Red Red Wine

"Red Red Wine" is a song written, performed and originally recorded by American artist Neil Diamond in 1967, included on Neil's second Bang Records album, Just For You. The lyrics are sung from the perspective of someone who finds drinking red wine the only way to forget his woes.

When Neil left the Bang Records label in 1968, Bang continued to release Neil Diamond singles, often adding newly recorded instruments and background vocals to album tracks from the two Neil Diamond albums that Bang had issued. For the "Red Red Wine" single, Bang added a background choir without Neil's involvement or permission. Diamond's version reached number sixty-two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1968. Diamond later performed a UB40-inspired version of the song on tour. The original album version was released on Diamond's The Greatest Hits (1966-1992) but the 1968 single version has never been issued on a vinyl album or CD. The song was covered by Tony Tribe, Jimmy James & the Vagabonds, shortly after Diamond's recording was released, and recorded much later by British reggae group UB40, whose version topped the U.S. and UK singles charts. Tony Tribe covered the song in 1969 in a reggae-influenced style. UB40 recorded it in 1983 in a lighter reggae style.

Red wine

Red wine is a type of wine made from dark-coloured (black) grape varieties. The actual colour of the wine can range from intense violet, typical of young wines, through to brick red for mature wines and brown for older red wines. The juice from most purple grapes is greenish-white; the red colour comes from anthocyan pigments (also called anthocyanins) present in the skin of the grape; exceptions are the relatively uncommon teinturier varieties, which produce a red colored juice. Much of the red-wine production process therefore involves extraction of colour and flavour components from the grape skin.

Production

Grape processing

The first step in red wine production, after picking, involves physical processing of the grapes. Hand-picked or machine-harvested grapes are usually tipped into a receival bin when they arrive at the winery and conveyed by a screw mechanism to the grape-processing equipment.

Destemming and crushing

On arrival at the winery there is usually a mixture of individual berries, whole bunches (particularly with hand-picked grapes), stems, and leaves. The presence of stems during fermentation can lead to a bitter taste in the wine, and the purpose of destemming is to separate grapes from the stems and leaves. Mechanical de-stemmers usually consist of a rotating cage perforated with grape-sized holes. Within this cage is a concentric axle with arms radiating towards the inner surface of the cage. Grapes pass through the holes in the cage, while stems and leaves are expelled through the open end of the cage.

Audrey Hall

Audrey Hall (born c.1948, Kingston, Jamaica) is a reggae singer.

Biography

Hall began her career singing with Dandy Livingstone in the duo Dandy & Audrey. They recorded the song "Morning Side of the Mountain" in 1969, the success of which led to an album of the same name. They released a second album on the Trojan label, I Need You. Livingstone also produced Hall's early solo recordings for his Downtown label. Hall worked as a backing singer through much of the 1970s and early 1980s alongside her sister Pam, including on Jimmy Cliff's Give The People What They Want, and Peter Tosh's Mama Africa, but she made a comeback as a solo artist in 1985 with "One Dance Won't Do", an answer record to Beres Hammond's "What One Dance Can Do", produced by Donovan Germain, which took her into the UK top 20. This was followed up by "Smile" in 1986, which repeated her UK chart success and gave her her biggest hit, and "The Best Thing For Me". In 1986, she returned to recording duets, with "Heart Made of Stone" and the album Dynamic Duo, recorded with former Paragon Don Evans. She continued to work with Germain, recording for his Germain and Penthouse labels, and released the album Reggae Zones in 2001.