merlot wine taste| Paloma Vineyards - Los Angeles

In the tasting room, people occasionally refer to red wine as sweet. Winemakers often find this statement worthy of correction; almost all reds are made to be dry. So what does the customer mean when they say sweet? Although taste is subjective, let’s dive into this flavor inquiry.When a winemaker adds yeast to begin fermentation, the yeast feeds on the sugars in the grapes. This “chemical process” is what creates alcohol. Picture yeast as a little Pac Man eating all the sweetest parts of the grapes. Those little yeasty Pac Men digest the sugar and poop out alcohol. A winemaker’s job, in part, is to create an environment for the yeast to thrive. For example,  if the yeast gets too cold, it will stop working and go dormant. This is how a winemaker can control how sweet they want the wine to be.