Unripe wine grapes have a lot of acid, primarily tartaric and malic acid. Malic acid creates the sour sensation found in tart green apples (looking at you Granny Smith). As the grapes ripen, the acids turn into sugars, primarily glucose and fructose. These sugars are what ferment into alcohol during fermentation with the help of yeast.
Wine grapes also have seeds — generally between one to four per berry — which make eating the wine grapes a little crunchier than table grapes. Although, if you ask me, ripe wine grapes taste a lot better…
And the berries are connected to the rest of the plant, in clusters, by a stem. While not technically part of the grape, the stem is sometimes included in winemaking so it’s worth mentioning.
Now that you know the structure of wine grapes, let’s talk about how they’re different!
First, let’s start with what you can see — the color. Most white wine grapes are made from yellow-green-brown grapes. Red wines are generally made from purplish-black grapes. The longer you leave the skin contact on during the winemaking process, the more color you get from the skins.
Now let’s look at two of the white wines VOON offers today: Grüner Veltliner and Chardonnay.
Both wines were made from yellow-green grapes farmed organically within a few miles of each other. Both wines have very similar winemaking styles, were fermented with native yeasts, daily pumpovers, and aged in neutral oak (although there is a little stainless steel on the Grüner). And yet, they are completely different wines.
So, why are they different? Let’s look at the grapes!
Grüner Veltliner grapes have a slightly thicker skin than a Chardonnay, are a larger berry, and ripen later in the growing season. The larger berry provides a higher ratio of juice to skin, so it’s a “juicier” wine than the Chardonnay. Because the Grüner ripens later, you get more tropical flavors than you do on the Chardonnay. And yet, it also has a slightly higher malic acid profile.
When we bottle our 2023 Sta. Rita Hills Grenache later this year, I encourage you to taste it side by side with our Pinot Noirs to appreciate how different they are, all due to the grapes!
If you want to read more on winemaking choices, I encourage you to revisit our newsletter from October 2023 on how wine is made. Simply put, there’s a lot of influence that a winemaker can have on how a wine tastes. So far, all of our wines have been minimal intervention. We want the grape and the terroir to shine, which means the varietal really is the star. However, we may start playing around with that ethos a little… strictly for academic reasons, of course.
