Wine Tip of the Week #7

Tasting wine in a restaurant. It’s amazing how many people are confused about what to do when a waiter offers a taste of your wine prior to pouring. Do I sniff the cork? Do I touch the bottle? Swirl? Sniff? Send it back? Do the hokey pokey and turn myself around? So, let’s take a step back here.

The purpose of tasting your wine prior to pouring is to check quality and temperature. You want to taste the wine to be sure it is free from cork taint and oxidation. A corked bottle of wine has been infected by a pesky mold called Trichloroanisole (TCA) and an oxidised bottle of wine will have been exposed to excess oxygen, rendering it undrinkable. So how do you know?

Please do not smell the cork. Smell the wine. Taste the wine as you normally would- swirl- sniff-sip and look for off-aromas like wet newspaper, mustiness, or even a complete lack of smell. These are all signs of a bottle that is suffering from one of the aforementioned problems. If you feel that you’ve got a sick bottle, send it back without hesitation. You should never pay for a damaged bottle of wine.

Then decide if your wine is at the appropriate temperature. Hopefully it has been stored at the proper temperature at the restaurant but if not, have them chill it down if need be. If everything tastes right, give the waiter the OK sign, and he will pour around the table.

Wine Tip of the Week #6

In the world of wine, oxygen is both your friend and your enemy. Wines are decanted or aerated so that friendly oxygen can slip into your wine in small doses. The oxygen, in effect, allows your wine to breathe and release newly developed aromas and flavors.

Oxygen is your enemy when you let an open bottle of wine sit on the counter and heavy doses of oxygen attack the wine, stripping it of its essences. Everything in moderation.

Wine Tip of the Week #5

Temperature is everything. If your wine is too hot or cold, the flavors may be completely masked. People often serve their red wines too hot and their white wines too cold. The key is remembering the difference between storage temperature and serving temperature. Both red and white wines should be stored at the same temperature which is room temperature or 55 degrees F. However, when the wines are served you’ll want your white wines to be a little colder than room temperature and your reds to be a little warmer.

If you store your wines in a temperature stable wine refrigerator (at 55), a good way to achieve optimal serving temperature is to pop your white wine into the fridge about a half hour before serving and remove your red wine from the wine refrigerator about a half hour before serving.

If you’ve kept your white wines in a regular refrigerator (not ideal, but OK if you’re not storing for a long period of time), you’ll want to remove them from the fridge for about a half an hour before you serve them. A normal refrigerator temperature is generally too cold for serving white wine. Any questions?

Wine Tip of the Week #4

Cooking with wine. People often wonder which wine to choose when a recipe calls for just “white wine” or “red wine.” It seems logical that one would want to use their cheapest wines to cook with- what a waste, right? Not so. Of course you don’t want to use a first growth Bordeaux to make a reduction, but it is never a good idea to use a cheap wine when you cook either. If you don’t want to drink it, why would you want your food to be slowly simmered in it? This will simply make your dish taste as cheap as the wine you cooked it in. Go with a decent, mid range wine. Typically dryer, less aromatic wines are better for cooking. Chardonnay is always a safe bet for white wine because it’s the least aromatic grape and is typically dry. If your recipe calls for red wine, Cabernet is a safe bet, depending on the dish. When your meal is ready, serve it with a similar wine to what you used in the dish otherwise you risk a clash of flavors. Keep it simple.

Wine Tip of the Week #3

It’s all about balance. The simplest way to judge the quality of a wine is to determine whether the wine is well balanced. A wine of high quality will have flavor components that are well integrated and in sync with one another. Attributes such as alcohol, acidity and tannin should work together well. If something seems out of wack, it may be an indication of a poorer quality of wine. For example, if you sense a hotness in your throat after sipping the wine, the alcohol may be out of balance. If your mouth is watering profusely, the acidity may be too high. Balance is the most crucial element of wine tasting. And of course if YOU don’t like it, none of this matters at all!

Wine Tip of the Week #2

Learn to detect fruit aromas. Wine will usually have some kind of fruit aroma. Experiment with different types of wine and learn to recognize what those aromas are. Swirl your glass with gusto and put your nose deep inside of it. For red wine, the primary aromatics are categorized into black fruits or red fruits. Black fruits consist of blackberries, plums, blueberries etc. while red fruits consist of strawberries, raspberries, cherries etc. The first question to ask yourself is whether the aromas are black or red fruits and from there you can pinpoint the specific fruit. White wine fruit aromas can be anything from the simpler citrus and apple to more exotic pineapple, banana, and lychee fruit. If you are having a difficult time pinpointing an aroma, you may have a non aromatic wine such as a Chardonnay. When in doubt, apples, pears or citrus are a safe bet ;)

