Wine is one of the liquors with the highest growth in consumption, especially since 2017, the year in which Ecuador eliminated tariff surcharges for European wines, punished until then against South American wines. Since 2018, Europeans have competed as equals, with Spanish wine being the fastest growing. It is a product that is fashionable.
The majority of world wine production is concentrated in ten countries, in the following order: Italy, France, Spain, United States, Argentina, Australia, South Africa, Chile, Germany and China.
The first three, almost tied, are responsible for 63% of world production, each with twice the volume of the United States, and more than four times that of the next group, in which they are also almost tied. Australia, South Africa, Argentina and Chile.
One of the fundamental factors to highlight in the production of wine is its ageing. This is the process that the wine has undergone in oak barrels after the first alcoholic fermentation has occurred, usually in stainless steel tanks.
The reader will find it easier to associate it with whiskey, a liquor with which the Ecuadorian is more familiar. In this product, the law that protects Scotch whiskey requires that it spend a minimum of three years in an oak barrel in order to be called scotch whiskey. Now imagine the vast difference between a three-year-old whiskey and an 8-, 12-, or 21-year-old.
It is the same with wine. The aging, created by the Celts and perfected by the French, is a process by which the passage through the wood of the barrel improves the characteristics of a wine. In fact, not all wines are suitable for ageing, they must have a series of quality characteristics, such as a sufficient amount of tannins, acidity, body, alcoholic strength, etc., so that the wood favors their evolution. The wood transmits to the wine a series of aromatic and taste substances that chemically modify its aroma and flavour.
That said, certain countries have developed legislation that protects the consumer. The South American producing countries do not have any legislation that informs whether or not a wine has gone through an aging process. Chilean legislation, for example, qualifies the alcoholic strength of the wine as a reserve or grand reserve, and not its process. Neither does Argentina. European legislation is the one that most protects the consumer and informs about the wine process. The Spanish, for example, as well as the Italian and French, require that their appellations of origin grow only certain strains, that they have processes that have been regulated and that their production has established geographical limits.
Thus, when you choose, for example, a Spanish Reserva wine, you can be sure that it has undergone an aging process of no less than two years, one in the barrel and the other in the bottle. It is that in the world of wine there are some wines, and there are other wines. (OR)
Source: Eluniverso
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
