White wine

Pressed off the skins

The decisive step in white winemaking is a separation. The fruit is crushed, the juice is drawn away from the skins, and only the clear juice ferments. Without skins there is no pigment and almost no tannin, which leaves acidity carrying the whole structure of the wine — and acidity is the reason a bar reaches for it. Worth knowing: the juice of dark-skinned grapes runs clear too, so a white wine can perfectly well be made from black grapes. Champagne does it routinely.

A note on the Chinese word

In Chinese, 白酒 is read first as baijiu, the grain spirit family that kaoliang and Moutai belong to. Baijiu ferments in a solid state and is then distilled, most often from sorghum, and is usually bottled between 38% and 53%. It has nothing to do with this page: one is a distilled grain spirit, the other fermented grape juice at a third of the strength. The Chinese edition of this page is titled 白葡萄酒 — white grape wine — and ordering in a bar goes more smoothly if you say the extra word.

Three styles

Three categories are enough to order with. Crisp whites are high in acid and see little or no oak — cool-climate Sauvignon blanc is the type, tasting of grass, citrus and green fruit. Aromatic whites lead with perfume, floral and fruity before anything else; Riesling belongs here and is made at every level of sweetness from bone dry to very sweet. Oaked whites ferment or age in barrel, and if they also go through malolactic fermentation the acidity softens and the texture turns buttery, with a note of hazelnut. Chardonnay takes that road most often, which is why the grape covers everything from the stony edge of Chablis to tropical fruit in warm regions — the variety on the label tells you very little about the style.

Grapes you will meet on a list

• Sauvignon blanc — markedly acidic in cool regions, with green notes of grass, green pepper and nettle, sometimes tropical fruit alongside.
• Chardonnay — a neutral grape whose character comes mostly from place and barrel: green apple and pear where it is cool, citrus and peach where it is warm.
• Riesling — aromatic and high in acid, made dry through to sweet, often apple and orchard fruit in cool regions, and rarely oaked.
• Pinot grigio, or pinot gris — picked early in Italy for fresh acidity and a fairly neutral flavour; the Alsace style is fuller-bodied and lower in acid.
• Aligoté — Burgundy's lean dry white, thin and sharply acidic, and the traditional base for a Kir.

The Kir

A Kir is down to two ingredients: 10 ml of blackcurrant liqueur in the bottom of a wine glass, 90 ml of chilled white wine poured over it, one gentle stir. It was called blanc-cassis until Félix Kir, mayor of Dijon after the Second World War, pushed the local habit of lacing white wine with blackcurrant and ended up lending it his name. Burgundian aligoté is the traditional base, and its thin, high acidity is precisely what holds the liqueur's sweetness in check. Swap the still wine for a sparkling one and you have a different drink — see sparkling wine and Champagne.

Choosing a bottle for mixing

What you want is acid. Dry, sharp and unoaked is the useful combination: it stands up to liqueur and syrup without smothering anything else. The buttery weight of an oaked white never quite settles with citrus, and a sweet white turns a drink that already contains liqueur into sugar on sugar, which is the usual way this goes wrong. Price is beside the point — a single Kir uses 90 ml, so an honest everyday bottle is the right bottle.

Cold, and after opening

White wants to be cold: around 7 to 10°C for the crisp styles, 10 to 13°C for a fuller oaked one, which needs a little warmth to open. Too cold and the aroma shuts down; not cold enough and the acidity goes slack. A built drink like the Kir has no shaker to chill it, so the wine itself is the temperature of the drink and the bottle has to be cold beforehand. Once opened, re-seal it, stand it upright in the fridge and use it within three to five days, after which the acidity turns tired.

Further reading: wine, sparkling wine and Champagne, liqueurs, building.