Wine Styles
Definition - What does Wine Styles mean?
Wine styles are simply a way to classify different types of wine based on many different factors or characteristics of the wine. The main wines styles are:
- Red wine
- White wine
- Rosé
- Sparkling wine
- And dessert wine (Fortified wines)
However, there are many styles within the styles. Additional wine styles are applied to a wine by region of origin, grape varietal, winemaking style, or individual characteristics of the wine. Individual characteristics associated with wine styles are color, body, sparkling or still, sweetness or dryness and alcohol content.
WineFrog explains Wine Styles
Understanding wine styles is important to wine drinkers so they can understand the characteristics in different wine. Knowing wine styles helps to understand wine labels and gives wine drinkers common descriptive words to communicate their taste in wine. Wine styles let you know what to expect when you purchase a bottle of wine in the description of the label.
Often wine labels list several wine styles, such as; color, region of origin and grape varietal. Additionally, descriptions on the wine label of the wine will let you know about individual characteristics. For instance, you could expect a wine labeled as a dessert wine to be sweet and have concentrated flavors, while a wine label that lists the grape varietal as Cabernet Sauvignon would have the classic flavors of black currant, blackberry, black cherry, tobacco and vanilla.
