Red wine

Fermented on the skins

Red wine differs from white by one decision: the juice ferments together with the skins. The colour is steeped out of them, and so is the tannin — the polyphenols held in skins, seeds and stems. Tannin is not a flavour but a sensation. It binds the proteins in your saliva and makes them precipitate, and once that lubrication goes the mouth dries, tightens and feels lightly coated, even on the teeth. The longer the juice sits on the skins the more of this a wine carries, and the longer it will keep. In a mixed drink that grip is the texture red wine brings, and also the thing most likely to wreck the glass.

Grapes you will meet on a list

• Cabernet Sauvignon — full-bodied, high in tannin, noticeably acidic; blackcurrant and green pepper in cool places, black cherry where it is warmer.
• Merlot — thinner skins and less tannin per unit of volume than Cabernet, so it drinks softer, with plum and blackberry.
• Pinot noir — thin-skinned, pale, low in tannin, light to medium in body, smelling of red and black cherry and raspberry.
• Syrah, or Shiraz — blackberry, mint and black pepper with firm tannin in moderate climates; softer tannin and notes of liquorice, anise and leather where it is hot.

Why it is rarely a base

A bottle at 12% to 14% cannot carry the weight of a cocktail, and between its colour and its tannin it has nowhere to hide. Add too much and the glass turns dull, muddy and astringent, and the balance of sweet against sour goes with it. So the red wine in this catalogue is never stirred through a drink. It sits on top, in a small measure, where the grip belongs to the first mouthful and nothing else.

The band on a New York Sour

A New York Sour is a whiskey sour wearing red wine. The whiskey, lemon juice, syrup and egg white are dry-shaken until they emulsify, shaken again with ice until foamy, and strained into a rocks glass over ice; the 15 ml of wine then goes on last, poured slowly over the back of a bar spoon so that it floats. It never enters the shaker and it is never stirred in. That band of colour is the drink's only ornament, and it folds into the sour a mouthful at a time as you drink.

Choosing a bottle for mixing

Look for dry, fruit-forward and modestly structured — the drink wants colour and a little grip, not complexity. A heavily oaked wine flattens the lemon and the syrup underneath it, and a very tannic one turns the first sip harsh where it floats. An expensive aged bottle is the worst choice of all: nothing delicate survives at 15 ml, so the money goes straight into the glass and disappears. Open something young, everyday and openly fruity, and drink the rest of it.

Temperature: red is not "room temperature"

Room temperature is a phrase left over from houses without central heating. A tannic red shows best around 15 to 18°C, while a light red is better still at 10 to 13°C; above 20°C the alcohol starts to evaporate noticeably and crowds out the fruit. In a warm room — and most rooms are warmer than that for much of the year — twenty minutes in the fridge before pouring does more for the bottle than any decanter.

After the bottle is open

Red oxidises exactly as white does. Re-seal it, stand it upright in the fridge, and it is worth drinking for about three to five days — the fridge is not reserved for whites, it simply slows the oxidation down, and you can let a glass warm up before you drink it. If the bottle is not going to be finished, a New York Sour is the obvious use for the end of it: the recipe takes 15 ml at a time.

Further reading: wine, white wine, whisky, dry-shaking.