Types of Wine

Three Families, One World

Walk into any wine shop and you're looking at thousands of bottles, but every single one belongs to one of three families: still, sparkling, or fortified. Understanding these three categories is like learning the three primary colours — everything else is a blend.

Within each family, wines can be white, red, or rose. Colour comes from skin contact: red grapes fermented with their skins produce red wine; press the juice off quickly and you get rose; ferment without skins at all (even from red grapes) and you can make white wine. Colour and type are independent dimensions.

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Still Wines

Still wines have no significant carbonation. They're the everyday wines of the world — the bottle you open with dinner, the glass poured at a cafe. Their alcohol typically falls between 8% and 15% ABV, depending on how ripe the grapes were at harvest (more sugar in the grape means more potential alcohol).

Colour and Skin Contact

The colour of a still wine is determined by one thing: how long the juice stays in contact with the grape skins.

• White wines are made by pressing the grapes and fermenting the clear juice alone, with little or no skin contact. The grapes are usually green or golden-skinned, though white wine can be made from red grapes if you press gently and quickly — this is exactly how Champagne is often made
• Red wines are fermented with their skins for days or even weeks. The skins release colour (anthocyanins), tannin, and flavour into the wine. Longer maceration generally means deeper colour and more structure
• Rose wines get their pink hue from brief skin contact — typically just a few hours. The result is lighter in colour, body, and tannin than a red, but with more texture than a white

Body and Sweetness

Still wines range across a wide spectrum:

Most still wines you'll encounter are dry — meaning all the grape sugar has been converted to alcohol during fermentation. Off-dry wines retain a touch of sweetness, and sweet wines retain significantly more. The key: sweetness in wine isn't a fault or a shortcut. Some of the world's greatest wines are sweet.

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Sparkling Wines

Sparkling wines contain dissolved carbon dioxide, which creates those beloved bubbles. The best sparkling wines get their fizz from a second fermentation — not from a pump injecting gas, but from yeast doing its work a second time, this time in a sealed container so the CO2 can't escape.

How and where that second fermentation happens defines the style.

Traditional Method

The second fermentation happens inside the bottle you'll eventually drink from. The wine ages on the dead yeast cells (lees) for months or years, developing toasty, biscuity complexity. Then the lees are removed through an elegant process of riddling and disgorgement.

This is how Champagne is made — and the method is also used for Cava (Spain), Cremant (various French regions), Franciacorta (Italy), and English sparkling wine. The bubbles are fine and persistent, the mousse is creamy, and the flavours are layered.

Champagne is always made by the traditional method, but not every traditional-method sparkling wine is Champagne. The name is reserved for wines from the Champagne region of France.

Tank Method (Charmat)

The second fermentation happens in a large pressurised steel tank rather than in individual bottles. This is faster and less expensive, but more importantly, it preserves the fresh, fruity character of the grape. That's not a compromise — it's the whole point for aromatic varieties like Glera (the Prosecco grape) and Muscat (Moscato d'Asti).

Prosecco from Italy's Veneto is the benchmark tank-method wine: light, floral, with apple and pear notes and a gentle, frothy fizz.

Carbonation

The simplest method: CO2 is injected into still wine, like making a soft drink. The bubbles are large and coarse and fade quickly. This is the lowest-quality method, used only for the cheapest sparkling wines. You'll rarely encounter it — but you'll recognise it instantly by the aggressive, short-lived fizz.

Key Sparkling Wines

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Fortified Wines

Fortified wines have a distilled grape spirit (essentially brandy) added to them, raising the alcohol to between 15% and 22%. This was originally a practical solution — the extra alcohol acted as a preservative for wines being shipped on long sea voyages. But the technique also creates unique and complex styles that are treasures of the wine world.

The single most important thing to understand about fortified wine is timing.

Fortification During Fermentation: Sweet Wines

When the spirit is added while the yeast is still working, it kills the yeast and stops fermentation. The unfermented sugar stays in the wine, producing a sweet, rich, high-alcohol wine.

Port is the classic example. Made in Portugal's Douro Valley from red grapes, Port is fortified after just two or three days of fermentation, leaving plenty of residual sugar. The result is deeply coloured, sweet, and powerful. Port comes in two broad families:

• Ruby styles (Ruby, LBV, Vintage Port) age in tank or bottle, preserving their fresh, fruity character
• Tawny styles (Tawny, 10/20/30/40 Year) age in small barrels, developing nutty, caramel, oxidative complexity

Fortification After Fermentation: Dry Wines

When the spirit is added after fermentation is complete, all the sugar has already been converted to alcohol. The result is a dry, high-alcohol wine.

Sherry demonstrates this beautifully. Made from Palomino Fino grapes in Jerez, southern Spain, Sherry is fortified after fermentation to make a dry base wine. What happens next depends on the style:

• Fino and Manzanilla age under a layer of living yeast called flor, which protects the wine from oxygen and gives it a distinctive tangy, saline, almond character
• Oloroso is fortified to a higher level that kills the flor, then ages oxidatively in barrels, becoming rich, nutty, and dark

Some Sherries are sweetened after aging (Cream Sherry, Pedro Ximenez), but the base wine itself is dry.

Madeira

Madeira, from the Portuguese island of the same name, is unique: it's deliberately heated during aging, a process that would ruin any other wine but gives Madeira its extraordinary longevity and caramel-smoky character. A bottle of Madeira can last for a century or more.

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Why It Matters

Understanding these three families gives you a map for navigating any wine list, any shop, any tasting. When someone pours you a glass, you can immediately place it: is this still, sparkling, or fortified? From there, you start to notice the details — the colour, the sweetness, the body, the bubbles (or lack thereof). Each family has its own pleasures, its own traditions, and its own place at the table.