Wine Tip of the Week

Replacing my lyrically retarded series, I am beginning a new series called “wine tip of the week.” It’s pretty simple: every week I give you a quick tip about wine in a bite sized, easily digestible portion. We will start with basics and get more involved as it progresses. You may also feel free to email me at Erika@Strumerika.com if you have any questions or suggestions for topics, I will address them here. Without further ado:

Wine Tip of the Week #1:

Preserve your wine. If you have opened a bottle and do not intend to finish it you certainly don’t have to throw it out or feel compelled to drink it all. However, the extra oxygen left in the open bottle will be an enemy to your wine and quickly ruin it after a few days. Purchase a preservation product which is a simple pump that removes excess oxygen from the bottle. There are many options in all sorts of price ranges. You may leave the wine out or even put it in the refrigerator (white or red) to further stunt the development in the bottle.

The 5 S’s of Wine Tasting

In celebration of tomorrow’s commencement of my two year foray into WSET Diploma certification, I thought I would go through a very brief overview of the basics of wine tasting. When I used to give tours at Robert Mondavi, I would go through the 5 S’s of wine tasting and it was a great learning tool for the visitors. In any case, here they are and I hope it is helpful to you!

The 5 S’s are See, Sniff, Swirl, Sniff and Sip

See- All wine tasting begins by holding the glass up to a good light and then, ideally, viewing the glass against a white surface. Your wine color should be clear and not opaque unless you have a very well-aged wine with a ton of sediment (this is rare). Take a moment to note the color. If it is a white wine is it: Yellow? Gold? Straw colored? Water white? If it is a red wine would you call it: Ruby? Purple? Garnet? Wines can range dramatically in color depending on the type of grape used to make the wine and how long the wine sat with the skins or macerated. As wines age they get deeper in color so a good look at the color of the wine can tell you a bit about how old it is. Also, notice the streams of water on the sides of your glass. These are called “legs.” Legs are a point of contention as some affirm that the more legs a wine has, the better the wine. Others claim that legs denote sugar or alcohol content. There are also those who would say that legs do not mean anything!

Sniff- The next step is to give your wine a nice big sniff. Don’t be shy. Stick your nose way into the bowl of the glass and try to decipher the smells. Remember that wine tasting can be very subjective and there are no right or wrong answers. Do you smell fruit? If so, what kind of fruit is it? Is it a black fruit? A tropical fruit? Does your wine smell like oak? Or is it difficult to smell anything at all? This is certainly possible if you have yet to swirl your wine.

Swirl- After your initial sniff, hold your wine at the base and lightly swirl the wine in your glass. Get a nice momentum going with your wrist. The swirling process sends oxygen through the wine, expands the surface area and allows the aromas to open up. This is sometimes called “swirling the esters”

Sniff- Now, smell your wine again. Do you notice a change? There should be a remarkable difference between your pre-swirl and post-swirl sniff. If not, work your wine a bit more and give it some time to open. Try your best to pinpoint the aromas and write them down if you’d like.

Sip- Finally, take a nice big sip of your wine. Let the wine spread out across your mouth, curl your tongue, and breathe in air through your tongue. This will send air through the wine once again while in your mouth and allow it to open even further. What do you taste? Sweetness? Dryness? Spice? Fruitiness? The sky is the limit! Did the taste surprise you? Was it similar on the palate to the nose? After you swallow, take a minute to notice the “finish”and the “length” of the wine. The “finish” is the after taste and the “length” is the period of time that it lingers. A really good wine will have a pleasing finish and a very long length. A poor wine falls flat very quickly.
Now you are ready to taste with the experts!

Top 10 Biggest Wine Misconceptions

I planned on waiting to start a wine category until I found out the results of my wine-al and had the credibility of WSET Advanced Certification. However, since they seem to be using ancient abacuses to calculate my score, I think I’ll have to begin posting without my certification. You’ll have to take my word for it that I know a thing or two about wine. Kicking off this category, I bring you the top 10 biggest wine misconceptions out there. Wine can be confusing and somewhere along the lines, people developed some pretty odd beliefs about it. I’m here to dispel all of that. Read on:

10. Winemakers add in flavors like cherry, strawberry and chocolate to their wine to give them flavor.

No no no! Any flavors or aromas in a wine come about from either the grape and the wine itself or the barrel that the wine was matured in. Wine is a fun little animal which can take on many different smells and tastes over time. However, these occur naturally and are never added to the wine.

9. Zinfandel is so gauche! Nobody drinks that if they know anything about wine.

There is a major difference between red Zinfandel and white Zinfandel. White Zinfandel is a blush wine which is made in large quantities and sold in jugs, boxes or cheap bottles. You wouldn’t spit it out in disgust but it’s a simple wine made for easy drinking. A favorite at frat parties across the nation.

