🫧Fermentation

Argentina Through Wine · Step 3 of 6 · 2 min read

Yeast eats sugar, makes alcohol. That single chemical reaction is the entire reason wine exists. Yeast consumes the sugar in grape juice and exhales alcohol and CO₂.

The winemaker's choices here decide everything: wild yeast or cultivated, cool or warm, stainless steel, concrete or oak. For reds, a daily ritual of “punching down” the floating cap of skins keeps the color and flavor extracting.

When the yeast eats all the sugar, fermentation stops on its own — that's a dry wine. Sweet wines stop early, leaving sugar behind.