When you think about wines, not everyone would automatically think of sparkling red wine–most people are content with just red wine itself. Sparkling red wine, also known as Cava in Spain where it’s much more popular, however, is becoming popular these days as well. For people who also want to know something about New Zealand wine, you can check online with IT support Auckland for wine NZ.
You may think you don’t know what sparkling red wine is–or even sparkling wine at all–but chances are you’re more familiar with it than you think. How is this possible? Because if you’ve ever had Champagne, you’ve had sparkling wine–Champagne is a class example. In fact some countries even use sparkling wine as an actual synonym for champagne itself!
Sparkling red wine is very similar to normal wine production especially in the early stages of production. The grapes are harvested very early when their acid levels are still high. However, for sparkling red wine grapes, high levels of sugar are not ideal so sparkling red wine grapes are harvested at higher yields to avoid this. Many sparkling red wine harvesters are still harvesting by hand because they want to make avoid splitting berries and encourage maceration, or the bleeding of color into the wine. Sparkling red wine grapes called Pinot noir are usually used for both types of red wine and sparkling white wine.
The fermentation process with them begins similar as well although winemakers have to use specially cultivated yeasts in the process. The winemakers let yeasts interact with the sugars in the wine to create ethanol, or pure alcohol, which is what makes wine an alcoholic drink. It’s during secondary fermentation that the wine really becomes sparkling red wine. The wine is put into a bottle where fresh yeast is added, which triggers the fermentation inside the bottle itself. The dead yeasts are taken from the bottle without opening it so that the dissolved carbon dioxide gas in the bottle can really increase the pressure inside it. This makes it so that when the wine bottle is popped and the sparkling red wine is poured into a glass, the gas gets released and the wine becomes sparkling.
Sparkling red wine is a favorite at parties because of its unique taste that little extra kick–they are often featured in red wine review magazines, for instance, and are a definite hit at parties. Go and try some sparkling red wine for yourself–chances are you’ll love it!
Tags: sparkling red wine, wine
