Five Main Designs of Wine
All wines can be arranged into 5 basic groups. Within each group are hundreds of different grape varieties and various wine making styles.
Red Wine – These are still wines made with black grapes. These can range from light to dark and bone-dry to sweet.
White Wine – These are still wine produced from green and in some cases black grapes. Tastes cover from rich and creamy to light and zesty.
Rose Wine – These are still wines from black grapes that are produced by eliminating the skins prior to the deeply color of the wine. It is also formed by mixing red and white wine together. Both dry and sweet designs of rose prevail.
Sparkling Wine – A style of wine making involving a secondary fermentation causing bubbles. Champagne can be red, white or rose and can range from minerally to rich and sweet.
Fortified Wine – A style of wine making involving fortifying wine with spirits. Usually a dessert wine, but numerous dry-style fortified wines exist such as dry Sherry.
Level of Sweet taste
Within the 5 primary styles of wine are different levels of sweet taste. This is a winemaking design as the majority of wines can be produced from Dry to Sugary food.
Dry – A dry wine is produced when all the grape sugars are fermented into alcohol. Some dry wines may have a touch of RS to add body however not sweetness.
Semi-Sweet – A semi-sweet wine leaves a touch of the sugars in a wine generally to complement level of acidity and/or aromatics in wine. Riesling is typically Off-Dry.
Sweet – A sweet wine leaves a great deal of the sugars in a wine unfermented. Sweet wines are generally lower alcohol if they are not fortified.
Learning Wine by Flavor
There are countless different varietals, areas and types of wine. Due to the fact that of the diversity it’s simpler to start classifying wine by the way it tastes. Wine sommeliers recognize wines through primary fruit tastes.
