Maceration and extraction

How long the juice spends with the skins, at what temperature, and how vigorously the cap is worked all determine how much colour and tannin end up in the wine.

Cold soaking before fermentation extracts water-soluble colour compounds with relatively little tannin. Extended maceration after fermentation extracts more tannin, though the tannins extracted late are often softer.

Punching down (pigeage) is gentler than pumping over (remontage), and the choice is a stylistic one.

Maceration is the contact between juice and grape solids — skins, seeds and sometimes stems — and it is where a red wine gets almost everything that distinguishes it from a white made from the same fruit.

Colour comes from anthocyanins in the skin and extracts quickly, usually within the first few days. Tannin comes from skins, seeds and stems and extracts more slowly, and continues throughout. That difference in rate is the lever: a short maceration gives colour without much tannin, a long one gives both.

Temperature and alcohol both increase extraction, which is why a cold soak before fermentation extracts colour and aroma with relatively little tannin, and why post-fermentation maceration adds tannin without adding much else.

Stems add tannin of a different character — greener, firmer, more structural — along with potassium that slightly lowers acidity. Whole-bunch fermentation is a deliberate choice with real consequences rather than a stylistic flourish.

For white wine, skin contact is usually minimal or absent. Where it is extended, the result is orange wine: tannic, savoury and amber, and structurally much closer to a red than to a white.