Tannins contribute to a wine's composition

A guide to white wine

Aside from color, how does white wine differ from red? This comprehensive guide to white wine covers everything from grape varieties to production methods to aging techniques. It provides explanations for several common white wine blends as well. You'll also discover an overview of tasting notes for several popular white wines, and suggestions for foolproof food pairings like brie and Chardonnay.

How fermentation works

Alcoholic fermentation is the process where yeast transforms grape sugars into ethanol, creating wine. Microscopic fungi (commonly known as yeast) metabolize sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide. Fermentation's speed and temperature impact wine's flavor and style: cooler temps suit fruity whites, while warmer ones enhance red's tannins. Fermentation stops when sugars are depleted or by temperature extremes, and sometimes yeast removal yields sweeter wines. Get a quick breakdown of the process with this easy explainer.

What is orange wine?

You've heard of rosé, a so-called anomalous wine. But what about orange wine? Orange wine is made using white wine grapes and red wine production methods. This guide walks you through the history of these wines—now trendy in the global market after being produced for thousands of years in places like Georgia. It also explores the flavors typically found in orange wine and how to pair it with food.

Red wine, 101

How does a bottle of red wine get to the table? In this podcast episode from VinePair, tastings director Keith Beavers covers this wide-ranging wine category. Learn about the entire process of red wine production, from grape to glass. The episode provides a great starting line for general wine knowledge and a jumping-off point into individual varieties or regions.

Wine explained

Wine is the sublime product of fermentation, the process of breaking down fruit—typically grapes. As the grapes ferment, yeast consumes the natural sugars and converts them to alcohol. With the process first developed and refined thousands of years ago, wine has been a central feature of celebrations throughout modern history. Want to learn more about its origins? Check out 1440's explainer on wine.

A database of grape varieties

All wines are defined in part by the type of grapes used, whether a single grape or a blend. This encyclopedic archive of grape varieties and their respective attributes is an easy way to become acquainted with just about any wine grape out there—from Albariño to Zweigelt. It also includes brief introductions to non-wine alcoholic beverage categories like beer and hard seltzer.

Why your wine smells unpleasant

Ever had the experience of receiving a bottle of wine with a janky, less-than-favorable odor? This Esquire article ventures to answer this question and offers the explanation that the culprit is likely corked wine. Read to understand why corks can create a moldy or musty scent, and feel emboldened to send a corked bottle back for something with improved quality.

How texture affects taste

Texture is the brain's interpretation of several sensations, including pressure, as registered by our teeth, tongue, and finger tips, and sound, as recorded by our ears. Texture also speaks to food particle sizes—smaller than 35 microns contributes to the sensation of creamy—and the balance between flavor and mouth time, such as the crunch of a crispy chip or the bounce of a chewy caramel.

Wine is divided between Old World and New World

The distinction stems from both geography and winemaking technique and tradition. This video breaks down how different viticultural regions fit into each category and the common traits of both Old World and New World wines. It also provides helpful tips for reading Old World wine labels.

The vast majority of Champagne is labeled 'dry' or even 'extra dry'

Sweetness levels are determined by the amount of sugar added to the wine at the end of the process—anything up to 6 grams per liter is extra dry, and up to 12 grams per liter is still considered dry.

Napa Valley has unique growing conditions, a quality the wine industry refers to as 'terroir.'

How winemaking has changed throughout history

Winemaking is an ancient practice, and researchers continue to find evidence that this ritual came even earlier than previously estimated. This article outlines five key turning points in wine’s history, from the fermentation of fruit by our primate ancestors to today’s increasingly popular “New World” wine. Discover the fascinating scientific and cultural factors that led to wine’s changes in flavor and increased symbolic importance.

Although vinegar was first discovered when wine was left to sour after exposure to air, the fermentation of different base ingredients contributes to the variety of vinegars seen today.

Breaking down various tongue disorders, from infections to genetics

Taste is one of our fundamental senses, but can be impeded by a wide variety of conditions including glossitis, angioedema, and black hairy tongue. Most are characterized by their color, shape, and sometimes change in function. Causes range from vitamin or mineral deficiencies to fluid accumulation, fungal infection, or more.

California's Napa Valley and Sonoma County both produce world-class wines, but they have key differences.

Food & Wine magazine's guide to the Napa Valley (and its next-door neighbor, Sonoma Valley) walks through the environmental and geological conditions that differentiate these two first-class wine regions from the rest of the world and from each other. It also includes in-depth explanations of what to look for in their wines, including common grapes, stylistic choices, and tasting notes.

Discover the chemistry behind smoking foods, including the types of smoking and the source of smoking flavors and colors.

The robust wine production of Antarctica

Antarctica might not be known for its agriculture, but parts of its unique climate are suitable for growing wine grapes. Most of the wine produced there is icewine, a style of dessert wine commonly found in Canada and Germany. This guide covers Antarctica’s unique soil composition, grape varieties, and how exactly penguins contribute to this unusual wine-growing region. There’s even a recommendation for an Antarctic tasting room for adventurous souls.

