Drink What You Like: Why should I care about the color of my wine?
You’re at a restaurant with your friends. The server just poured everyone a glass of Pinot and you happily raise the glass to your lips. Eager to take a sip, you realize that your buddies are busy holding their glasses up to the light or tilting the glass over their white napkin. You hear someone mutter “extended rim variation”. Oh boy, there they go again. “Um, cheers!” you say to the table, encouraging more drinking and less analysis.
Why should you care about color anyway?
The color of your wine can actually tell you quite a lot about it. And apart from telling a story, I truly think appreciating the color of the wine makes the whole wine experience more enjoyable. So before you chug your glass, take a look at the color, see if you can define it (Is it raspberry, garnet, or cherry? Or perhaps almost like water, straw, or butter yellow?), and then move on to the drinking part.
So what does the color tell us? A whole bunch of things! But here’s what is most important for you: Age, an indication of oak, and an indication of style.
AGE: White wines will turn more brown as they age. Reds will turn more orange, and become less opaque. By tilting the glass over a white napkin, it’s easier to see the color variation, or the “rim variation” your friends above mentioned. Rim variation is the difference in color between the center, the most concentrated area of wine, and the rim of the wine. The older the wine, the more orangey the rim will appear. In white wines, a greenish rim indicates the wine is rather young, as the chlorophyll in the unripe grapes tints the juice, and/or they come from a cooler climate that doesn’t ripen grapes as quickly. So what’s all this mean? If someone hands you a glass of red wine and it’s trending towards brown, or a white wine that looks like, in the words of Master Somm Tim Gaiser, “an errant urine sample”, you’ll know there’s something wrong with it. It’s unlikely you’ll be drinking anything much older than 10 years, and they sure as hell shouldn’t look like that!
OAK: Simply, the lighter colored, more translucent, and more clear the wine, the less likely it is to have been aged in oak, or to have been aged in oak for very long. This matters to me when someone hands me Chardonnay. I hate oaky Chard, and that deep butter yellow color is an instant giveaway that this won’t be my favorite wine. But if I receive one much more pale in color, there’s a serious chance that I’ll really enjoy it. The darker the color, the more substantial the grape, and the more likely it is to have been aged in oak.
STYLE: The lighter the color, the lighter, more refreshing the wine will be. A Pinot is light and bright, and the color reflects that. In contrast, a Syrah is heavy and meaty, and the color is a dark purple. For whites, think of the differences between a light, crisp Sauvignon Blanc with its straw, almost green color, and a heavy, floral Viognier, with its subtly darker yellow tint.
When you start paying attention to the color of the wine, you’ll start to notice trends in what you like to drink. It’s just one more way to put you on the path to drinking more of what you like and less of what you’re told to like. So take note, and drink up!
