Wine Arcana

Concept

Teinturier

A teinturier is a grape variety with red pigment in its flesh as well as its skin. The French word means “dyer.” Most dark-skinned wine grapes have pale flesh and obtain their wine colour chiefly through skin contact; teinturier grapes can release coloured juice as soon as their flesh is broken. Alicante Bouschet and Saperavi are familiar examples.

The term describes a property of the berry, not a single cultivar or a wine style. It helps explain where colour comes from, while leaving open questions about the wine's flavour, weight, and texture.

Pigment in two tissues

The pigments are anthocyanins, compounds responsible for much of the red and purple colour in grapes. In teinturier varieties they accumulate in the pulp as well as the skin. The two tissues can contain different mixtures of these compounds. A comparative study of fifteen teinturier varieties found distinct pigment profiles in skin and juice, with the skin generally containing a more complex mixture.1. László Kőrösi et al., “Comparative Study on Grape Berry Anthocyanins of Various Teinturier Varieties,” 2022.

This difference has a practical consequence. Separating juice promptly from the skins limits one source of pigment, but leaves the colour already supplied by the flesh. For pale rosé, grape choice therefore matters alongside pressing technique and the length of skin contact.

Colour and cellar decisions

Teinturier grapes give a winemaker an additional source of colour, but maceration still extracts compounds from skins and seeds. Time, temperature, alcohol, and the handling of the floating cap affect how much reaches the wine. Pigment and tannin follow different courses during fermentation: colour extracts early, while increasing alcohol makes seed tannins more readily extractable.

A strongly coloured juice consequently does not establish how much tannic grip the finished wine will have. Winemakers can adjust extraction to the texture they want, rather than using colour alone as the endpoint. Nor is the colour at pressing permanent. Pigments react with other compounds or attach to solids as fermentation proceeds, changing what remains in the liquid.

Blends and varietal wines

Alicante Bouschet illustrates the historical interest in breeding grapes for colour. Plantgrape records its creation by Louis and Henri Bouschet in 1855 through a cross of Grenache and Petit Bouschet, and identifies colour contribution as a principal use.2. Plantgrape, “Alicante Henri Bouschet N,” origin and technological potential sections, accessed 19 September 2026. A blending partner can bring pigment to a pale wine, but it also contributes its own flavour, acidity, and texture. The appropriate proportion depends on the whole blend.

Saperavi places the same berry characteristic in a different regional tradition. It is Georgia's leading red grape, especially associated with Kakheti, and makes wines with marked acidity as well as deep colour. Its identity encompasses much more than a colouring role. Both grapes are useful examples of why teinturier should be read as information about the fruit, rather than a prediction of one uniform wine character.

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