A quick guide to rosé wine

What is a rosé? Rosé wines are technically reds, though they’re typically served cold and have more flavor characteristics in common with white wines. This primer explains the basics of the fastest-growing wine category in the US. It covers production and rosé-making regions and styles, along with some common tasting notes for each bottle.

The top wine-producing countries in the world

Three European countries dominate the world in wine production: France, Italy, and Spain. This table lays out how the world's top wine-producing countries compare in terms of annual volume, with Europe and the United States comprising the bulk of production. Visualize the country-by-country difference with this bar graph.

A history of Rome and wine

Wine and winemaking were integral parts of everyday Roman life. Wine was used medicinally and for religious rites, as well as for pleasure. It also contributed to the expansion of the Roman empire as wine and grapes were traded throughout the Mediterranean. Roman winemaking practices spread as the empire grew. Without Rome, wine may never have grown into what it became, and vice versa.

Wildfires and rising temperatures have seriously impacted Napa's winemaking in the 2020s.

The non-alcoholic wine market

A no-nonsense, stats-based exploration of the relatively new market for nonalcoholic wine. Driven by people looking to consume less or no alcohol at all, production of nonalcoholic wine has increased dramatically over the last few years. This report details the basics of nonalcoholic winemaking, as well as the current state of the market and what to expect in the future.

Explaining concentrate and how concentrate-derived juice differs from its source

Developed to reduce the volume of goods—thus lowering storage and shipping costs—the concentration process uses pressure and heat to remove water, pulp, and skin from fruits. Concentrates provide significant flavor, sugar, and calories to foods in small quantities, but do not retain most of the fiber, vitamins, and other nutrients from the source fruit.

How bitter taste receptors help guard against infection

Receptors for "bitter" tastes evolved to detect potentially harmful plant chemicals, such as nicotine. The receptors also trigger bacteria-fighting responses, including waving hairlike projections to bat away bacteria, ordering the release of bacteria-killing nitric oxide, and calling for antimicrobial protein reinforcements.

The research that led to sour

Scientists are trying to figure out if there are unique receptors that respond to the molecules that make up flavors we associate with calcium, blood, batteries, and other items that often escape dinner menus. Taste researcher Dr. Danielle Reed says the minimum evidence for a taste category typically involves identifying dedicated receptors and then removing them to show the taste vanishes.

The importance of volatile aroma compounds in the flavor quality of food

Processes such as air movement and heating cause food to lose aroma molecules, which studies have shown play a major role in our sense of taste. While losing these molecules to the environment leaves fewer to be processed during consumption to intensify flavor, it can also produce previously nonexistent aroma compounds or release previously trapped ones, altering or enhancing the food's flavor.

A timeline of the science of taste discoveries

The tongue is made up of four types of papillae—elevated, nipple-like projections that give the organ its rough texture. In the early 1900s, initial research into the tongue's varying taste sensitivity led to a misleading map of the tongue and its taste regions. Over the decades, researchers fleshed out five distinct tastes (and more recently, a sixth).

How fermentation enables the pickling of food and the production of beer

This process occurs when microbes produce lactic acid, ethanol, or carbon dioxide after consuming sugars. The acid helps preserve vegetables in a brine solution during pickling and gives them a sour taste, while ethanol serves as the inebriant in alcoholic beverages. The acid and carbon dioxide give sourdough bread its taste and texture.

Wine connoisseurs say proper tasting requires looking, smelling, tasting, and thinking

Tasting wine can be intimidating, which is why Wine Folly cofounder Madeline Puckette breaks down the four steps in this helpful video, encouraging viewers to pour a glass and follow along.

Taste buds have evolved to fill a wide variety of functions

Taste buds do more than let you experience your favorite food. These peripheral organs can sense the chemical makeup, potential toxicity, and fleeting experience of flavor, giving the body a chance to respond to undesirable chemicals or tell the brain that you should reach for another scoop.

These cells 'taste' danger, trigger immune responses

Taste receptor-coated tuft cells are found throughout the body, where they communicate with and take part in a growing list of biological processes. In the intestines, these taste receptor-studded cells can sense byproducts of parasite metabolisms. This causes the taste receptors to release chemicals that alert the immune system, order nearby goblet cells to produce mucus, and trigger muscle contractions in attempts to launch the parasites from the intestines.

Miracle berries make things that normally taste acidic or sour, such as lemons, taste sweet, like sugar-coated candy, by binding a special protein called miraculin to taste buds.

Understanding the biochemistry of ingredients and taste can improve flavor and texture

Keeping eggs at room temperature produces smoother batters when baking, and doing the same with tomatoes helps prevent a mealy, granular mouthfeel. Salting meat a day before gives more time for proteins to break down, improving flavor and tenderness, while cooking vegetables in well-salted water can lock in nutrients and color.

