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The
Making of French Wine
Wine has been known
for thousands of years in all the Mediterranean countries, but
France is a country where the growing of vines and the making
and appreciation of wine, have been considered as an art for
more than 2.000 years and have become part of the civilization.
Latin historians
already state that the culture of the vine was developed in Gaul
(in Marseille) at the beginning of the 6th Century. B.C. The
people of Marseille not only knew how to cultivate the vine but
they also knew how to prune it.
Pruning makes all
the difference between wild vines and wine producing grapes. As
a matter of fact, until 1869 the science of vine growing was
mainly the science of pruning the vines. After 1869, new
improvements were made through grafting and this method has been
perfected and used in France ever since then.
Wine making spread
all over Gaul during the first century B.C. At that time new
weather resistant vines were "invented". One in the Rhone Valley
which was resistant to cold and another one in the Bordeaux
region resistant to rain and storm.
Already during the
first century of our era, Bordeaux and Burgundy were producing
high quality wines. Tacitus, the Roman historian, writes of the
commerce of wine between Gaul and Ireland and by the end of the
first century Gaul was exporting wine to the entire known world,
even to Greece and Italy. In the 4th century, the wines of Gaul
were already famous beyond her borders.
The Latin poet,
Ausonius, himself the owner of a vineyard in Bordeaux, travelled
to see his "customers”. in Germany, and in Bordeaux there was a
"negociator Brittanicus" who bad a central buying office for the
British Isles.
Since that time, man
has learned to improve the culture of the vine and the process
of wine making. Science, to a great extent, has taught the wine
maker how to correct the conditions which endangered the yield
of the harvest and the aging of the wine.
Here are the basic steps involved. The wine
making process differs depending on whether the end product is
red, rosé or
white
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Gathering,
preparing and crushing the grapes
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Fermentation (transformation of the
sugar into alcohol)
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Maceration to extract flavors, color, and
tannins
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Pressing, Blending, Settling for consistency
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Depending on the wine, an ageing process in
oak barrels or vats
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Filtering
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Bottling
The Wine Making process can take anywhere from a few weeks
(Beaujolais Nouveau) to many years for a vintage Bordeaux.
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