How Wines, beers and spirits are produced

How Champagne is produced

Without Champagne, we wouldn't have the sparkle in wedding toasts or the pizzazz in New Year's Eve. Queens would have nothing with which to launch their ships. There would be no "O!" in mimosa. And James Bond wouldn't have gotten out of Russia alive. Champagne isn't a mere wine. It's a metaphor. It seals the beginnings and the ends of life: births, engagements and marriages; treaties, deals and death

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How Red Wine is produced

Whether it’s red, white or some color in between, all wine is fermented grape juice. To be red, a wine must be made from red or black grapes, for it is from the skins of the grapes that the wine gets its color. When making wine, red grape skins are like a packet of dye because the juice of both red and white grapes is nearly colorless.

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How White Wine is produced

When the grapes destined for white wine have ripened sufficiently in the vineyard, they are picked and crushed. At this point, whites destined to be fuller bodied often spend a day or two before fermentation in contact with their skins, pulp and sometimes stems. To make less assertive whites, winemakers cleanse the juice of pulp, stems, seeds and skins. With white wine, the idea is not to extract color and tannin from the skins, as it is with red wine, but to retain fruitiness and freshness.

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How Sweet Wine is Produced

In most ways, sweet wines resemble dry (non-sweet) wines. Grapes are crushed and yeasts change the grapes’ sugar into carbon dioxide and alcohol. The process is fairly simple. But sweet wines are sweet because, in various ways, some of the sugar in the grapes remains unfermented. In dry wines, all or nearly all of the sugar is fermented.

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