Unlock the secrets of wine styles! Dive into sparkling, still, sweet, dry, fortified, and more. Your ultimate guide to understanding every bottle

You can easily divide wine into two styles: sparkling or still. But you can also classify them by color. Or by residual sugar. Or by whether they’ve been fortified or not. In short, there are many wine styles, and I want to give you a quick guide to understanding all of them.

Each of the following wine styles deserve a separate article, so, even though nobody will accuse me of being succinct, I’ll try for this one. Let’s jump into it!

Is Sparkling Wine Regular Wine but With Bubbles?

In a way, yes. Sparkling wine starts as still wine and through different methods, winemakers infuse the wine with carbon dioxide. This can occur naturally as the result of fermentation, when yeast converts sugars into alcohol and CO₂. The trick is in how winemakers trap those bubbles[i].

The traditional technique is the big one here. In it, vintners trap the carbonation in the bottle during a second fermentation. This process is also known as the Champenoise method. That’s right! It’s the method used to make Champagne.

Of course, there are other ways to trap carbonation bubbles. The Charmat method also uses a second fermentation to create bubbles, but it does so in large stainless steel tanks. Prosecco uses this technique.

Lastly, you can inject CO2 into the wine, like you would with do with carbonated water or soda.

Exploring Sparkling Wine Styles

I can cover a lot of them by just talking about Champagne styles. But I shouldn’t assume you’re that familiar with it. And I’m sorry I’m getting ahead and stepping on the toes of other wine styles I’ll cover below, but since bubbly starts with still wine, all wine styles can be made sparkling.

You’re more likely to recognize white sparkling wine, but I’m sure you’ve also seen pink ones. This tells us sparkling can be made with both white and red wines. And there are fully red wine sparkling, like Lambrusco. You can also have sparkling wine that’s bone dry, cotton-candy sweet, and everything in between.

Color in Wine Styles: White and Red

You would think that it’s as simple as: white wine is made with white grapes, and red wine is made with red ones. But, alas, it’s not that simple. Well, it mostly is, but there are some peculiar white wines made with red grapes.

Let me explain. The skin of the grape gives the wine its color. White wines are made by pressing grapes and then fermenting the juice without the skins. Therefore, if you peel your red grapes, you can make white wines with them.

The famous example is Blanc de Noir Champagne made with Pinot Noir grapes. Now, a lot of Champagne is a blend of grapes, and of the three main ones, two are red: Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. The other one is Chardonnay, and you can also make a 100% Chardonnay Champagne called Blanc de Blancs. For still wines, this is less common, but a few producers globally are making white wine from red grapes[ii].

On the other hand, red wine is made by letting the skins of red grapes macerate with the juice, infusing it with color. Darker skins and letting the juice sit with skins for longer make deeper colored wine. But what happens if you don’t leave the skins in with the wine for too long?

Skin Contact Wine Styles: Pink (Rosé) and Orange

I spoiled it in the paragraph above and in the title of this section, but both orange wines and rosé get their peculiar colors by being exposed to some skin contact during the fermentation process. The longer you leave the skins in with the juice, the deeper the color.

Rosé, probably the better-known skin contact wine style, is made with red grapes. The deeper the color of the skin, the deeper the color of the finished wine will be. That is, given similar skin contact time[iii], Rosés made with País or Pinot Noir will be lighter in color than those made with Syrah or Cabernet Franc.

Winemakers produce orange wines by following the same concept: white—or rather yellow and green—skins mixed in with the juice for a bit of time[iv]. This gives white wines more character, body, and even some tannins, making orange wines more complex. Even though this is an ancient technique popular in Georgia[v], global consumers have only caught up in the past few years.

Sweet Vs Dry Wine Styles (Understanding Residual Sugar)

As I mentioned above, fermentation turns the sugars from the fruit into alcohol and carbon dioxide. So, if the grapes have too much sugar, the finished wine will have some leftover[vi], which we call residual sugar. Grapes picked later in the harvest have more sugars in them, as you’d expect from any other overripe fruit.

