THE THREE R'S--RED WINE, ROSES and RAIN

I am fascinated by the colour of red wine. It's an enormously complex and mysterious subject. The compounds responsible are called anthocyanins and they also give many other fruits, not to mention roses, their colour. Anthocyanins in wine are quite unstable, prone to change hue according to wine pH and associated factors but when you see the vivid colour of a young red wine, you never forget it. The only colours I know that are more striking are found in roses.
The photo above was taken in the "Weary" Dunlop Memorial gardens in Benalla, Victoria just 48 hours after Remembrance Day. On an overcast spring day, the gardens were alive with colour and while the rose purists may say that the blooms were slightly past their best, they astonished me with their vibrancy and depth.
We pay great attention to colour in our red wine-making. While big colours are not necessarily what we are looking for, we do want stability and brightness. How we set about achieving that is an essay in itself. Perhaps a subject for a blog at vintage time.....