I have given FOUR wine classes now so I am pretty much an expert! Just kidding, but I do know a lot more about wine than I did pre-pandemic. It was during the COVID slowdown that I took my wine education to the next level and signed up for a myriad of certification classes. WOW, is there a lot to learn. I thought I knew about wine before but was clearly just fooling myself. There is so much more to know and I love wine so I am up for the challenge. As it turns out, I really enjoy talking about all the fun stuff that I am learning including fun pairings, wine styles, history, maps, weather patterns, geology(you name it) and am more than willing to answer all those questions that people don't want to ask.
How do you hold a wine glass?
Can I just say that I love the sincerity of this question? So many people don't know the answer but are too afraid to ask for one reason or another. Well, that's my jam! I'm super happy to answer these types of questions all day and provide the reasoning too.
We have all gone shopping for wine glasses; with so many options out there it can be a bit overwhelming. There are stems and stemless, not to mention the various sizes, shapes and even materials. Ughhh! Well, let's keep it simple.
Wine glasses are designed with stems so that while slowly sipping on the chilled beverage the wine does not drift toward body temperature with the bowl of the glass encapsulated in the hand. (BTW, that's another side piece of information, even red wines should have a slight chill on them - see below.) A wine that is too warm loses its refreshing character, the flavors are off and sparkling wine goes flat faster.
Now, with glassware the thing you need to know is that the bowl of the wine glass needs to be somewhat tall so that the wine doesn't fly out during all of the swirling; that's just some practical advice. But seriously, there should be a little height to the glass and the top should be narrower than the bottom so that when the wine is swirled in the bottom of the glass it can mix with oxygen and give off all of those subjective aromas that wine geeks love to discuss.
If the top of the glass is bigger then the aromas are lost before they can be appreciated. The glass above is a universal wine glass which is good for red, white, rosé and even sparkling wine; they can range in price from $5 per glass to upwards of hundreds of dollars per glass for hand blown crystal (and a fancy name). I prefer glass drinkware most of the time but do opt for plastic when on a picnic or by the pool. To get into the nerdiness of all of that is not the aim of this post but I will say that wine will not taste or smell as intense if it is drunk out of a wine tumbler (AKA sippy cup) although those are completely necessary in certain circumstances, wink, wink!
What is a good year?
The annual differences in weather during the growing season, especially near harvest, is what leads to variations in the quality of the fruit on the vine, and thus the wine from year to year. Some wine regions around the world have more predictable weather patterns and produce consistent wines annually but other areas are influenced by various conditions including: smoke taint from wild fires, overly hot growing seasons that can make the wine taste baked and/or have super high alcohol, or a rainy season near harvest which will dilute the flavors in the grapes thus making a wimpy wine and even a cool year where the grapes fail to ripen as expected. Several vintage charts are available to look up quality wines such as this one from Wine Spectator. However, bulk wines that are mass produced by big companies tend to be the same from year to year similar to any other mass produced beverage which brings me to the next question.
Do they add stuff, like sugar, to wine?
The answer is yes and no. Many highly regarded and regulated wine regions are forbidden from tinkering with the wine and there has been a movement towards clean / natural wines recently. However, depending on the climate of a region, sugar can be added to the grape juice if the grapes are unable to ripen fully. The process, called Chaptalization, supplements the level of sugar in the grape juice when the weather is too cold to allow the grapes to achieve to the sweetness level necessary to make a wine of a certain alcohol by volume which is often mandated by regulatory agencies. All of the added sugar in the juice must be completely converted to alcohol during fermentation and cannot be left in the wine to add sweetness. Conversely, in hot wine making regions acidification is sometimes necessary to balance the wines which can otherwise lose much of their refreshing character. These hot climate wines tend to be on the higher end of the alcohol spectrum and need the acid to keep the wine from feeling heavy and flat. Additionally, sulfur dioxide is added in small quantities to most wines to keep bacteria at bay, but there are some natural wines that do not add sulfites although many of these need to be consumed early as they are prone to spoilage if kept too long. Currently
research is being conducted to enable less sulfite additions however. Again, mass produced wines and those from less stringent regions may take more liberties with the winemaking process, utilizing practices not allowed elsewhere. I personally like the idea of full disclosure and have found wines with online tech sheets that divulge wine making processes, residual sugars and whether the wine is vegan, organic, natural etc, like those curated by Scout & Cellar, to be a satisfying addition to my collection. Some wine brands will place the technical information on their labels which is a practice that I hope will catch on.
I don't like sweet wines
Speaking of sugar in wine... I absolutely love introducing people to sweet dessert wine that is appropriately paired with dessert! It is almost universal that I get a person who absolutely swears that they do NOT like sweet wines and then I have them try a chocolate dessert in between sips and the look on their faces are all the same--Astonishment!! Well there is a reason for that, dessert wines are meant to be paired with dessert. The sweetness in the wine is balanced by the sugar in the dessert which makes the fruit and acid in the wine pop. The above pairing was absolutely mind-blowing in that the very sweet wine tasted like a raspberry reduction after a bite of the s'mores bar. All tasters were converted to believers and loved this combo. I see this time and time again, which makes my little heart skip a beat! See #3 below.
Food / Wine pairing
There are a few basic tips which will help with food and wine pairing, but it is as much art as it is science. The main point is that it is the food that will change the flavor of the wine, not the other way around. I suggest to always taste the wine before the food. If the wine is good on its own but not with the food, then note that the pairing doesn't work but also remember that the wine is not bad and should not be regarded as such. Sometimes it is only a portion of the meal that doesn't work, for instance asparagus is notoriously hard to pair with wine. My suggestion is to not take a drink of wine after a bite of asparagus, but rather the food that does work with the wine such as the steak in the photo above. Also see my blog post about Thanksgiving wine pairings for additional details.
Another pitfall that people fall into is pairing the wine with the main component of the dish but not considering the sauce or condiments. For example, the same wine would not go with grilled ribs, BBQ ribs and ribs with sauerkraut or even a sweet and sour sauce.
Here are a few general rules to help guide you:
The food will change the flavor of the wine more than the other way around. For example if you are drinking a nice wine and then take a bite of food, lets say something sweet, then the next sip of wine may be unexpectedly sour but the next bite of that food would not be altered too much.
When pairing a wine with a food, don't forget to consider the condiments or the sauce. These often have bolder flavor profiles than the main dish they are a part of. Think of mustard on anything...
Whatever the dominant characteristic of the food is, the wine has to have more of that or the match will not work. If the food is sweet, the wine needs to be sweeter. If the food has a lot of acid (sour), so should the wine or it will feel flat.
Try to find wines that will compliment the entire meal and not just an individual dish. When in doubt, go with bubbles!
You don't need to break the bank to have great wine for a special occasion.
If you have a question that was not addressed here, please send it to me. I will address it in a future blog. Until then, Cheers!
Let me know if interested in attending the upcoming "White Wines for Hot Days" lecture on April 23, 2022 in Lodi, CA.
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