“This wine has extended maceration. That’s good, right?”

Wow, what a great evening to be outside and have a wine tasting, and our wine tasting crowd agreed, showing up in force! We are currently in the best time of year for outdoor wine drinking. All too soon the heat will be here and the full-pitched battle of drinking wines at the correct temperature will be upon us. Soak it in now!As we get to tonight’s Crowd Favorite we tread into the swamp that is all of the wine jargon written on the back of a wine bottle. This disease does not inflict every wine bottle. For the wine geeks out there; I shared a bottle of 2009 Colares Reserva Velho (old reserve) from Portugal last night with some of my great neighbors. Talk about a niche wine! But one of the best parts was the writing, or rather the lack there of, on the back of the bottle. Printed on the back was the name, where it was from, and that it came from grapes grown near the sea, all written in Portuguese. Absent was an explanation of the “passion” that went into this bottle, pleasantly missing the description of flavors; cherry, black currant, and soft tannins from the extended maceration. Sometimes the stuff printed on the back can be helpful, but most of the time it includes a description that can be slightly off to totally inaccurate. Did you get the black currants, or smell the lilac blossoms?Most back of the bottle descriptions include some level of wine jargon that can be helpful if you know what it means. In this case; maceration. There is extended maceration, carbonic maceration, and cold soaking. All can be printed as maceration. Throw it in google, or actually pull out your copy of “Wine Folly” and you will find that it is part of the wine making process that involves keeping all of the parts of the grape (skins, seeds, etc.) in the wine during and after fermentation. As the sugars in the grape juice turn into alcohol (ferment) the alcohol starts to act as a solvent, extracting even more color, tannins, and a bunch of other flavor compounds. Extended maceration. That’s got to make it better, right? Sometimes. It depends what you are starting with.In the case of tonight’s Crowd Favorite, 2021 Gran Passione Rosso, it probably helped. A 60/40 blend of Merlot and Corvina grapes from the Vento region of Italy, with “some days of maceration,” this wine would make a great, cheap, dinner wine. Want to drive deeper into what that all means, catch me at the next tasting and ask. Cheers until then.