🍷 Maceration

Maceration means steeping grape juice together with the skins. The skins give the juice colour, tannins and aromatic compounds. Without maceration, red wine would be almost colourless.

For red wines, maceration takes place during fermentation: the juice ferments with skins and seeds. The longer it steeps, the darker and more tannic the wine. Tannins give a drying taste, and anthocyanins give the red colour. The winemaker decides how long to keep the wine on the skins, and so steers the style.

There is also cold maceration: the juice is steeped at low temperature before fermentation to take more aroma but less tannin. Skin contact is also used for white wine, which gives orange wines. Maceration is one of the key steps of winemaking, and much of the final taste depends on it. The winemaker chooses its length and temperature for each variety and each harvest.