Red wine/white wine

[stevebody]

One small note: ALL grape juice is clear when it's first freed from the skin. Roses, such as white Zinfandel and the Tavel wines, are made not by removing the skin of the grapes but by crushing the juices out and then collecting the resultant juice. There is a process called "free-run" that doesn't even use a crush but simply allows gravity and the weight of the grapes themselves to bleed off the bulk of the juices. This is seen by many people as being the purest and tastiest form of juice and is described as free-run juices.

To make a red, the winemaker will retain the grapeskins and then press them, under great pressure, to release the beautiful red pigments and intense flavor of the pulpy lining inside the grapeskin. To make a rose, the skins are simply dumped into the clear juice and left in contact with the soon-to-be wine for a brief period, anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days. This gentle contact, minus the pressing, results in the pretty pink-to-light-red color of the rose wines. The sweetness of the finished wine can be regulated by how much yeast is introduced into the juices. Yeast makes alcohol by converting sugars, so it can be added in sufficient quantity and left to act for enough time to make the wine dry or a smaller quantity can be added or the contact time reduced to leave residual sugars.

In some cases, the free run juice carries a little of the color of the red skin but normally it is the same clear color as the whites.