Wine making, flavors & aromas

I hope this will put your mind at rest, when someone puts their nose to a glass of wine and rattles off a fruit vegetable salad. When it leaves you scratching your head, and asking how does a wine evoke such flavors as diverse as cherry, licorice, chocolate, vanilla, tobacco, butter, leather. minerals, earthiness, mushroom honeysuckle, and honey?

Let me unfold these mysteries to you. Here are the elements that affect the wine in different ways. If you sniff and smell, blackberries and your friend smells melon. Neither of you is wrong, and here is why. Everbody’s snout develops a learning pattern of recognition as we each live our different existence. So, it is only natural that you each smell something different. Just relax and enjoy your wine as you smell and taste it and let the other guy do the same.

Now to the making of wine and how to achieve those flavors and aromas we just spoke about. For great wine or even good wine, you need grapes, experience, skill and a good deal of luck. Luck being in that year’s terroir. Most winemakers think along the traditional line, but some like to treat something new, unique. The most common flavor characteristics are alcohol content, acid, tannin. oak. fruit aromas, and flavors, body, and sweetness that affect the wine.

Alcolhol: When fresh grapes are used, you often get a slightly lower sugar content, result in a wine that is less than full-bodied: or too dry.

Acid: Acid is what gives wine its pucker power or tarte taste. It also gives structure to the wine. Tartaric coming from the grape its self, Citric acids like those in oranges and lemons, and the Malic acid from apples and pears. You can also reduce the acidity if a wine is too tart by adding Potassium carbonate.

Tannins: They are inert in all grapes, being found in the skins, seeds, and stems. They are primarily found in red wines and determined by the length of time the juice is in contact with them.

Oak: This comes from being aged during fermentation in oak cast or having oak chips added. During this period the flavor is determine by the type of oak, weather it lightly toasted or deeply toasted barrels that it is placed in.

Fruit: Some flavors occur naturally due to the variations in terroir. Others are created by adding concentrated fruit juices before fermentation.

Sweetness: If a wine is too dry, you can over come this by adding concentrated juices, liquid sugar’s combined with potassium sorbate, or sorbic acid to stop re-fermentation.