

The reveal

What you tasted

  1. 1 Muscadet Sèvre et Maine sur lie Sur lie means aged on its spent yeast: lemon, salty edge, light bready note, rounder feel
  2. 2 Champagne Non-vintage Brut A blend of years, dry. Second fermentation in the bottle makes the bubbles.
  3. 3 Gamay Beaujolais Carbonic maceration: juicy red cherry, low tannin, sometimes banana or bubblegum
  4. 4 Chenin Blanc Vouvray demi-sec Demi-sec means medium sweet: stopped before all the sugar became alcohol. Ripe apple, quince, a touch of honey.

In your deck

Find these four cards

  • Lees Aging 1 · Muscadet
  • Traditional-Method Sparkling 2 · Champagne
  • Carbonic Maceration 3 · Beaujolais
  • Chenin Blanc 4 · Vouvray

The decisions

From vine to bottle

  • When to pick
  • Ferment in steel or oak
  • How long on the skins (skins give color and tannin)
  • Soften the acid (malolactic) or not
  • Oak: new or old, French or American, big or small
  • Lees (spent yeast): stir, leave, or move the wine off them
  • Clean it up (fining, filtering) or not
  • Cork or screwcap

Traditional method

How Champagne gets its bubbles

  1. Make a dry base wine
  2. Add sugar and yeast, seal the bottle
  3. A second fermentation makes the bubbles
  4. Age on the spent yeast
  5. Turn and tilt the bottles so the yeast slides into the neck (riddling)
  6. Freeze the neck and pop out the yeast (disgorging)
  7. Top up with a little wine and sugar (dosage), then cork
Traditional-Method Sparkling
Carbonic maceration: whole grapes ferment inside their own skins. Bright fruit, little tannin.

Faults

What wrong smells like

  • Cork taint: wet cardboard, damp basement
  • Oxidized (too much air): bruised apple, flat, browning
  • Reduction (too little air): struck match, rotten egg. Often fades with swirling.
  • Brett (a wild yeast): barnyard, bandage
Faults

Cards · Flash Round

Technique and aroma

  • Shuffle the eight Winemaking cards
  • Flip one
  • In 10 seconds, name one smell or feel it adds
  • "Nothing added, keeps the fruit fresh" counts

Take it to the table

Read the label

A guest reads "unfined, unfiltered" and asks what it means.

Then: "Wine gives me a headache. It's the sulfites." Explain each in one plain sentence. Don't diagnose.

Study this week

Tonight's cards

Grapes

  • Chenin Blanc Chenin Blanc

Regions

  • Loire Valley Loire Valley
  • Champagne Champagne

Winemaking

  • Lees Aging Lees Aging
  • Traditional-Method Sparkling Traditional-Method Sparkling
  • Carbonic Maceration Carbonic Maceration
  • Oak Aging Oak Aging
  • Stainless Steel Stainless Steel
  • Malolactic Conversion Malolactic Conversion

Tasting

  • Faults Faults

Pull these from your deck. Read two a day. Before next week, find one of these wines on a shelf.

Wine 101

Next: Chapter 6 · The Regions

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