Winemaking
How wine is made
Every decision in a winery shows up in the glass. This section explains what each step actually does, so a tasting note stops being a list of adjectives and starts being a set of consequences.
Wine attracts a great deal of confident assertion. Where a widely repeated explanation goes beyond what has actually been demonstrated, the page says so rather than repeating it — that note is part of the topic, not a disclaimer bolted onto the end.
All topics
73 topics.
Winemaking
Fermentation
Yeast converting sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide — the step that makes wine wine.
Winemaking
How red wine is made
Fermenting grape juice in contact with the skins, which is where colour and tannin come from.
Winemaking
How white wine is made
Pressing the juice off the skins before fermentation, then fermenting the clear juice.
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Oak ageing
What barrels actually do — flavour, texture, and slow oxygen exposure.
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The traditional method
A second fermentation inside the bottle, followed by ageing on the dead yeast.
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Blending
Combining components to make something better than any of them alone.
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Cap management
Skins float during red fermentation. What the winemaker does about that determines much of the wine.
Winemaking
Fermentation and maturation vessels
Steel, barrel, foudre, concrete, amphora, qvevri — what each actually does about oxygen, temperature and extraction.
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Flor: the living film on Sherry
A layer of yeast that grows across the surface of the wine, protects it from air, and changes it completely.
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Fortification
Adding grape spirit — and when you add it determines whether the wine is sweet or dry.
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How Champagne is made
The traditional method as practised in Champagne, with its own blending and ageing conventions.
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How rosé is made
Brief contact between juice and black grape skins — not by mixing red and white wine.
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Lees ageing and bâtonnage
Leaving wine on its spent yeast to build texture and savoury complexity.
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Maceration and extraction
Soaking skins in juice to extract colour, tannin and flavour — the main lever on a red wine's structure.
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Malolactic conversion
Converting sharp malic acid into softer lactic acid — and the source of buttery Chardonnay.
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Native yeast or cultured yeast
Letting the resident population ferment, or adding a selected strain — what each actually changes, and what the evidence does and does not support.
Winemaking
Natural wine
What the term covers, where it has legal force and where it has none, and what it does not mean.
Winemaking
Natural, organic, biodynamic: what each word means
Seven terms that are routinely treated as synonyms and are not. A wine can be any combination of them.
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New oak and old oak
What changes with each use of a barrel — and what does not.
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Noble rot
A fungus that concentrates grapes and adds its own honeyed character — in exactly the right weather.
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Single varietal or blend
Why so many of the world’s most admired wines are blends, and why varietal labelling is a marketing convention rather than a quality tier.
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The tank method (Charmat)
A second fermentation in a pressurised tank, preserving fresh fruit instead of developing bready complexity.
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What actually goes into wine
A neutral account of permitted additives and processing aids — what they are for, and why "chemicals in wine" is the wrong frame.
Winemaking
Acidification and deacidification
Adjusting acidity up or down — why it is needed, and why the rules are the mirror image of chaptalisation.
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Adjusting the must
The family of interventions that change what the grapes delivered — enrichment, acidification, concentration — and where each is permitted.
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Appassimento (drying grapes)
Drying grapes after picking to concentrate them — producing both Amarone and sweet passito.
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Barrel fermentation
Fermenting white wine in oak rather than steel, which integrates the oak more completely.
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Biological ageing and flor
Ageing wine beneath a living film of yeast, which protects it and transforms it.
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Carbonic maceration
Fermenting whole uncrushed grapes under carbon dioxide, producing very soft tannins and distinctive aromas.
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Chaptalisation
Adding sugar before fermentation to raise the alcohol — not to make the wine sweet.
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Corks, screwcaps and closures
How a bottle is sealed, and why it is a genuine trade-off rather than a quality signal.
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Dosage
The final addition that sets a sparkling wine’s sweetness — and why Brut is not the driest category.
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Extended maceration
Leaving the wine on its skins for weeks after fermentation has finished, and why that can soften rather than harden it.
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Extended skin contact
Fermenting white grapes on their skins for weeks or months, producing orange wine.
