Full-bodied dry red
Long maceration, high extract and real tannin: Cabernet, Syrah, Nebbiolo, Petite Sirah. Built to be undrinkable at two years and excellent at eight.
The numbers
Each bar drawn against all 30 styles
Alcohol
13.5-15.5%
13.5% - 15.5%
Titratable acidity
5-6.5 g/L
5 - 6.5
pH
3.5-3.9
3.5 - 3.9
Residual sugar
0-4 g/L
0 - 4
Serve at
16-18 C
Worth opening after
2 years
and it keeps improving to roughly 15 years
Sulphite at pH 3.70
39 mg/L
free SO2, for 0.5 mg/L molecular
What goes wrong
pH drift. At 3.8 and above, sulphite barely works, Brettanomyces thrives, and the colour goes brick early. Acidify the must, not the finished wine.
Usually made from
No legal definition sets these figures. They are typical published analyses of commercial examples, compiled as a planning aid.
Make it
2 recipes on this site made to this style
Every figure below is computed from the ingredients and checked against the ranges above before the page is built.