"Beautiful vermilion color, a touch of violet. Lovely radiance. This is a Bordeaux... a great Bordeaux!" This comes from a scene in L'Aile ou la Cuisse ("The Wing or the Thigh," 1976), directed by Gérard Oury. Deprived of taste and scent by the infamous Tricatel (played by Julien Guiomar), the food critic Duchemin (Louis de Funès) makes up for it: Simply by looking at the wine's color, he guesses its origin. "This is a Saint-Julien. Château Léoville Las Cases 1953!"

Certainly, the comedy takes things to the extreme, but the colors of wine remain a fascinating source of clues. They can tell us about the grape varieties used, the winemaking method, the vintage, the soil, the climate and so much more.

"I can assess the quality of a wine just by looking at it," admitted Jean-Claude Mas, an oenologist and wine merchant from Languedoc. When he is working on a blend, the color immediately tells him whether it is successful or not: If it is dull, he has to start again; if it is vibrant with nuances, the blend is a success.

"You can tell if a wine is complex or not just by looking at it. The color reveals its elegance, its youth, but also its yield and the maturity of its fruit," he continued. "If you harvest later, the fruit becomes more concentrated and you get greater chromatic density. Conversely, the higher the yield, the more diluted and lighter the final color will be." Furthermore, the more nuanced, golden or reflective a white wine is, the more it conveys its terroir and identity.

Colorless pulp

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