What makes red wine taste fizzy

Wine Wizard replies: First of all, you need to make sure that the fermentation is finished. You do this by checking your sugars with a hyrdrometer. An even better way for home winemakers to check residual sugar levels is to buy the Clinitest tablets that diabetics use to determine sugar in their urine. To do the test, simply drop a tablet into a sample of wine.

The wine will change color, and you compare the color against the chart provided in the kit reading for wine, not urine! You might possibly be experiencing the joys of what I can only assume to be re-fermentation or secondary fermentation.

Adding glucose to the carboy after the wine was filtered could have contributed to this by giving the yeast a new energy source. Some winemakers actively encourage this re-fermentation, namely producers of sparkling wines. In this cold-bottling case, the CO2 that was supposed to be released into the air during fermentation may not have entirely escaped before bottling.

I wouldn't necessarily call such wines flawed; it's just a quirk of traditional winemaking, especially in regions with cool autumn climates, such as Germany. Many "still" wines, red or white, that display subtle effervescence can be all the better for it, with a more lively mouth-feel. But it's a matter of individual taste. Long-term cellaring will, indeed, tend to diminish the effervescence, at least in bottles sealed with cork.

Cork is slightly porous and will eventually permit dissolved CO2 to escape over months or years. The rate of escape depends on the temperature of your cellar — the warmer the cellar, the faster the rate. However, some wines can display a vague effervescence even five or 10 years after bottling. When it comes to wine, the older the better. Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know.

Loading Something is loading. Email address. Food Preparation. This is a fairly recent development in wine making, since red wines are traditionally smooth and full bodied. What separates these sparkling reds from accidentally bubbly reds or sparkling whites is deliberate intent.

Wine making is a complicated process that relies on balancing numerous factors such as body, taste and alcohol content. Sparkling reds are designed to balance these factors between the body of sparkling wine and the flavor of red wine. Sparkling reds maintain the complexity and full flavor of red wine, even ranging from dry to sweet depending on your personal preference, while also maintaining the light, bubbly body of sparkling wine.

This is only achieved by deliberately creating the wine to be both sparkling and red, which helps balance its qualities. Since these wines are deliberately created to be both red and sparkling, they are not just bubbly versions of existing labels like Merlot or Pinot Noir. If you are interested in sparkling red wines consider researching a few labels and finding one that best matches your individual tastes.

Red wines, whether bubbly or sparkling, can be jarring considering how smooth and full bodied such drinks generally are.

Red wines become carbonated when they ferment outside of the standard fermentation process, creating carbon dioxide bubbles in the wine. They can also become carbonated if fermented and stored in a cold area where carbon dioxide will disperse more slowly.

Bubbly red wines can be made accidentally through improper fermentation or deliberately as sparkling red wines. While neither is dangerous to your health only sparkling red wine is deliberately crafted and designed to balance a sparkling body with the flavor of red wine.