Though red and white Zinfandel are made from the same grape, when Zinfandel is made into a red wine it is entirely different. Red Zinfandel is full-bodied, lush, and spicy. Red Zinfandel is one of my personal favorites. If you want to experience some serious Zins I highly recommend Seghesio, Ravenswood and Sin Zin. Added bonus: if you are particularly patriotic, Zinfandel is often called The American Varietal.

8. Red wine should always be stored at room temperature while white wine is stored at a colder temperature.

No way, jose! Red and white wines should actually be stored at the same temperature which is 55 degrees. It is when you serve the wine that you chill your whites and serve your reds slightly below room temperature. You never want your reds to be too hot nor your whites to be too cold as this will mask the flavors and aromas of the wine.

7. Obviously red wine is made from red grapes and white wine is made from white grapes!

Not true at all. When I used to give wine tours at Robert Mondavi, I loved stumping people with this one. This is a very common wine misconception. The color of a wine is imparted from contact with the skins during the fermentation and aging process. Thus, if you remove the skins before this process, you will always have a white wine! Many white wines are actually made from red grapes. Champagne is a perfect example. In the traditional method, champagne is made from three grapes: Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay. The first two grapes are black grapes. When champagne is made, there is never a period of skin contact (maceration), yielding a completely white wine.

Of the same token, blush or rose wines are NOT made from mixing together red and white grapes. To make rose wine, you simply have a shorter maceration period which gives less time for the skin to impart its pigment onto the wine. A perfect example is white Zinfandel, as mentioned above.

6. I always get headaches when I drink wine. I must be allergic to sulfites.

In most cases, this is completely false. Sulfites (sulphur dioxide) naturally occur in wine and are sometimes added to help preserve the wine as it ages. Virtually all wine contains sulfites- even organic wines. What many people don’t realize is that sulfites are incredibly common in many other types of food such as dried fruits and orange juice. If you were allergic to sulfites, you would have an incredibly long list of other foods that would cause you reactions. More often people are allergic to the tannins (chemical compound in the skins) of red wine or histamines used in the production process.

5. Red wines always go best with meats and white wines always go best with fish.

This is a general rule of thumb, but there are many exceptions. A lot of food and wine pairing has to do with preparation as well. Let’s take veal for example. If you were to have a veal osso bucco with a rich, stewy sauce you’d do best with a red wine. However, let’s say you had a lighter veal picatta, you could easily opt for a white wine and it would go well also. In addition, some fish may even pair well with red wine. Generally, steaky fish such as salmon and tuna can hold up to a light bodied red wine with the proper preparation. Lighter, more flaky fish such as halibut and sea bass will usually be best with white wine. These are just a few examples, but you get the picture.

4. A screw cap means a wine is cheap and not good.

You may have noticed that screw caps have become much more common these days. Does this mean that the quality of wine is going down? Certainly not. The major benefit of a cork is that it is permeable so the wine can breathe and develop over time as it ages. So, if your wine is not ageable, a cork serves no purpose but to inconvenience you. Many new world wine producing regions such as New Zealand are embracing the screw cap. Uncorking a bottle is romantic and all, but corks sometimes develop a mold called TCA or Trichloroanisole (sorry, had to flex my wine nerd muscles) which infects the wine and renders it undrinkable. Wineries waste tons of money every year on wasted bottles of wine with faulty corks. I predict that eventually screw caps will be used for all white wines except those of the highest quality, which have some time to age. This brings me to the next misconception

3. Smelling the cork is a great way to discover if your wine is faulty.

This is a pretty silly idea and all I have to say about it is- smell the wine, not the cork! I always find it amusing when waiters proudly pass me the cork from my wine for me to inspect it. Even if your wine happens to be corked (which happens about 5% of the time), it may not be detectable in the cork itself. Smelling the cork is pointless.

2. Anyone who likes sweet wines has an unsophisticated palate.

In no way, shape, or form is this true. There are tons of high quality, sweet wines! I happen to love a delicious late harvest Riesling or Eiswein. There is a whole German classification system devoted to sweet wines and based on quality. I won’t get into the logistics of that here but because the sweetest wines require special hand picking, great attention to detail, and impeccable weather conditions, the sweetest wines are sometimes considered the best!

1. It is impossible to find a good wine for $10 or less.

With the incredibly broad spectrum of countries producing wine these days, it’s rather easy to find a good wine without breaking the bank. I recommend trying some new world wines such as New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs or Chilean wines.

Any questions? Leave a comment or email me at Strumerika@gmail.com