Wine Spectator

Wine Spectator is a lifestyle magazine that focuses on wine and wine culture, and gives out ratings to certain types of wine. It publishes 15 issues per year with content that includes news, articles, profiles, and general entertainment pieces. Each issue also includes from 400 to more than 1,000 wine reviews, which consist of wine ratings and tasting notes.

Wine Spectator, like most other major wine publications, rates wine on a 100-point scale. The magazine's policy also states that editors review wines in blind tasting. Wine Spectator's current critics include executive editor Thomas Mathews, managing editor Kim Marcus, editor-at-large Harvey Steiman, tasting director Bruce Sanderson and senior editors Tim Fish, James Laube, James Molesworth, Alison Napjus and MaryAnn Worobiec. Past critics include former managing editor Jim Gordon, Per-Henrik Mansson, former senior editor and European bureau chief James Suckling, who served at the magazine from 1981 to 2010, and former senior editor Nathan Wesley, who worked in the magazine's tasting department from 2005 to 2013.

Wine

Wine (from Latin vinum) is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented grapes or other fruits. Due to a natural chemical balance, grapes ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, water, or other nutrients.Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts produce different styles of wine. These variations result from the complex interactions between the biochemical development of the grape, the reactions involved in fermentation, the terroir (the special characteristics imparted by geography, geology, climate and plant genetics) and subsequent appellation (the legally defined and protected geographical indication used to identify where the grapes for a wine were grown), along with human intervention in the overall process.

Wine has been produced for thousands of years. The earliest evidence of wine to date was found in the country of Georgia, where 8000-year old wine jars were uncovered. Traces of wine have also been found in Iran with 7,000-year-old wine jars and in Armenia with the 6100-year old Areni-1 winery, which is considered to be the earliest known winery by far. The earliest form of grape-based fermented drink however, was found in northern China, where archaeologists discovered 9000-year old pottery jars. Wine had reached the Balkans by c. 4500 BC and was consumed and celebrated in ancient Greece, Thrace and Rome. Throughout history, wine has been consumed for its intoxicating effects, which are evident at normal serving sizes.

Spectator

Spectator or The Spectator may refer to:

Publications

United Kingdom

United States

Canada

India

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.