Mayor by night, wine expert by day: Get tips from Littleton’s Kyle Schlachter to up your wine game (Littleton Independent)
Nina Joss
January 3, 2025
The world of wine can be intimidating. From guessing what to serve with a filet mignon to struggling through an incomprehensible wine list at a fancy restaurant, it can seem like there is a large barrier to entry.
But if you want to impress your friends at dinner parties this year, fear not — Littleton Mayor Kyle Schlachter has answers to help you.
Although many know him only as the man in the center of the dais, Schlachter is also a wine professional. In his day job as the executive director for the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board, Schlachter works to promote and develop the state’s wine industry, largely through marketing and research.
To help those who want to up their wine game this year, Schlachter broke it down to the basics.
Why are wines different colors?
When you look at a bottle of wine from the U.S., it often lists one or several words — like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir or Chardonnay, Schlachter said. These words, which most wine drinkers are familiar with, are the names of different kinds of grapes.
“They all have slightly different characteristics with the size of the grapes, the sizes of the bunches — are they real big bunches or small bunches? The skin — do they have thick skin or light skin?” Schlachter said. “It’s those characteristics that then get passed on into the wine.”
Schlachter said you can think of these different kinds of grapes — called cultivars — like dog breeds. The wine grapes are part of the species Vitis vinifera, just like how domestic dogs are Canis lupus familiaris. Within the species, there are different dog breeds — like mastiffs and golden retrievers — just as there are different grape cultivars, like Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc.
Wine grapes are different from the grapes people eat as a snack, Schlachter said. Although many people think red wine comes from red grapes and white wine comes from green grapes, this is not entirely accurate. Almost all wine grapes have “yellowish, clearish flesh and juice” if you peel the skins off, Schlachter said.
Red wine is made when skins and seeds of red grapes are crushed and fermented with the juice, whereas white wine does not include the skin and seeds.
“That pigment leaks out when you crush them all together and mix them up,” Schlachter said. “That’s where it gets the color. That’s why you can make white wine from red grapes if you don’t let the skin get in contact with the juice that you crush.”
For example, Schlachter said, three main grape varieties are used to make Champagne, and two of them are red grapes. The skins and seeds are not included in the process, so the well-known sparkling wine is white or light yellow in color.
Rosé wines can be made a few different ways, Schlachter said. One of the more traditional ways is to use red grapes and include the skins just a little bit, so the wine picks up a small amount of color.