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White winevin blanc

White wine is made from grape juice pressed off the skins before fermentation, so it takes up little colour or tannin. The juice is settled clear and fermented cool to keep its fruity aromas, and the wine is often bottled young after a rest in tank or on its lees.

Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks12 monthsFamily: Red wine

Recipe

White wine, a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
Amounts from a sourceCommercial practice with no single recipe. The enzyme dose is per hectolitre of juice, from the wineries in one study.
White grapes (Vitis vinifera)Pressed whole or after crushing; only the juice is fermented[oiv-coldmac-white][vazquez2022]
Pectolytic enzyme2 g/hLAdded to help the juice settle clear in one study's Albariño wineries[vazquez2022]
YeastWild yeasts, or a selected Saccharomyces cerevisiae as in the wineries studied[tamang2016][vazquez2022]
Starterspontaneous (wild yeasts) or a selected Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Total time across the recorded steps: 12 months

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: The press squeezes juice from the white grapes; the skins stay out of the ferment

Step 1 of 6
Press the grapes before fermentation
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Saccharomyces
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Candida stellata
Torulaspora delbrueckii

A short cold soak of the crushed grapes before pressing is an admitted option (OIV Code sheet II.1.14). The OIV warns that too much sulphite, heat or time then pulls out phenolic compounds. Output: grape juice; skins and seeds are removed.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

White wine is made from grape juice pressed off the skins before fermentation, so it takes up little colour or tannin. The juice is settled clear and fermented cool to keep its fruity aromas, and the wine is often bottled young after a rest in tank or on its lees. Made in 6 steps over 12 months. The longest step, mature in tank or on fine lees, takes 12 months (Romanet R 2023). Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which the review names for wine fermentations in general and Non-Saccharomyces yeasts that the review names for wine in general do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step12 monthsReported[romanet2023][mercanti2026]Mature in tank or on fine lees
Temperature12 °CReported[vazquez2022]Settle the juice

What makes this one different

Unlike red wine, the skins are pressed off before fermentation, the juice is settled clear, and fermentation runs cooler, about 10–20 °C rather than 20–30 °C. Malolactic fermentation, carried out in most reds, is done only in some white wines.

Related ferments

Made the white wine way

Safety

The OIV caps total SO₂ at 200 mg/L in dry white wine with no more than 4 g/L reducing sugars, and in the EU any food with more than 10 mg/L must be labelled as containing sulphites. The OIV methanol limit for white wine is 250 mg/L.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Wikipedia's article on white wine says the oldest trace of wine found so far dates to about 7,500 years ago in present-day Iran, and that German vineyards covered 400,000 hectares in the 15th century, about four times the 21st-century area. It also says that in the 17th century the Dutch market drew dry white wine from the port of Nantes, in today's Muscadet area.

  1. [tamang2016] Tamang J.P., Watanabe K., Holzapfel W.H. 2016, Review - Diversity of microorganisms in global fermented foods and beverages, Frontiers in Microbiology 7:377, doi:10.3389/fmicb.2016.00377paper
  2. [vazquez2022] Vázquez-Pateiro I., Mirás-Avalos J.M., Falqué E. 2022, Influence of must clarification technique on the volatile composition of Albariño and Treixadura wines, Molecules 27(3):810, doi:10.3390/molecules27030810paper
  3. [garcia-rios2016] García-Ríos E., Ramos-Alonso L., Guillamón J.M. 2016, Correlation between low temperature adaptation and oxidative stress in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Frontiers in Microbiology 7:1199, doi:10.3389/fmicb.2016.01199paper
  4. [romanet2023] Romanet R., Gougeon R.D., Nikolantonaki M. 2023, White wine antioxidant metabolome - definition and dynamic behavior during aging on lees in oak barrels, Antioxidants 12(2):395, doi:10.3390/antiox12020395paper
  5. [mercanti2026] Mercanti N. et al. 2026, Wine bottle refinement - a review of emerging aging strategies, Foods 15(7):1269, doi:10.3390/foods15071269paper
  6. [awri-mlf] Australian Wine Research Institute 2020, Achieving successful malolactic fermentation (fact sheet, updated September 2020)other
  7. [oiv-coldmac-white] OIV, International Code of Oenological Practices, sheet II.1.14 Prefermentative cold maceration for making white wines (OENO 12/2005)spec
  8. [oiv-def] OIV, International Code of Oenological Practices, sheet I.3.1 Basic definition (wine)spec
  9. [oiv-limits] OIV, International Code of Oenological Practices, Annex - Maximum acceptable limits (issue 2015/01) - total SO2 and methanol (OENO 19/2004)spec
  10. [eu1169] Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on food information to consumers, Annex II item 12 (sulphur dioxide and sulphites above 10 mg/L)spec
  11. [wp-white-wine] Wikipedia, White wine (History section), read 2026-10-31web