What is Red Wine?

Series Summary

Wine is made from the fermentation of grape juice and is made all over the world. Archaeologists believe wine was first created in Ancient Sumer, what is now Georgia and Iran. It was introduced into Europe by the Greeks over 5000 years ago and carried on into cultural and religious history by it being the representation of the blood of Christ given by Jesus at the Last Supper. Besides being an important part of the Eucharist, red wine plays an important role in fine dining cuisine all over the world and carries with it a unique personality and heritage.

In this free video series, our expert sommelier, or wine professional, will teach you all about red wine. The favorite of many wine loves, red wine comes in many varieties grown all around the world. You will learn how to taste and what aromas to look for in cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir, merlot, and zinfandel. You will also learn about shiraz, malbec, and petit shiraz red wines. Finally, get tips on less popular wines from grapes like the sangiovese and gamay. If you're a wine lover looking to improve your knowledge of wines, let our expert teach you everything you need to know about red wines.

Video Transcript

"Hi, I would like to tell you about red wines. Red wines are made throughout the wine producing world and they are usually the favorite wine of a wine lover. They are considered the serious part of wine. So red wines have a lot in common. The first thing they have in common is they are made from red grapes. Now that may sound kind of silly, but you can also make a white wine from a red grape. But a red wine is made from a red grape that is crushed and fermented for about two weeks on the grape skins. All of the color in the red wine comes from the grape skins. There are very few exceptions to that all over the world; like one out of a million. So all the color is extracted from the skins and while the color is being extracted from the skins, we are also extracting something called tannin. Tannin is something in red wine that gives it that textural drying sensation on the back of your mouth. So when you taste a red wine, the first thing you are going to notice is it tastes dry. Meaning its not sweet. A sweet red wine in a very rare thing. If we are not talking about a dessert wine, we are going to be talking about a wine that is dry. In other words, has no residual sugar. Then we are going to talk about a wine that is smooth in acidity. It does have some acidity that you will feel on the sides of your tongue but it is going to be smooth. Then we are going to talk about a little bit bitterness. Red wine typically has a little bit of bitterness that you will taste on the back of your tongue in two little specialize receptors on either side of the middle of the back of your tongue. So its dry. It has smooth acidity, a little bit of bitterness and it also has that tannin. That tannin will give the wine a little bit of weight, a little bit of structure and also give you that little textual drying sensation on the back of your tongue. Besides that, so we have dry, smooth acidity, a little bit of bitterness, a little bit of tannin. We also have a wine with quite a bit of body from that tannin and also from the alcohol. If you want to describe the aromas and the flavors of red wine in one easy sentence, you can say the following; this wines smells like cherry, berry, smoke and spice. It's full bodied and dry with a hint of bitterness and a little bit of tannin. Now that is kind of a buzz word but you will usually be right. That describes about 99 out of 100 red wines and you will sound really cute saying it too."