Winemaking
Filtration
Physically straining wine to clarify or stabilise it, and the long argument about whether doing so strips character or merely strips haze.
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Fining
Adding an agent that binds to unwanted particles so they can be removed together.
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French oak, American oak and the rest
Species and seasoning differ measurably. The tasting-note shorthand built on top of that difference does not hold up.
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How alcohol-free wine is made
Removing alcohol from finished wine — and why that is harder than it sounds.
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How orange wine is made
White grapes treated like red ones — and one of the oldest methods in wine, not a modern invention.
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How Port is made
Fast extraction, then spirit added mid-fermentation to stop the yeast and keep the sugar.
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How sherry is made
Fortified after fermentation, then aged either under flor or in contact with air.
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How sweet wine is made
Five different routes to leaving sugar in the glass — stopping fermentation, drying the grapes, freezing them, botrytis, and simply adding sweetness back.
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Late harvest and passerillage
Leaving grapes on the vine to shrivel, concentrating them without rot.
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Oxidative ageing
Deliberately exposing wine to air to develop nutty, dried-fruit complexity.
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Pressing
Extracting juice under pressure — before fermentation for white wine, after it for red.
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Qvevri and amphora
Fermenting and ageing in buried clay vessels — the Georgian tradition behind orange wine.
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Riddling and disgorgement
Getting the sediment out of a bottle that is already under six atmospheres of pressure.
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Stabilisation
Making sure the wine does not change unpredictably after bottling.
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Stainless steel and inert vessels
Fermenting in a vessel that contributes nothing, to preserve fruit and freshness.
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Stems: to include or remove
What retaining stems in a red fermentation actually contributes, and why ripeness of the stem matters more than the proportion.
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The ancestral method
Bottling wine before its first fermentation finishes, so a single ferment produces the bubbles.
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The four routes to rosé
Direct press, short maceration, saignée and blending — what each does to colour, structure and purpose.
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The solera system
Fractional blending across tiers of barrels, so no wine is of a single vintage.
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Unfined and unfiltered
Two different decisions, frequently conflated, and neither of them a quality guarantee.
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Vegan and vegetarian wine
Why wine is not automatically vegan, which fining agents are animal-derived, and what a label does and does not tell you.
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Whole-bunch fermentation
Including stems in the ferment, which adds structure, spice and aromatic lift.
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Yeast: cultured and ambient
Whether to add a selected yeast strain or let the grapes and cellar do it.
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Arrested fermentation
Stopping fermentation early to leave natural sugar in the wine.
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Bottling and closures
The last step, and one that determines how the wine will age.
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Co-fermentation
Fermenting two varieties together rather than blending them afterwards.
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Cold soak (pre-fermentation maceration)
Holding crushed red grapes cold before fermentation starts, to extract in water rather than in alcohol.
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Concentration methods
Saignée, reverse osmosis, vacuum evaporation and cryoextraction — four ways of removing water, with different consequences.
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Direct pressing
Pressing black grapes immediately so almost no colour is extracted.
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Estufagem and canteiro
Deliberately heating Madeira, which is why it is effectively indestructible.
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Field blends and co-fermentation
Three things routinely confused: mixed plantings picked together, varieties fermented together, and wines blended after fermentation.
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How Madeira is made
Fortified and then deliberately heated, producing a wine that is effectively indestructible.
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Ice wine
Pressing grapes while frozen, so the ice stays behind and only concentrated juice comes out.
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Micro-oxygenation
Dosing tiny, controlled quantities of oxygen into a tank — developed for Tannat, and not the same as barrel ageing.
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Ripasso
Re-passing Valpolicella over Amarone skins to add body and dried-fruit character.
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Short skin contact
A few hours of skin contact, used to make rosé and to add aromatics to white wine.
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Stuck and sluggish fermentation
When yeast stop before the sugar runs out — why it happens, and why it is more dangerous than it sounds.
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The transfer method
Second fermentation in bottle, then emptying all the bottles into a tank to filter — used mainly for very large and very small formats.
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Thermovinification and flash détente
Heating grapes to extract colour quickly — a technology behind a great deal of inexpensive red wine, and a tool for damaged fruit.