«"Are you a wine lover who needs, perhaps ..."to revise his classics "?! Are there a few gaps to fill in maybe? If so ... let's start from the very beginning: the life of grapes: I'll tell you a simple story ...!

An essential little reminder first. Winemaking is done in two main steps:

• the agriculture of the vine or viticulture
• the making of the wine or vinification.

The vine is a perennial, it grows with the seasons and follows a growth cycle that takes place in several stages.

Périod	Vegetative state	Description	Man's work
November to  February	Vegetative rest	The vine enters a sleeping state (she can resist frost to  -17°).	The winegrower prunes his vines  to remove old wood and select  new canes and buds for growth  and fruit in the following year
March April May June	Budding  Flowering	Frost risk is important (-2 ° is enough to impair a crop). The branches grow and clusters form. The flowers release pollen. The fertilisation by pollen to form green berries.	- Debudding Labour: -Removing sucker shoots - Trellis work
July August	Fruit set Veraison	The foliage continues to grow and the flowers become grapes. Green grapes grow and ripen: they change colour to red or yellow and becoming less acidic, richer in flavor and the texture softens.	- Cropping - Harvest Green - Thinning
September November	Maturation Harvest	The grapes are harvested manually or mechanically with a harvesting machine. Late season, leaves fall and are blown away.	Harvest

All this work is not applied systematically. Green harvest or thinning, for example, are not practiced by all growers. 

Do you know what the grape has inside? A little reminder: 

• Water: about 70% of the juice is water. 
• The sugars: glucose and fructose accumulate in the pulp during ripening. 
• Acids: malic acid and tartaric acid. 
• Polyphenols: 
  • Anthocyanins: contained in the grape skin, these pigments give color to red wines. 
  • Tannins: molecules in the skin but also in the seed and the stalk, they give structure to the wine and can impart a certain astringency (dryness in the mouth feel) that disappears with aging. They can be soft, round, fine or on the contrary, green or herbaceous. Maceration (contact between wine and grape skins) is much longer for red wines than for whites, the rate of tannin is much higher in the former. 

• Aromas: flavours specific to different varieties are contained in the grape skins. 

During the maturation water, sugars and polyphenols accumulate in the grapes while the acidity decreases. 

Got all that? Then let's continue and find the wine ... "