Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
13
Overview of Winemaking
Anyone who has seen a wine critic on television can be a bit
intimidated by the prospect of trying to make a wine that is
even drinkable, much less enjoyable. Fortunately, Frederic
Brochet conducted two studies using 57 wine experts at the
University of Bordeaux in 2001 that will forever put the wine
experts into perspective.
44
In the first study, the experts were given two glasses of wine
to describe, one being a white wine and the other a red wine.
Unknown to the experts, both glasses were a white wine but
the wine in one of the glasses had been dyed red. Not even
one of the 57 experts at the University of Bordeaux could
distinguish that the red wine was really white, and they even
went on to describe the fake red wine as having
characteristics associated with red wines such as “tannic
notes.”
In the second study, a cheap wine was put into bottles
denoting both a cheap and an expensive wine. Same wine,
different bottles. The experts described the wine in the
expensive bottles as “woody, complex, and round” while
describing the exact same wine in the cheap bottles as “short,
light, and faulty.”
What this means is that you need not be intimidated by wine
snobbery. All you need to do is make a sound product using
good ingredients and proper methods, and as long as you put
it in a nice bottle with a nice label and serve it in a nice glass
