Grape Awareness
- Since seeing is believing just for fun peel the skin off both a red and a white table grape to see with your own eyes that the naked red and the naked white grape are almost indistinguishable from one another.
- Moving right along, let’s see how much of an impact allowing the red wine to macerate longer on their skins has on the color and character of the wine. You can do this by comparing a red Bordeaux cru classé with a regular blended Appellation Bordeaux Contrôlée of the same vintage. Notice how the cru classé is more deeply flavored, tannic, and long.
- For a blast of color with a minimum of tannins, compare the characteristics of a Bordeaux with a Beaujolais, where carbonic maceration is used to extract maximum color and to emphasize the wine’s fruity character.
the Singing Sommelière 