Red Grape
Red grapes are the dark-skinned fruit of the grapevine, grown in many cultivars and used for red, rosé, fortified and spiced wines, and for juices and alcohol-free wine-style drinks. Their color, tannin and much of their flavor sit in the skin, while the juice of most cultivars is nearly colorless.
How red grape is prepared
Fermented on the skins for red wine, briefly macerated or bled off for rosé and blush wines, and pressed quickly for pale blanc de noirs and sparkling wines. Fortified with grape spirit for port-style wines. Heated with spices for mulled wine, glögg and related drinks. Pressed into unfermented red grape juice, which also serves as the base for non-alcoholic mulled punches, spritzers and dealcoholized wine-style beverages.
Other preparations
The source marks this juice as from concentrate.[7]
Service signal Works as a juice component.
In depth
Ancient Origins in the Caucasus and the Mediterranean
The story of red grape drinks begins with the domestication of the Eurasian grapevine in the Caucasus, roughly eight thousand years ago. Winemaking seems to have followed almost as soon as the vine was tamed. Dark-skinned fruit was crushed and left to ferment with the natural yeasts on its skins, producing some of humanity's earliest deliberately made fermented beverages. Cultivation then moved west and south into Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and the wider Mediterranean. Wine became a trade good, a religious offering and an everyday drink, often diluted with water. Over the following millennia this westward spread seeded the local vine populations from which many regional red cultivars eventually descended.[1]
Roman and Medieval Spiced Wines
Heating and spicing red wine is one of the oldest recorded ways of transforming it. A comedy by the Roman playwright Plautus from the second century BC mentions warmed, spiced wine. Roman legions carried vines, winemaking and drinking customs as far as the Rhine, the Danube and northern Britain. In medieval Europe, spiced and sweetened wines were valued both as luxuries and as supposed aids to health. An English cookery manuscript from around 1390 describes hippocras, made by steeping ground spices such as cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg and grains of paradise in sweetened red wine. These recipes are the direct ancestors of today's mulled wines.[2]
Skin Contact and the Making of Red Wine
What sets red grapes apart in the cellar is that their color lives in the skin, not the juice. The flesh of most dark cultivars yields a pale, greenish juice, and the red hue comes from anthocyanin pigments in the skins. Traditional red winemaking therefore leaves the crushed fruit to ferment together with its skins and seeds. During this time color, tannin and flavor are drawn into the liquid, and the cap of floating skins is repeatedly pushed down or soaked with juice. Pressing usually comes only near or after the end of fermentation. The same fruit can also produce rosé, when skin contact is brief, or a nearly white wine, when the juice is separated at once. Young reds range from vivid violet, and they fade toward brick and brown as they age.[3]
European Regional Traditions: Burgundy, Bordeaux and Tuscany
From the Middle Ages onward, particular red cultivars became tied to particular places. Pinot noir, an ancient and mutation-prone variety, became the grape of Burgundy's red wines and later a key component of Champagne. There its uncolored juice allows a dark grape to make pale sparkling wine. In Tuscany, Sangiovese, first clearly recorded in the late sixteenth century, grew to dominate Chianti and other central Italian reds. In Bordeaux, Merlot was documented in the late eighteenth century. Cabernet Sauvignon, a seventeenth-century chance cross of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc, became a leading planting in the Médoc. The Bordeaux blend of these grapes, prized for tannin, structure and ageing potential, was later imitated around the world.[4]
Port and the Fortified Red Wines of the Douro
In northern Portugal, red grapes gave rise to one of the best-known fortified styles. In the late seventeenth century, English merchants encountered sweet Douro wines that had been strengthened with grape spirit. Adding the spirit partway through fermentation stops the yeast, leaving natural grape sugar and raising the strength. A 1703 treaty lowered duties on Portuguese wine at a time when war limited French imports, and port became a fixture of English drinking. The Douro was formally demarcated in 1756, making it one of the oldest protected wine regions. Red port is typically blended from several native dark grapes, notably Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca and Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo). It is aged either in tanks and bottles for fruity ruby styles or in wooden casks for nutty tawny styles.[5]
Red Grapes in the Americas: Zinfandel, Prohibition and Blush Wine
European vines crossed the Atlantic with colonists and immigrants. The red grape now called Zinfandel, whose origin is traced to the Adriatic coast and most likely Montenegro, reached New England nurseries around 1830. It was first grown there as a greenhouse table grape. It then moved to California in the Gold Rush era and became the state's most widely planted variety by the end of the nineteenth century. During Prohibition, making wine at home remained effectively legal. Growers shipped large quantities of dark grapes east for household fermenting, favoring thick-skinned varieties such as Alicante Bouschet that travelled better. In the 1970s, California producers popularized pale, often slightly sweet blush wines made from red grapes with minimal skin contact. The style became hugely popular, and its success helped preserve many old red-grape vineyards.[1]
Native American Grapes and Unfermented Juice
Not all red grapes used in drinks belong to the European species. Dark-skinned American varieties derived from Vitis labrusca and its hybrids, such as Concord and Isabella, tolerate harsher climates and have an intensely grapey, 'foxy' aroma. In the nineteenth century, pasteurization made it possible to keep grape juice from fermenting. Unfermented Concord-type juice was then promoted in the United States, partly as an alcohol-free alternative for communion among temperance-minded churches. Deep purple grape juice became a staple family drink in North America. Labrusca-type grapes are also grown for juice and sweet wines in South America, Eastern Europe and East Asia.[6]
Winter Warmers and Today's Alcohol-Free Red Grape Drinks
Mulled red wine remains a living seasonal tradition across Europe and beyond. It is served as Glühwein at German-speaking Christmas markets, as glögg in the Nordic countries, as vin chaud in the French Alps, and as vino navegado in Chile. Many of these traditions already include alcohol-free versions. Children's punch at German markets echoes the spices of Glühwein, Nordic households make glögg from grape or blackcurrant juice, and Latvian cooks may substitute grape juice for wine. Contemporary no- and low-alcohol makers build on this heritage. They use red grape juice as a base for spiced winter punches and sparkling spritzers, and they remove the alcohol from finished red wine to keep its tannin and structure. They also blend grape must with teas, botanicals and verjus-style acidity to echo the complexity of wine without the alcohol.[2]
References
- [1]EncyclopediaZinfandel — Wikipedia↑§1↑§6
- [2]EncyclopediaMulled wine — Wikipedia↑§2↑§8
- [3]EncyclopediaRed wine — Wikipedia↑§3
- [4]EncyclopediaCabernet Sauvignon — Wikipedia↑§4
- [5]EncyclopediaPort wine — Wikipedia↑§5
- [6]EncyclopediaList of grape varieties — Wikipedia↑§7
- [7]Producerepicone.life↑prepared