What is Wine?
"WINE," say most writers of the voluminous literature on the subject,
"is the fermented juice of fresh grapes". Neither chemist nor wine lover
finds much satisfaction in this bald generalization. The chemist knows
less about wine than he would like to know, and usually is ready to
admit it, being more than willing to seek the aid of the micro-biologist
whose business is to understand —and control—the miraculous little
enzymes that most of us know as yeast. The wine lover is not satisfied
with the simple generalization, for wine to him is a thing of marvellous
complexity, difficult to define and sometimes impossible to describe.
Some writers, dealing with the subject of what wine is, devote a great
deal of attention to saying what it is not. The fermented juice of
elderberries and pears and plums, is not, they say, wine in the true
meaning of the word. Wine must be the fermented juice of the fruit of
the vine, specifically of the grape, and anything that is not just that
is not wine.
This is too fine a distinction for us in this book. We will think of
brandy as wine, for indeed it is the fermented juice of the grape,
refined by distillation, but wine nonetheless. Call it spirits if you
wish.
So we are left with an unsatisfactory definition. If we are to stick to
the restriction that wine can be wine only if it is made from (fresh)
grape juice, we are in trouble with brandy which certainly qualifies as
wine, except that it is subjected to another process after the initial
fermentation. And we are stuck with the problem of finding a description
for Aunt Alice's fermented elderberry juice, which is certainly wine to
her, for what else could, or should, she call it.
Let us say then, that for the purpose of this site, we will consider
wine only as a product of the grape, the juice of which has been
fermented, and sometimes distilled. Thus we are able to include brandy,
for indeed we cannot ignore it, and we can include as well, port and
sherry and vermouth, which are fortified wines. We will have no trouble
with champagne, even though a little syrup has been added to it at the
end of its bottle fermentation.
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