The Best Dry Red Wine, According to a Sonoma County Winemaker
Surprise, Surprise…
The best dry red wine is one you discover yourself and enjoy.
If you’re looking for a one-word answer to the question, “What is the best dry red wine?” you’ve come to the wrong blog post.
While “best” is certainly objective, “dry” is too. As the winemaker and owner of Bruliam Wines, I am here to tell you (without bias) that my pinot noir is obviously the best dry red wine in the universe. But as a winemaker, I’ll tell you rather pointedly that your definition and my definition of dry are worlds apart.
As a winemaker, the best dry red wine is one that is microbially stable, consistent bottle to bottle, and without spoilage.
According to my definition, the best dry red wine contains less than 2 g/L residual sugar measured as glucose + fructose. Many wines (including mine) contain less than 2 g/L RS (residual sugar). But this is the threshold we winemakers use for stability when defining wine as “dry.”
Clearly, my definition is not your definition of “dry.” If you’re looking to purchase the best dry red wine, then you’re seeking out a wine that tastes delicious. Some delicious wines showcase ripe fruit as the most prominent flavor. But a wine that smells fruity and tastes fruit forward is not necessarily sweet, if the residual sugar measures less than 2 g/L. Furthermore, as with “sweet,” many components contribute to the perception of “dry.”
Let’s Talk Tannins
The most wine component most closely aligned with “dry” is tannin.
Tannins derive from grape skins and seeds, and varietals with a higher skin tannin content may be more drying in your mouth. Wines that make your mouth dry, like sandpaper, are likely high in tannins.
So, if you’re looking for the best dry red wine, please consider your own definition of dry and whether you even like tannic wines at all.
In general, the wines with the most tannins come from grapes with thicker skins (like cabernet sauvignon, for example). If we’re talking about the best dry red wine, let’s explore tannins in greater detail. As you can see from their chemical structure above, tannins are serious business.
Tannins are derived from phenolic compounds, the chemical building blocks of wine. Phenolics, sometimes referred to as polyphenols, are chemical compounds produced by plants, including grapevines. The phenolics in the best dry red wines (the ones that we care about) are soluble chemical compounds located predominantly in grape skins and seeds.
Phenolics include things like tannins, which make your mouth feel dry and puckery and anthocyanins, which give dry red wine its characteristic hue. As you know, grape juice from both red and white grapes is clear. Red wines are hued because they are fermented in a tank with the grape skins; white wines are not.
This is important for the vinification of the best dry red wines because throughout fermentation, unique grape skin and seed components are extracted into red wine that are absent from whites. These diverse compounds are united in that their chemical silhouette includes a hexagon-shaped ring (see above).
Beyond that, the compounds look and function differently, modifying different aspects of a wine’s personality, taste and mouthfeel. Wines with a higher percentage of these compounds may taste astringent and be described as “dry.”
The Six Classes of Soluble Phenols
There are 6 different classes of soluble phenols. Here we will consider one called flavan-3-ols, which live in grape seeds and can taste bitter. When the flavan-3-ols congregate into chains called polymers, they make tannins.
Tannins, of course, are responsible for “astringency,” that drying, sandpaper-y quality in your mouth. This sensation may be most pronounced in young wines. This is because over time, as wines age, the tannin chains grow even longer, softening that distinct, mouth-puckering quality.
Tannins also polymerize with oxygen exposure, via oxidation reactions. In a way, tannins act like a sponge, absorbing the harmful effects of oxygen without wrecking the juice. Since red wines contain more phenolics than whites, they can absorb, or “consume” more oxygen without detrimental effect.
In fact, sometimes oxygen exposure improves red wines, by mimicking and hastening the effects of aging thereby mellowing any acerbic, tannic harshness. Sometimes the best dry red wine is one with some bottle age so that the monster tannin content has had time to mellow out into smoothness.
Of course, this depends on the wine, the varietal, the location of the vineyard, and innumerable other factors. The right way to find the best dry red wine is to explore.
Buy wines, uncork and taste them, and see what you think. I make pinot noir and zinfandel, both think skinned varietals. Pinots are round, soft, and lower in tannin content. Pinot noir is the best dry red wine for consumers looking for an elegant, round wine without any pointy elbows or astringency.
So…is the best dry red wine healthy?
Well, that depends…
Indeed, many of the cardio-protective effects of red wine are attributed to phenolics, specifically a chemical class called “stilbenes.” The most famous player is resveratrol, touted to reduce heart disease, prevent dementia and diabetes, protect against colds and influenza, increase bone density, and even slow aging.
As you can imagine, resveratrol is the focus of frenzied scientific and drug research. But before you guzzle away your inhibitions in the name of science and good health, remember “a 150 pound man would have to drink 1,500 bottles of pinot noir a day to get the same dose of resveratrol that [one researcher] gave his mice.” (Wine Spectator, May 31, 2009).
I’m not sure we winemakers can endorse a specific dry red wine as being the healthiest, since the fraction of “healthy” resveratrol is marginal. But we can draw the conclusions as before: the best dry red wine is the one you enjoy drinking (in moderation).
Want to try a dry red wine for yourself?
Lucky for you: at Bruliam Wines, we’d love to host you for an in-person wine tasting here in Sonoma County, or a virtual tasting in the comfort of your own home.