My year of wine: It's time to polish your boots and switch over to red

With the nip in the air, have you noticed that you're opening bottles of red wine? Why, after months of delicious chilled white wines, does the cooler weather mean we drink red wines?

While slurping on a best-value Vondeling Petit Rouge 2012 (R49), I looked for the answer. It's so obvious.

Corlien Morris from the delightful Wine Concepts store at the Blubird Centre in Johannesburg says the temperature of our wines determines when we drink them. Drinking chilled white wines in winter would make no sense. And red wines make us feel heavy, something we don't mind too much on a cold day.

Anther reason is that white wine is a better accompaniment to our summer dishes.

On the contrary, reds are weightier than whites, and are best served with heavier, meatier meals. Think of the soups and stews you'll be cooking soon, and all that cabernet sauvignon and merlot you'll be drinking.

That all makes sense but raises questions about what makes white wine white and red wine red? And why are reds weightier than whites?

It's the colour of the grape skin that gives wine its colour. White wines are made by crushing grapes and then separating the skins from the pulp immediately, or almost immediately, before the fermentation process. For reds, the grapes are crushed and the juice mixed with the skins for a period of time. Some white wines are made from red grapes, but red wines are never made from white grapes.

Morris tells me that reds are weightier because of the tannins in the skins and from the barrels in which they are fermented.

Added to the additional weight and the lovely warming effect it has, there is another benefit of drinking red wine (in moderation, of course). It's good for us. All wine calms nerves and improves heart health. But red wine contains resveratrol, a compound found in red grape skin that is effective at fighting cancer.

All worth the headaches red wine can cause. I suppose it is just one glass a day we should be drinking, not three.