But there are other techniques that winemakers use, like dangerously cultivating a particular mold on grapes, which causes them to shrivel, concentrating their sugars. Vintners call this mold noble rot, and makes world famous sweet wines, like Sauternes.

For still wines, you can classify them in three categories based on how much residual sugar is in them. Wines with less than 10 grams of sugar per liter (g/Lt) are considered dry[vii]. Most of the wines you drink probably fall under this category. If they have from 10 to 35(ish) g/Lt, we call them off-dry. Some Rieslings can be off-dry, and they’re wonderful!

Lastly, sweet wines have over 35g/Lt, but they can be much sweeter than that. Over 100g/Lt is not unusual, like in the afore mentioned Sauternes, for instance, which has closer to 120 grams or residual sugar per liter.

Champagne has its own sweetness categories, going from close to 0 grams to over 50. Brut, the most common category[viii] has around 12g/Lt.

Ok, But Then What Are Fortified Wines?

Great question! Those are sweet, aren’t they? Well, no. At least not all of them. Let me explain. Fortified wines are still wines to which a distilled spirit is added. Winemakers can add the spirit during or after fermentation. If it’s the former, fermentation stops because the high alcohol content kills the yeast. These wines are sweet because there’s still sugar in the fruit. On the other hand, if the spirit is added after fermentation, there’s no residual sugar, and the resulting fortified wine will be dry.

Holistic Wine Styles: Natural, Organic, Biodynamic, and Vegan

These terms have to do with philosophies focusing on more holistic approaches to winemaking.

Natural wine is more than a buzz word. Producers here focus on minimal intervention in the winemaking process. They use native yeasts and little to no sulfites. Their wines are unfiltered; therefore, some can be cloudy.

Organic wine producers don’t use synthetic pesticides or fertilizers on the vines. Now, you can make organic wine, but if the winery wants that information in the label, then they must be certified. Costs are different in each country, but unfortunately, the certification can be expensive in some cases.

Biodynamic wines crank the organic practices up to 11. Winemakers view the vineyard as a connected ecosystem and use a holistic approach, like following lunar cycles, to their agricultural practices. Biodynamic wines must also be certified.

Lastly, you might think that, regardless of wine styles, all of them are vegan, but that’s not the case. Wait, what? Why are wines not vegan? Wines are clarified to remove unwanted particles. For this process, producers add what’s called a fining agent, typically egg whites or gelatin. Vegan wines use plant-based protein, activated charcoal, or bentonite clay[ix] instead.

The Last Drop

As you can see, there are plenty of wine styles for you to explore and enjoy. Some wines can fall into different categories, like a Rosé Demi-Sec Sparkling from the New World. Wine has enough variety to keep us from getting bored with it, especially if we consider how different wines already are with distinct varietals, regions, terroir, and vintages.

The one to pick will depend on the food on the table, the company you keep, and your general mood. Just remember, don’t be afraid to get outside of your comfort zone!

Do you have favorite wine styles? Or some you haven’t tried? Let me know in the comments!

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Footnotes

[i] I don’t mention it in the article, but there’s also an ancestral method, in which the wine is bottled before the initial fermentation is completed. We call these naturally sparkling wines Pet Nat.

[ii] Particularly from Pinot Noir, but other red grapes are also used. In Mendoza, at least one producer I know of is making white wine out of Malbec grapes.

[iii] Skin contact for Rosé wine is usually only a few hours and up to a couple of days at most.

[iv] Skin contact time for orange wines is longer than that for Rosé. It can go up to over a year, although several days is more frequent.

[v] I, of course, mean the country, not the state.

[vi] In reality, the winemaker decides when to stop the fermentation process, so they decide how dry the end product will be, regardless of how much sugar was in the berries.

[vii] Though most of them have a lot less residual sugar than that.

[viii] An estimated 90% of Champagne produced falls under the brut category.

[ix] Bentonite clay is… well… clay. It’s natural clay formed from volcanic ash.

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Cover Image: Overhead view of a table full of wine glasses. Photo by Gravity Cut.