10/17/06 Fermentation

Welcome to Vine to Wine this is your host Linda Moran and today we are going to explore wine fermentation. Since we are in the midst of the initial part of harvest and winemaking for this years vintage I thought we would take a look at one aspect of winemaking and that is fermentation. Fermentation is the process of converting the sugars in the grape juice to alcohol. Everything from the size, shape and material of the vessel selected to ferment the grapes in can influence the wine's taste. The larger the vessel the more complicated the process can be. This is because the process of fermentation creates and gives off a great deal of heat and the heat will destroy or at least diminish many of the flavors and fragrances of a wine. This is why those great big stainless steel tanks you see when you visit a winery are covered with a refrigerated jacket. This allows the winemaker to control the temperature during fermentation and slow it down so that the aspects of the wine that could be lost in all of that heat are retained. White wines are usually fermented cooler that reds as they rely on the fruit aromas and perfumes for a great deal of their character. Red wine which can withstand a higher fermentation temperature benefit by gaining greater extraction from the grape skins, endowing it with color and tannin. So when you see those great big tanks recognize that production at this level can be just as fine a dance as a winemaker that is fermenting in a little oak barrel. It is all relative to the temperature of the fermentation. Remember to send your wine questions to Linda at vine to wine dot net and thank you for joining me on today's Vine to Wine.