White Wine
White wine is one of the wine categories I love most. Perhaps for its lightness or freshness, or simply because I once spent a harvest in the Mosel region of Germany. What I do know is that it is a category that keeps winning consumers over and balancing consumption between white wines and red wine.
What Is White Wine?
White wine is the result of the fermentation of the must, or juice, of white grapes. It is believed that white grapes are a derivation of the original red grapes of the wild European vine. At some point in time, these will have diverged into grapes whose skin is green or yellow depending on the state of ripeness and on the variety. And so white wine was born.
How Is White Wine Made?
White wine is made from white grapes. At least, that is the rule. But as with everything, there are exceptions. There are ways of producing white wine from red grapes, which is common in the regions that produce sparkling wines.
Moving on, white wine is then usually made from white grapes, using the fermentation technique known as “bica aberta” (free-run). The name of the technique itself tells us a little about how it works. According to the oldest production methods, the white grapes were placed in lagares and, to obtain the white wine, the bica, or tap, was left open, so that the must, or juice, of the grapes spent as little time as possible in contact with the skins, which is where the colour lies.
Today, white grapes are harvested and, on arriving at the cellar, are crushed and frequently destemmed (the stalk, or stem, of the bunch is removed) and placed in the press, where they are pressed or squeezed to obtain the maximum amount of must at the best possible quality. From here the must goes to a tank where settling takes place, that is, the separation of the part responsible for cloudiness. This stage usually takes 24 to 48 hours, during which the must is chilled so that the settling is efficient, so that fermentation does not begin before we separate the clean must from the lees.
Next, we move the clean must to another tank where fermentation will take place. The temperature is normally controlled to obtain a wine with clean aromas. And that, in broad terms, is how white wine is made.
How to Serve White Wine?
Serving white wine is easy, as long as you have a way to chill it. The most common white wines taste better at temperatures between 8 and 12 degrees Celsius. Do not chill them too much, as very low temperatures will hide their characteristics.
As for the glass in which to serve white wine, I recommend the tulip, that is, a glass with a more tapered shape at the rim, so as to concentrate the aromas, which in white wines are plentiful.
As for decanting a white wine, I recommend it when the wine already has some age and needs to breathe, having been shut in the bottle for years.
Despite these general tips, the way you serve white wine can vary greatly, since it depends on characteristics that are endless within the different styles of white wine.
Types of White Wine
The types of white wine can be grouped into several families. There are so many forms and styles that, so as not to get lost, I will arrange them into just 4 types of white wine.
Aromatic White Wines
Aromatic white wines are, perhaps, the most common. It is in this family that we place dry white wine, the white wine that has no residual sugar. Aromatic white wines are those that normally have a balanced freshness and an expressive nose that draws on the type of grape that made it or on a style of vinification at lower temperatures, so as to retain and produce more aromas originating in fermentation.
Light White Wines
Light white wines are those with a lower alcohol content. We have two good examples in Portugal: the white wines from the Vinho Verde region and the white wines from the Lisboa region. Normally, light wines are not a dry type of white wine, since to offset the natural acidity the producer leaves some residual sugar.
Full-Bodied White Wines
Full-bodied white wines are, as a rule, more alcoholic wines, since alcohol is one of the things responsible for a wine’s body. They are usually wines from varieties that produce more alcohol or from slightly warmer regions, which lend body to white wines. This type also includes wines that are aged in new oak barrels, where we can feel the tannins, whether from some maceration of the grapes or from the wood ageing itself. Good examples are white wine from Alentejo or white wine from the Douro made from grapes grown at low altitudes or in the Douro Superior.
Liqueur or Fortified White Wines
Liqueur white wines are, for example, white Port, Moscatel de Setúbal or Moscatel do Douro. White Madeira is also a good example of this type of wine, which as a rule are fortified through the addition of alcohol to the musts.
Casca Wines White Wines
Casca Wines’ white wines are one of our flagships. Ever since we began making wine, they have been the ones that most helped to establish us as a producer of excellence, because the production of white wine in Portugal was revolutionised more slowly than that of red wine.
The truth is that we, Casca Wines, drawing on my experience in Germany in 2001 and my fondness for white wines, took the lead and created a style of white wine that delights everyone who tastes it. And if you do not know what I am talking about, you have no idea what you are missing…
From the page to the glass
- Cabo da Roca Reserva Arinto — Arinto at 20 metres, picked in the last week of August. Citrus, minerality, salt.
- Monte Cascas Colheita Branco Douro — Códega do Larinho from three vineyards above 400 metres.
- 1808 Colheita Branco — Síria and Fonte Cal at 690 metres, six months in French oak.
