Wine Issues

Andrew Jefford, one of Britain's most respected wine writers tackles the big questions that we have all asked about wine. Whether it's telling your chardonnay from your riesling, learning how to taste, or growing grapes, we present for the first time everything you ever wanted to know about wine but were afraid to reaveal you didn't know.

Wine: who cares?

Well, I do. Because, like humanity, wine is hugely diverse and mostly beautiful. It lends flavours to different places on earth. It's a nice drink, too. Enjoy it for either reason.

What is a vine?

A vine is a plant that wants nothing more in life than to climb a tree. Wine growers persuade it, with the aid of a pair of secateurs, to settle for a few wires and the odd post. This means that it puts more effort into its grapes than its shoots, tendrils and leaves. It is deep-rooted, since summers in its natural habitat are sunny and dry. Nobody has managed to prove it, but it is thought that all that rummaging about in earth, rocks and minerals underground is one reason why wines taste so compellingly different from one another.

How do you make wine?

Wine is fermented grape juice. This means that yeasts (microscopic mushrooms) carry out this transformation - by eating sugar and excreting carbon dioxide and alcohol.

To make wine, you grow the healthiest, ripest grapes you can, squash the juice out of them, and add yeast - or let wild yeasts get to work. A week or two later, all the sugar has been transformed into alcohol and carbon dioxide: you have made wine. Grape juice is white, no matter what the colour of the grape, so to create red wine from red grapes you have to soak the skins with the juice. That's all there is to it.

What's oak got to do with it?

All this fermentation has to happen inside something, and once it's over, too, wines need to rest before they are calm and collected enough to be bottled. Experience shows that not only does oak make usefully wine-tight, durable casks, but also that its vanilla-and-toast flavour marries agreeably with that of wine itself. Almost all the greatest red wines, therefore, are now aged after fermentation in oak casks, while many fine white wines are actually fermented in them. This means money, especially if you want to give your wines new oak every year (the best casks cost £300 or more each). Cheaper wines are given oak flavours by adding 'chips' to the juice as it ferments, or dunking staves in it. Not all wines need oak, though, and a lot of oak will not necessarily make sumptuous wine. As always, it is a question of taste.

What about all those names?

Don't worry about them; you are allowed to like wine without being an expert. Grape variety names are the easiest: they are the key to unlocking the wine world, so start with a few of those. After that, remember the regional names of any wines you like (chablis and sancerre are just two well-known examples), though it is best to link those to producers' names, too, since standards are depressingly variable.

Is there a knack to tasting wine?

Sniff; sip; think.

What if I can't get blackcurrant and cherry with chocolate on the finish?

This is strictly optional. Do you want to talk about wine? If the answer is 'yes', you will need ways of describing flavours - which is where winespeak of this sort comes in handy. Remember that nobody is claiming that wine actually contains blackcurrants or cherries or chocolate; it just contains a repertoire of flavours that might remind the drinker of these tastes. If you don't get those, tell anyone who will listen what you do get. If you would rather talk about it in a different way, or just drink it in beatific silence, that's fine too.

Will my wine improve if I keep it longer?

Not usually. The best time to drink 98 out of every 100 bottles sold in Britain is within a month of purchase. Even those that optimistically predict that they will 'improve with up to a year's storage' are usually lying; claiming this is a kind of wine machismo. The few wines that are certain to improve with storage are expensive European classics such as fine red bordeaux or burgundy from great vintages.

What else are we going to learn?

I mentioned above that grape varieties are the keys that unlock wine knowledge, so over the next couple of months we will get ourselves acquainted with a dozen of the best. After that, we'll take a look at top wines, settle down to a little winemaking philosophy, and take a fortifying look (for Christmas) at the delights of wine that has been beefed up with a little brandy.

The wine grower's year

Most of us get lots of practice at improving our work; not wine growers. They only get one chance a year to perform the action on which their income, and their reputation, depends: making wine.

