What brings stature and significance to red wine? What commands the next sip, marks a memory, or turns a conversational lubricant into a topic in its own right?
Red and white wines, remember, are different objects. White wine is a ferment of pressed juice alone. Not so red wine: its juice undergoes a conversational exchange with grape skins, pips, and sometimes even stems, during and after fermentation. That’s the source of its dark colours – and at best, much else.