How disgorgement works while making sparkling wine

After riddling, winemakers still need to dispose of collected sediment in wines. While this was once done by hand, the modern method of freezing the bottle's neck and removing the now-solid sediment is ubiquitous. In this short video, an enologist (wine expert) from California’s Halter Ranch vineyards explains each step of the mechanical disgorgement process, complete with footage from their production line.

Pigments in paint can come from rocks, plants, insects or synthetic sources

Paint's composition is varied through the combination of pigments with binding agents. In the past, artists created their own paints by mixing pigments with water, oils or egg yolks to bind the colors together.

Tick saliva has a numbing agent so you won't feel the bite

Tick saliva has a variety of built-in assets that enable them to go undetected and continue feeding on their prey: They use saliva to form a hard seal around themselves to keep them in place while they feed for a few days, a numbing agent so you don't feel the bite, and even natural anticoagulants to keep blood from clotting.

The idea of a tongue map has been discredited, but taste sensitivity can vary across the tongue.

Animal wines: Wine bottles with pigs on the label had the lowest median prices at $23.22

If you’ve ever spent too much time staring at a shelf in a wine store, you might have noticed something similar: animals, specifically, cats, pigs, or birds on the labels. So, what do these wines have in common? This interactive tool attempts to figure out what wines that include the same animal have in common.

Visualizing California's wine production

While Europe has France, Italy, and Spain, the US has California. The bulk of US wine production takes place in the Golden State, accounting for roughly two-thirds of the United States’ nearly 800 million gallons produced each year. This chart compares California and United States wine production from 1995 through 2022. Production in both has been trending down for several years, partially due to extreme weather events.

Many parts of the body, including the testicles, have bitter, sweet, and umami receptors

Taste receptors—the tiny cells that report the chemical makeup of external stimuli to the brain—in the testicles don't "taste" in the same way as the gustatory ones you use to determine if there's enough sugar in your tea. Research suggests that these "teste" receptors can sense bitter, sweet, and umami compounds and use that chemical input to control physiological processes or (literally) change direction. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Humans have taste receptors throughout the body, including in the testes and lungs, but we don't taste what they detect because those areas lack taste buds.

Microbes are essential to creating the many varieties of cheese, influencing texture and taste

Microbes break down proteins and fats and produce compounds with distinct tastes. These microbes can include bacteria (like the one used to give Swiss its trademark holes), molds (like the ones that give blue cheese its distinctive veining), and countless other tiny organisms.

Georgian wine and the qvevri method

What do we know about early viticulture? The earliest evidence of winemaking comes from the country of Georgia. More than 8,000 years ago, people began fermenting grapes in clay vessels called qvevri (pronounced kway-vree). Join Master of Wine Konstantin Baum for a video diving into the origins of winemaking in Georgia, exploring how that country's unique mix of climates and cultures made it the perfect place for wine to flourish.

Your DNA may determine whether you like coffee or tea

Whether people prefer coffee or tea may boil down to a matter of taste genetics. People with a version of a gene that increases sensitivity to the bitter flavor of caffeine tend to be coffee drinkers, according to a report. Read on for more.

How our sense of taste evolves as we age

Kids are hardwired to prefer sweets over greens, with sweetness a shorthand for calorie-rich and bitter flavor warning of potentially noxious plants. This holds true even in the womb, where fetuses have been seen via ultrasound scans grimacing as their hosts consume kale capsules. As they age into double digits and beyond, their taste cells and sense of smell diminish, leading to broader and less sensitive palates.

Xylitol, a sugar alcohol, is sometimes added to foods at 1,000 times the level seen naturally in foods

This article covers the latest research in sugar alcohols and heart health. Some work indicates that after consuming sugar alcohols erythritol or xylitol people are at an elevated risk of developing blood clots, which can cause heart attacks and strokes. Both substances occur in low levels naturally in fruits and vegetables and are also produced by the human body, but as sweeteners in foods they are present at exponentially higher levels.

Each taste bud has 10 to 50 sensory cells that form a flower-like capsule

At the top of the structure are thin filaments known as "taste hairs" that bind taste-producing substances to the surfaces of the cell, after which corresponding electrical signals are sent to the brain. Adults have 2,000 to 4,000 taste buds on their tongue.

The five most common chemicals found in modern food

Most modern processed foods rely on a number of preservatives to stay fresh from production to our plates. The most common include citric acid (preservative and flavor), sodium benzoate (preservative), xanthan gum (thickening and stabilizing), carrageenan (thickening), and red dyes 3 and 4 (for color).

The strange endurance of consuming blood for health

Blood's importance to humanity is best summarized this way: without it, we die. This importance naturally begets assumptions about its medicinal properties, many of which appear accessible through drinking or eating the fluid connective tissue. This article details the history of blood drinking, from ancient Roman gladiators to modern-day sanguinarians.

Cats have a mutation that prevents them from tasting sweetness, and goldfish rank among the world's supertasters.