January

Finish pruning the vines.

February

Move wine off its lees in the cellar, and begin blending.

March

Plough between the vines; finish blending.

April

Pray for no frost. It can kill the buds and annihilate the crop.

May

Spray vines against disease such as mildew. Remove suckers.

June

With fingers crossed, watch the vines flower. This governs the potential size and success of the harvest.

July

Trim leaves and excess bunches to ensure full ripening.

August

Take a holiday; prepare winery.

September

Harvest the grapes.

October

Finish harvesting and supervise wine-making.

November

Move the new wine to casks.

December

Begin pruning the vines.

Try before you die: my absolute top ten wine styles

• Red bordeaux ('claret') Mid-weight, food-friendly, digestible.
• White burgundy Sinewy and structured.
• Red burgundy Graceful, perfumed, light yet intense.
• Châteauneuf-du-Pape Soupy, soft, spicy-meaty red.
• Chianti Vivid, fresh, lively red, full of coffee and laurel.
• New Zealand sauvignon blanc Shiveringly fresh, citrussy and sometimes grassy white.
• Australian Barossa Valley shiraz Powerful, deep, often salty red.
• German riesling The lightest of all whites - pure, crystalline fruit.
• Champagne Penetrating, polished, finely honed sparkling wine.
• Chilled fino sherry Pungent, bready, bracing, the perfect aperitif.

Delicate, fruity white

Dr L Riesling 1998 Dr Loosen (Waitrose, £5.99, bin no 31561).

Please retune your taste buds for this dawn-pale, reed-slender, snowdrop-fresh wine. It is a little liquid essay in purity and limpidity of fruit (apples and grapes, dusted with lemon sherbet). At just 8.5 per cent alcohol by volume, the alcohol melts swiftly from the tongue, leaving the print of those quicksilver fruits to linger like a fossil fern. Perfect summer-house drinking.

Rich, oaky white

Jordan's Chardonnay 1998 Stellenbosch (Waitrose, £7.99, bin no 52349).

The flavours of many grape varieties mingle well with wood, but none more so than chardonnay. Vanilla is an aromatic key, since oak contains compounds called vanillins; in the mouth, you will feel the rich breadth that barrel-fermentation brings, and taste more creamy vanilla shaping the wine's ripe melon-peach fruit. The concentration and depth of this wine make it fine value.

Sweet white

Bouvier Beerenauslese 1996 M�nzenrieder (Waitrose, 50cl, £5.95, bin no 64051).

You need lots of late-autumn sunshine to make sweet wine, and Austria's Neusiedlersee usually delivers. This unctuous, honey-gold wine actually seems to smell of beeswax and honeycomb; in the mouth, it is rich, weighty and tangy, charged with the flavours of grape and orange, crystallised lemon and fresh fig.

Soft, smooth, easy-drinking red

Don Hugo, Vino de Mesa (Waitrose, £3.95, bin no 82035).

Europe's experts at the easy-drinking, throat-soothing style of red are the Spanish, and this gently curranty mouthful offers an inexpensive interpretation. Vivid plum acidity stops it turning flabby and helps it cruise through food.

Mid-weight, classic red

Château d'Aiguilhe 1997 C�tes de Castillon (Waitrose Direct, £7.99, bin no 47215).

One reason why good bordeaux still exerts the fascination it does for wine-drinkers is its ability to hit dead-centre for weight and balance. The refined, faintly cedary scents and expressive, balanced flavours of ripe currants and berries in this claret from the C�tes de Castillon region encapsulate that golden mean.

Gutsy red

1999 Clos Malverne Basket-Pressed Pinotage (Waitrose £6.99, bin no 62376).

The warm vineyards of Australia, Chile, Argentina and (as here) South Africa are ideal for producing mouth-storming, steamroller reds. This one is made from South Africa's own grape variety, Pinotage, and it is packed with smoky-sweet damson and sloe.