Begin with the bottle in front of you
Wine begins with grape juice. During fermentation, yeast turns sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Winemakers make choices about grape skins, fermentation, aging and blending. Those choices help explain why two bottles made from the same grape can taste different.
A wine's color is a starting clue. Reds generally ferment with their skins. White wines usually have the juice separated from the skins early. Rosé gets a lighter color through its production choices. Orange wine is made from white grapes with skin contact. Color alone cannot tell you how sweet the finished wine will be.
Separate style from sweetness
Still wines have no obvious fizz. Sparkling wines retain dissolved carbon dioxide that forms bubbles when poured. Fortified wines have spirit added during production. These groups contain different sweetness levels. A sparkling wine can be very dry, and a still white can be sweet.
On a label, look for the grape or wine name, place of origin and alcohol percentage. Some labels lead with a region instead of a grape. A year usually identifies the harvest, rather than the date the wine was bottled. A wine without a vintage year may blend harvests.
Turn a label into a useful question
Imagine a label that reads Riesling, Mosel, 2024. You know the grape, a German region and the harvest year. You still need information about sweetness. Ask the seller for a dry or sweeter style, or check the producer's description.
Start a small list of the words you meet. Write the term, what you know and what you still want to find out. It is more useful than trying to memorize every region at once.
Put it into practice
Check your understanding
Use a bottle, a shop listing or the fictional Riesling label above. Record its name, place and one question that the label does not answer.
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Explore wine typesLook up a wine termSources behind the lesson
WSET: wine types and stylesThe explanations and exercises are original Corkly material. Examples marked fictional describe invented tastings.