The Colour of Wine

As autumn is turning our landscape into golden hues, it’s a good time to embrace the variety of colours in our wines. All grape varieties have colourless flesh and juice with colour deriving from the skins. Red wines with purple tones tend to be young whilst brown tones, called garnet, indicate a more developed wine or oak ageing. The depth of colour will be derived from the levels of natural pigment and tannins in the skins. Our Côtes du Rhône is a young wine hence quite bright red in colour.

Grapes pressed without skin contact result in white wine. Colour also provides clues to the age and evolution of the wine. White wines made in a reductive style will be pale, sometimes even with a greenish tinge, but ones that are barrel fermented will be a deeper colour due to oxidation. Pale whites tend to be lighter bodied and originate from cooler climates. A good example of this is our Garganega from Verona in Italy which is very light with a slight green tinge.