Albert Ponnelle - Mercurey - Les Grandes Vignes | French Red Wine

VINIFICATION:
Once they are ripe, grapes contain sugars. These are transformed by naturally occurring yeasts (present in the vines and therefore in the grapes, giving the wine its special character) into alcohol and glycerol, giving off carbon gases. It needs about 17g of sugar per litre to produce 1 degree of alcohol.

For red wines, the grapes are partly stripped from their bunches (the berries taken off the stalks). They are left to rest on their skins in a vat (preferably wood) for a week or more according to the character of the year. This phase allows extraction of the tannins and the color contained in the skins. When the vats have reached a temperature of around 18*C, the yeasts begin to function and the alcoholic fermentation begins. This goes on for between 8 and 15 days, during which we break the crust once or twice a day (thus putting the solids back into contact with the liquids) until all the sugars have been converted into alcohol.