Do white wines have tannins?
Transcript:
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Hello, bonjour, and welcome to your new Bonner Private Wines video, where we learn about wine together, weekly. Brought to you by the best wine club in America. I’m your host, Julien Miquel, Bordeaux trained winemaker and avid wine traveler. Today, I want to tell you about something very few wine people actually know about or realize, which is that even white wines have tannins.
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Yes, they do, and they actually matter a lot when tasting and enjoying white wines. And I believe you deserve to know about it. I want to do things a little bit differently today and give you a voice over a video for a bit of a change. Please watch it until the end. It’s a relatively short video today and let me know at the end in the comments.
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If you enjoyed this format. Sit back, relax, maybe pour yourself a glass of wine perhaps, and let’s go. Let’s dig into it.
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To be concise yet thorough, and so you understand very well what we’re talking about today, here is how we’re going to break things down. First we look at why white wines have less tannins than red wine. Secondly, why white wines still have some tannins, before we explain why tannins in white wines matter, really. And finally, as a bonus, we’ll have a word about tannins in rosé and orange wines.
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Do they have some too? White wines have less tannins than red wines for two reasons. Firstly, because red grapes simply have much more tannins in their skin. It’s just the nature of red grapes. They have these antioxidant compounds concentrated in their skin to protect the berries from pests, while white grapes have much less phenolic molecules in them. And then when we winemakers make red wines, we ferment the juice of the grapes together with their skins, while for white wines, we press the grapes first before fermenting the juice, and we disregard the skins of white grapes and only keep the juice fermenting.
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So for red wines, we have tannin rich skins fermenting within the wine, while for whites we have skins with very little tannins and not fermenting with the wine. So white wines have way less tannins. Does that make sense? But still, when we press white grapes to extract the juice, because white grapes have a little bit of tannins in their skins, well, a little bit of these tannins are also pressed and end up in your white wines.
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It’s small concentration, but yes white wines still have a little bit of tannins. So why does this all matter? Well, when you taste a white wine, you can taste these tannins. They’re delicate, but they’re there. White wines have delicate flavors. They’re very subtle. So you can feel those tannins even in small concentration. If you pay attention to the finish of a white wine, in particular the sensations on your palate towards the end of the tasting, the aftertaste.
00:03:26:19 – 00:03:53:04
If you wish, you may feel a little drying sensation, even from white wines, the astringency of the tannins. It’s much less than for reds, of course, but it’s there. And in fact, those phenolics, yes, for white wines we don’t actually usually talk about tannins, but we generally refer to them as phenolics, even though it’s exactly the same thing.
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Tannins, phenolics, is the same thing. But in white wines we usually say phenolic because they’re in small concentration. Well, those phenolics participate in a white wine tasting profile. This dryness to the finish can be more pronounced on some whites, which sometimes makes them a little more food friendly and salivating. Or if it’s too pronounced, it can make them taste a little harsh.
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Whites that were fermented or aged in oak barrels have some phenolics from the oak as well, which can you can definitely taste. Basically, those phenolics or tannins in white wines are very subtle and delicate, but they do influence the taste and the overall feel of a white wine quite a lot. And if you want to up your game when it comes to tasting white wines, well, you need to pay attention to those phenolics and at least know that there are tannins in white wines.
00:04:50:19 – 00:05:16:23
And now you know roses and orange wines also have phenolics that you can taste: rosés usually have about the same amount as white wine, so pay attention to them the same way. Orange wines have more tannins that whites because they are fermented with the skins of the grapes. That’s essentially basically how you make orange wines. I hope you enjoyed today’s video.
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