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Other Wine Types
Rosé Wines (Blush Wines)
Also called blush wines, rosé wines are usually pink in color, though some, like White Zinfandel, do indeed appear to be white. Rosé are made using red wine grapes, but after crushing, the juice is kept in contact with the skins for just a couple of hours. This brief contact ensures the wine won't have more color than a pink "blush" and also limits the tannins that get into the wine.
Rosés are often drunk as "picnic wines," and can be tasty and refreshing when chilled to about 60ºF (15ºC) and drunk on a hot day.
Sparkling Wines
As yeast ferments the sugar in grape juice to produce alcohol and wine, it also produces carbon dioxide gas as a byproduct. Usually winemakers let this carbon dioxide escape from the wine. To make sparkling wines, however, the winemaker traps the carbon dioxide, producing bubbles. Sparkling wines are made almost exclusively with white wines.
Though all American wine companies that make sparkling wine can legally call their product Champagne, the fact is that real Champagne is made only in the Champagne region of France. Other sparkling wines are just that: sparkling wines.
Dessert Wines (Fortified Wines)
Yeast cannot survive in an environment containing more than 14% alcohol by volume. This means that unless a winemaker uses specially developed yeast, naturally produced wines cannot have an alcohol content above 14% because the yeast in the casks will die off at that point.
Winemakers such as those in Port (in Portugal) and Sherry (in Spain) found a way around this limitation: they added extra sugar or additional alcohol to the wine as it fermented. This produced wines that had significantly higher alcohol contents. Most, though not all, of these wines are sweeter than regular wines and are consumed after meals—hence the name dessert wines. Dessert wines are also sometimes called fortified wines since their alcohol content has been strengthened.
With more than 3,000 entries on every aspect of wine from vine pests to specific grapes, this hefty tome has something for both the seasoned connoisseur and novice alike. Edited by one of today's premier wine columnists, the work covers all aspects of wine, travelling back in time to early Greece to examine wine's role in Dionysian revels, then returning to today's wine centers to explore all aspects of wine appreciation. A full third of the book is dedicated to specific wines and wine-producing regions. All those technical terms you've heard and puzzled over at tastings are clearly explained, making this the perfect reference for newcomers to the world of oenology.
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