Urgent wine advice needed.

[LynetteScavo]

I've jsut opened a bottle of read and it seems a bit, well, fizzy. It seems to taste OK, but the fizzyness seems a bit wrong.

Is it off? Will it kill me?

Secondary fermentation, probably. If it tastes OK then will not likely kill you, but won't taste as it should.

Should I march it back to Sainsburys for an exchange?

won't kill you, but you'll probably feel dreadful in the morning

such a brilliant thread title

Some grape varieties do make it seem as though the wine is fizzy.

Champagne is made from a red grape.

What is the bottle you have?

It's a Merlot, from SE Australia -Heritage Road, 2008 reserve.

Champagne is made from red grapes? Yeah right! I think your pants are on fire!

I found this; "Generally, red wines are made from black grapes, and white wine from white grapes. But, of course, it is not the colour of the grapes that gives the wine its colour. Red wines are darker because the skins are kept in with the wine as if ferments.

Theoretically, white wine can be made from dark grapes and in the case of sparkling wines, it often is. Champagne is traditionally made from a mixture of three grape varieties ? chardonnay, which is a white grape, and pinot noir and pinot meunier, which are both dark grapes. The presence of these is what led scientists to suspect that champagne might share some of the health-giving properties of red wine."

Wow...I never knew that!

See below:

The grapes of Champagne are primarily black. About two-thirds of the vineyards grow black grapes. However, although the skins are black, the juice is white. The chief grape is Pinot Noir, which make all the finest red Burgundies. It has difficulty ripening in Burgundy, any further north in Champagne it almost never attains any great depth and strength of colour or alcohol. Which is fair because with the exception of pink Champagne, or the rare, non sparkling Coteaux Champenois, the idea is to produce a white sparkling wine. Very careful pressing of the grapes in enormous square vertical presses is the best way to draw of the juice as pale as possible. Even so, the black grape juice does have a fairly big feel to it, and a Champagne relying largely on black grapes is certain to be heavier and take longer to mature.

You will probably find that although it is predominantly a Merlot there is another grape in there that is giving it the zingy taste.

My parents are "in the trade" so I have picked up the odd bit of info over the years.

Mostly how to drink it

Isn't it the tanins in the grape which have the health benefits?

White wine grapes are pressed, red wine grapes are crushed..... So any old grapes can do the job!

Used to work for the thresher group so did my elementary in wines and spirits, studied for the next exam up too but never took it. I used to really enjoy working with wine

Australian Merlot is not meant to be fizzy. Do not drink it unless you want to be really sick and lose the enamel from your teeth

Oh.