Wine Fundamentals Part 1: Viticulture

(Parade) - As you sit there sipping your favorite wine, have you ever wondered how a grape gets from the vine into your glass?

While it’s an extremely intricate process, in order to appreciate the finished product, it’s important to understand what’s involved from start to finish. So today we begin a five-part series in which we’ll cover the fundamentals of growing grapes and making wine. While some parts may seem less important to you than others, just remember that understanding wine is like putting together a puzzle—you can’t complete the puzzle if there are pieces of it missing!

So let’s get started with part 1: Viticulture.

You’re probably thinking “Viticulture? What the heck is that?” Simply put, it’s the art and science of growing grapes. A viticulturist (or grower) is responsible for how grapevines are grown and the overall happenings in the vineyard.

Without getting too scientific, this basically means that viticulturists work year-round to make calculated decisions regarding things like pest control, irrigation, and pruning, which ultimately affect the quality level and flavor profile of the resulting wine. While grape variety determines the general flavor of a wine, how the grapes are grown has the greatest impact on its quality.

These decisions are shaped by the French concept of terroir (pronounced ter-wahr), meaning everything that influences the development of a vine. Terroir can be as broad as the overall climate of a region or as specific as the type of soil surrounding a single vine. It’s what many believe gives wine a sense of place, and it’s a big reason why the exact same grape grown in different parts of the world can result in wines that are drastically different from each other in color, structure and flavor. It’s crucial that viticulturists have an intimate understanding of terroir in order to decide what grape varieties to plant, how to care for them and every decision in between.

These decisions are shaped by the French concept of terroir (pronounced ter-wahr), meaning everything that influences the development of a vine. Terroir can be as broad as the overall climate of a region or as specific as the type of soil surrounding a single vine. It’s what many believe gives wine a sense of place, and it’s a big reason why the exact same grape grown in different parts of the world can result in wines that are drastically different from each other in color, structure and flavor. It’s crucial that viticulturists have an intimate understanding of terroir in order to decide what grape varieties to plant, how to care for them and every decision in between.