Wine Colours and What They Mean
Ok, Wine Baby, you know that there is a difference between red and white wine, but, what exactly is it?
And further more, where does rosé fit in? Ever heard of orange wine?
Colour is one of the first things we assess when tasting a wine, but anyone can tell you what colour something is. What’s more important is why it’s that colour. So today we are breaking down the reasons behind the different colours of wine.
THE GRAPES
Let’s start with the obvious. There are white grape varietals and black grape varietals. Generally speaking, white grapes make white wine, and black grapes make red wine.
Why? Because it’s the colour of the grape skins that gives the wine it’s colour. The interior of the grape, the fleshy bit, is actually colourless for almost all grapes (although there are a few exceptions).
It’s not quite that simple though. Differences in winemaking methods, however, also play a role in the finished product.
Think of the colouring from the grape skins like clothing dye – the strength of the dye and the amount of time spent with the fabric will both affect your end result.
Then there are other factors like oxygen exposure and acidity also have a hand in the outcome. So let’s break this down into a bit more detail.
WHITE WINE
White wines are made almost exclusively from white grapes. I say “almost” exclusively because there are a few exceptions like Blanc de Noir champagne, which is a white sparkling wine made from black Pinot Noir grapes. But for the vast majority, if you’re drinking a white wine, it’s going to be made from a white grape.
The grapes are harvested, sorted, and then processed and pressed early in the winemaking process. The juice from these grapes isn’t going to spend any time sitting around soaking with the skins. So the baseline colour of white wine is always going to start out as a general pale yellow.
The juice is then fermented in chilled steel tanks to turn it into wine. But once that’s done, the wine makers has a decision to make – do they continue to age the wine before bottling, and if so, in steel or oak?
This key decision is made with the end flavours in mind, but it also has a distinct impact on the final colour of the wine as well. Oak vessels allow for more oxygen exchange than steel does, and when that originally pale white wine is exposed to oxygen, it begins to darken.
Let’s use Chardonnay as an example, since it’s so versatile.
If the winemaker wants to retain it’s original delicate flavours and create a crisp and refreshing wine, they will use steel so as not to impart any oak flavours that could overwhelm it. These wines are going to be a soft straw or lemon colour in the glass.
On the other hand, if the winemaker wants to create a fuller-bodied, more robust wine, they will age it in oak to add those rich buttery characteristics. Because of the oxygen exchange that occurs through the grain of the wood, these wines are going to be darker in colour, appearing more golden yellow.
And let’s say you decided to keep one of these oaked Chardonnays for a handful of years. As oxygen slowly trickles in through the pores of the cork, it will darker even more, to a rich amber shade.
Kept it a little too long? Not sealed properly and let a bunch of oxygen in? Now it’s brown.
RED WINE
Remember how I said almost all white wines were made with white grapes? Well there are no exceptions with red wines. They are ALL made with black grapes. They have to be, because the colour is in the skins.
The grapes are harvested, sorted and processed just like the white grapes were, but the key difference lies in when they are pressed off the skins. White grapes were pressed of their juice prior to fermentation, whereas with black grapes, it’s the other way around. The grapes stay with their skins until fermentation is completed, and only then is the juice pressed out. This results in that beautiful red colouring.
Just like white wines, these red wines are also affected by oxygen exposure. As a wine ages, either in oak or in the bottle, it will move towards a more tawny colour, and eventually make it’s way to that unpleasant brown.
But there’s one more distinction we can look for in the hue of a red wine, as there is also colour variation when these wines are young. There are blue/purple-toned reds, true/ruby reds, and orange/garnet-toned reds. A great reference point a friend shared recently was to think about the different shades of red lipstick (if you’re a lipstick kind of person).
These differences are indicative of the pH level of the wine, and can tell you how acidic the wine is going to be from the hue. (In case you’ve been out of chemistry class for a while, higher pH = lower acidity). Blue or purple-toned reds will be lower in acidity, whereas true reds and garnet wines will be higher.
ROSÉ WINE
Ok, now that we have red and white down as our baseline, where does rosé fit in?
Contrary to popular belief, rosé wine is not the product of blending white and red wine together. In fact, that practice is straight up illegal in many wine producing countries.
Instead, black grapes are used with white winemaking techniques. That means the juice is pressed from the skins prior to fermentation, instead of after.
The end colour is the result of how much time the juice was allowed to sit with those skins prior to pressing. Some wines will spend almost no time with the skins, whereas some will spend hours soaking before they are pressed. This will produce a range of very pale to very deep pinkish wines, respectively.
These wines are always done in stainless steel to retain their fresh flavours, so don’t expect any oxidation to affect the colour. (If it’s starting to look brown, please don’t bother drinking it!)
There is also a range of hue in these wines too. Pink, salmon, and copper are all possible options.
ORANGE WINE
These wines are just starting to gain popularity, so you may not have heard of or tried one yet. But they are worth mentioning here as we are exploring how winemaking affects colour.
We know that classic white wine spends little to no time with the skins, and we know red wine spends lots of time with the skins. Then we shook things up and made rosé with black grapes and minimal skin contact, so what happens when we flip it again, and make wine from white grapes and lots of skin contact?
You guessed it. Orange wine.
These wines are in a league of their own, so don’t expect them to taste anything like their lighter classic white cousins. But I encourage you to give them a taste, even just to build up your reference palate.
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