Wine color practice of saignée (exposing wine to red grape skins for only a short period of time in order to give it a lighter feel closer to that of white wine) or by blending a white wine with a red wine. The presence of a complex mixture of anthocyanins and procyanidins can increase the stability of color in wine. As it ages, the wine undergoes chemical autoxidation reactions involving acetaldehyde of its pigments molecules. The newly formed molecules are more stable to the effect of pH or sulfite bleaching. The new compounds include pyranoanthocyanins like vitisins (A and B), pinotins and
French wine traditionally been the largest consumer of its own wines. However, wine consumption has been dropping in France for 40 years. During the decade of the 1990s, per capita consumption dropped by nearly 20 percent. Therefore, French wine producers must rely increasingly on foreign markets. However, consumption has also been dropping in other potential markets such as Italy, Spain and Portugal. The result has been a continuing wine glut, often called the wine lake. This has led to the distillation of wine into industrial alcohol as well as a government program to pay farmers to pull up their grape vines through