Home » The Vine » The Burn: California Wine and High Alcohol

The Burn: California Wine and High Alcohol


» posted by Rich on 2008-09-29 23:17:30

California wines have been criticized for their high alcohol levels, which can sometimes cause a harsh burning sensation in the chest. It feels a bit like heart burn.

Dang... is there fire it that wine!?

Wines with high alcohol levels is, in part, due to winemakers pushing the length of time the grapes stay on the vine. This, among other things, will give the wine high sugar, thus high alcohol levels. But waiting as long as possible to harvest the grapes also gives the potential of getting the most and best flavor from the grapes.

The backlash is what's known to wine drinkers as "the burn" or "hot". A wine that has an unbalanced alcohol level can hurt, or bury, the big flavors of an otherwise good wine.

You may also know that wines with 14% alcohol or higher get bumped to a higher tax rate in California. So what can a winemaker do if one of their wines finishes hot?

Enter Vinovation. A Sebastopol company with a patented reverse osmosis technology that will extract alcohol from wine. Cool, right?

In July 2008, Vinovation was purchased by WineSecrets Inc. in Napa. Wine Secrets Inc. until now was just a mobile wine filtration service, but is now the second largest company of it's kind, serving over 700 wineries.




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