Wine: White, Rose, Sparking, and Red

Wine plays an important role in Italian culture. It dates back to ancient times when wine was developed as a social feature to everyday life, and that quality is still prevalent today. The definition of wine is an alcoholic beverage produced through the fermentation of fruits, mainly grapes, containing natural sugars. When wine ferments, the yeasts convert the sugars to carbon dioxide and alcohols such as ethanols and other chemicals that add to the character of the wine. The key factors to making/producing wine include climate zones, a temperate zone is ideal, altitude, and soil composition and texture. The differences in these key factors contribute to the differences in flavor and body in the wines. The main parts of the grape that contribute to the wine are the skins (color), the pulp (vitamins and minerals), and the seeds of pits (flavor and tannins).

The main components of wine are water, alcohol, acids, sugars, mineral salts, flavoring and coloring substances, odorous substances, and sulfites. Wines can be: white, rosese, sparkling, or red. Red wines are made from macerating red grapes and using all of the grapes to produce the wine. White wines are actually made from red grapes, but the skins are separated from the juice so that the wine stays clear with no color. Rose wines are made with limited skin contact making the color of the wine a lighter pink color. Sparkling wines are made with special fermentation techniques either Metodo Champenoise (bottle fermentation) or Metodo Charmat (sealed tank fermentation method). The Metodo Charmat is the faster and cheaper and used more frequently to produce sparkling wines.

The main wine producers of the world include France, Italy, Spain, and the United States. The best quality and highest production of wine are mainly from France and Italy. Regional wine is named after where they are produced and cannot be called something else if produced in another region of Europe. For example, Bordeaux is a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc only produced in Bordeaux, France. Therefore, if this combination is made somewhere else, it cannot be called Bordeaux. There are many regions in Italy that adhere to this rule as well such as Tuscany and Piedmont: the best red wines produced in Italy.

The main steps involved with wine tasting are sight, smell, taste, and touch, generally in that order. Sight involves evaluating the color of the wine, considering the clarity of the wine, and evaluating the "tears" left on the sides of the glass after swirling it. In a sparkling wine, effervescence, the amount of bubbles formed, is also looked at. When evaluating the smell of the wine, a wine taster smells for aromas: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary aromas come directly from the grape, secondary aromas come from the fermentation of the wine, and the tertiary aromas come from the aging and storing of the wine. Taste is the third step. The four main components of taste involve sweetness, acidity, saltiness, and bitterness. Evaluating the wine is very subjective, but it involves using your creativity to really evaluate the wine and see what you think your senses are grasping.