Bases et dégustation·Informational
What is wine?
Wine is an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting fresh grape juice. Yeast converts the natural sugars in grapes into alcohol and carbon dioxide, typically producing a drink between 8% and 16% ABV.
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- Bases et dégustation·Informational
How is wine made?
Wine is made in 5 main steps: harvesting, crushing/pressing, alcoholic fermentation (yeast converts sugar to alcohol), aging (in tank or barrel), and bottling. The full process takes anywhere from a few weeks to several years depending on the style.
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What is the difference between red, white, and rosé wine?
The main difference is skin contact: red wine ferments with grape skins (which provide colour and tannins), white wine is pressed before fermentation (juice only), and rosé gets a short maceration (2 to 24 hours) to extract just a pink hue.
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What are tannins in wine?
Tannins are naturally occurring polyphenols found in grape skins, seeds, and stems that create a dry, slightly bitter sensation on your palate. They give red wine its structure and backbone, and are a key reason why some bottles improve with age.
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What do wine 'legs' or 'tears' mean?
Wine 'legs' or 'tears' are the slow-moving droplets that trickle down the inside of your glass after you swirl it. They are caused by the Marangoni effect — a difference in surface tension between alcohol and water — and mainly indicate alcohol content and residual sugar.
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What is the difference between dry and sweet wine?
A dry wine is one where nearly all the grape sugar has been converted to alcohol during fermentation, leaving less than 4 g/l of residual sugar. A sweet wine retains some of that sugar, ranging from off-dry (around 12-45 g/l) to lusciously sweet dessert wines (over 45 g/l).
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What is the most expensive wine in the world?
The most consistently expensive wine in the world is Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC) Romanée-Conti Grand Cru, which averages over USD 20,000 per bottle. The all-time auction record was set in 2018 when a bottle of 1945 Romanée-Conti sold for USD 558,000 at Sotheby's.
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Why are some white wines sweet?
Some white wines are sweet because the winemaker stops fermentation before yeast converts all the grape sugar into alcohol. This can happen naturally — when grapes are harvested ultra-ripe, affected by noble rot, or frozen on the vine — or by deliberately halting fermentation through chilling or filtration.
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What is minerality in wine?
Minerality is a tasting term used to describe flavours and textures that evoke wet stone, chalk, flint, or oyster shell in a wine. While widely used by professionals, no direct scientific link between soil minerals and wine flavour has been conclusively proven.
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Should you always smell the cork?
Smelling the cork is a common ritual, but it tells you surprisingly little. A cork might reveal a strong musty taint from TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole), yet the only reliable way to check a wine is to smell and taste the liquid itself in the glass.
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Why do you swirl wine in the glass?
Swirling wine in your glass exposes a larger surface area to air, which speeds up oxidation and releases volatile aromatic compounds. This simple move can double or even triple the intensity of aromas reaching your nose.
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How to describe wine?
Describing wine means systematically evaluating three dimensions: sight (colour, clarity, intensity), smell (aroma families), and taste (attack, mid-palate, finish, balance). Using a structured vocabulary helps you communicate what you experience in a way others can understand.
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How to taste wine like a professional?
Professional wine tasting follows a structured five-step method — sight, first nose, second nose (after swirling), palate, and conclusion — designed to objectively assess a wine's quality, origin, and ageing potential.
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What is terroir?
Terroir is the unique combination of natural factors — soil, subsoil, climate, topography, and sun exposure — plus human traditions and know-how that give a wine its distinctive character, one that cannot be replicated elsewhere. It is the founding principle behind France's appellation system.
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What is acidity in wine?
Acidity in wine refers to the organic acids — mainly tartaric, malic, and citric — that give wine its freshness, liveliness, and structure. A typical dry white wine has a pH between 3.0 and 3.4, while red wine ranges from 3.3 to 3.6.
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Why does red wine stain your teeth?
Red wine stains your teeth because of anthocyanins — natural pigments that give it its colour — combined with the wine's acidity, which softens tooth enamel, and tannins, which help the pigments stick to the surface.
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How to recognize good wine by taste?
You can recognise a good wine by taste through three core qualities: balance (no single element — acidity, alcohol, tannin, or sugar — dominates), complexity (multiple layers of identifiable flavours), and length (the flavour lingers for more than 6-8 seconds after swallowing).
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How to organize a wine tasting at home?
Hosting a wine tasting at home means choosing 4-6 wines around a coherent theme, providing proper glasses, preparing simple tasting cards, and offering neutral food to cleanse the palate. A budget of EUR 50-100 for the wines is enough for a memorable evening with 6-10 guests.
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What is a wine blend?
A wine blend (assemblage) is the art of combining different grape varieties, vineyard parcels, or vintages to create a wine that is more balanced and complex than any single component alone. Around 75 % of Bordeaux wines are blends, typically of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc.
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What is a medium-sweet wine?
A medium-sweet wine (moelleux in French) contains between 12 and 45 grams per litre of residual sugar, sitting between off-dry and fully sweet dessert wines on the sweetness scale. It offers gentle sweetness balanced by the wine's natural acidity.