Wine, happiness, a culture of pleasure. An exploration that roams from a local wine drinking community to a whole world of passion, beauty, and pleasure that awaits us out there. You know, eat, drink, and be merry-type stuff. Let's dive into wine and pleasure, but not take ourselves too seriously. After all, as a friend of mine likes to point out to beer geeks and wine freaks, "we're just talking about 10 minutes of pleasure, that's all."
To connect with me elsewhere, I can be found on Twitter @RonMarks, on Cork'd to share what we're drinking, or for my more personal mindcasting stuff, check out www.ronmarks.tumblr.com, or you can simply ask me a question here
Cheers!
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The Sweetest Thing
If you’ve taken the wine journey with me since the beginning you will recall my recommendation that you bring an Ice Wine to any social gathering you attend. Let’s go a step further this week. Lets familiarize ourselves with dessert wines in general. Here is your crash course to the sweet side of wine. I’ll try to keep it simple and not too nerdy, but understand that we’re only scratching the surface here.
Sherry
Where: Andalucia, Spain
Types: fino (light, dry, 15.5% alcohol), oloroso (rich and full, dry, 18%+ alcohol)
What’s Weird About It: Not aged on its own. Young sherry is added to casks of older wine that are already aging. Wine keeps getting moved a little at a time to casks of older and older Sherry until its ready to be bottled.
The Exciting Part: There are like a dozen styles of dry Sherry, and there are a half dozen styles of sweet Sherry. So there’s lots to explore!
Port
Where: Douro Valley, Portugal
What: The greatest fortified red wine.
What’s Weird Abut It: It was invented by the British, who because of their many wars with France had to drink Portuguese wine, which they fortified so the wines would be stable enough to be shipped by sea.
My Favorite Style: Ruby Port, young, inexpensive, fruity, simple, aged about 3-6 years.
A Step Up: Tawny Port, 10-40 years old (at least), brownish red, expensive.
When: Dessert, with chocolate cake or other dessert, or as a dessert all on its own.
Madeira
Where: Madeira. It’s a subtropical island in the Atlantic Ocean near Africa.
What’s Unique About It: The world’s longest-lived wine: this stuff just doesn’t go bad.
Types: Four styles, two dry and two sweet.
What Else: Starts as a white wine, but ends up amber in color, and is know for having the longest finish of any wine.
Sauternes
Where: Graves (Bordeaux, France) and Germany primarily
What Absolutely EVERYONE Who Has Had It Calls It: Liquid Gold. Because it is.
What: Noble rot (the fungus botrytis) concentrates the liquid and sugar in the grapes before fermentation.
Cost: Expensive. $300 for a good one from Chateau d’Yquem, the most famous.
Serve: Cold, but not icy.
When: Best after dinner, as dessert, rather than before on its own. This stuff is RICH!
There you have it. The basics on dessert wine. Now go, indulge your sweet tooth, pour one tonight. Cheers! -
Damn Good Value Wine
Since our wine region of the month was Catalunya, Spain, I will be wholeheartedly recommending for you a very nice Cava.
If you’ll recall the very strict standard I’ve set for myself, the wine has to be not only a good value for the money, it also has to be widely available for $10 or less. Not $15. Not $12. We are challenging ourselves to find good wines for 10 bucks.
With that said, I have absolutely wonderful news. You can drink an absolutely wonderful sparkling wine any night of the week, for no reason at all other than they kick ass, for $8.
My recommendation of the month is Cristalino Brut. Citrus, apple. Crisp, clean taste. Great finish. In a blind tasting would beat many sparkling wines at 5 times the price.
And the great thing about getting sparkling wine this cheap is that you can drink it as it is, or you can make Champagne coctails without feeling bad about blending such an expensive sparkling wine.
So check it out, and tell me if you don’t prefer it to any number of more expensive sparkling wines. -
Your Weekly Wine Geography Lesson
Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed your tour of Sancerre, and have been able to try a Sauvignon Blanc from that region since then. Now it’s time to head west, to Spain.
Specifically, Catalunya, running from Tarragona to Barcelona (hooray Barcelona!) home to 95% of all Spain’s production of Cava. What’s Cava? Spain’s answer to Champagne, gloriously good stuff, and much, much more affordable.
Although both Champagne and Cava are made by the same method, the grapes are very different. Instead of using familiar grape varietals like Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, Cava uses unique Spanish varietals such as Macabeo, Xarel-lo, and Parellada. (Are you writing this down? There WILL be a quiz later!) What you get with these varietals is a sparkling wine that is consistently crip with lots of apple flavor.
In addition to sparkling wine, a number of still wines are also produced here. I won’t go into detail about every subregion, but it will be helpful for you to be familiar with Penedes. It is the leading subregion of Catalunya, and is the one region in Spain that plants many of the international varietals you may be familiar with, such as Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, as well as Monastrell and Garnacha (Grenache). If you are looking for wines from this subregion you are likely to find the name Miguel Torres on the racks at your local wine shop.
So check out some wines from this region, from sparkling to still, and then you can check Catalunya off this list of your Worldwide Wine Tour. -
”The mouth of a perfectly happy man is filled with beer.
Egyptian Proverb (via toledoanderson)
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Now this is just a GORGEOUS shot of these two great actors.
Penelope Cruz & Daniel Day-Lewis - NYTimes Great Performers of 2009 by Inez & Vinoodh
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How Long Will That Bottle Keep?
Now, back to the practical stuff with this post. Here’s a common situation. A bottle of wine contains about four and a half drinks. You and a friend open it for dinner and don’t necessarily want to go back for a second glass. Will it still be good tomorrow?
It depends on the wine, of course, better wines and red wines especially being able to hold up better over time, some of them for several days even if stored properly. Cheaper wines will likely taste terrible by the next day. What happens is that when wine is exposed to oxygen it begins to oxidize, and eventually comes more and more to resemble vinegar. This should come as no surprise, since it’s said that wine is fermented grape just that’s been stopped on its way to becoming vinegar. So what can you do if you want to store wine overnight and enjoy it the next day? What can you do to slow down oxidation?
There are a couple of things you can do. First, there are products that help by getting the air out of the bottle so the wine isn’t in contact with that much oxygen, and therefore doesn’t oxidize that fast. There are gases that are lighter than oxygen than can be sprayed in the bottle, expelling the air and replacing it with a gas coating of sorts to limit the oxidation reaction. I personally don’t use this, but you’ll be able to find canisters of this stuff at your local wine shop. Then you just put the cork back.
Another thing you can do, the method I prefer, is to use one of those wine bottle pumps. You put a special stopper on the wine bottle, attach the pump to it, and pump out the air. Works by the same principle.
Both in theory should work flawlessly, but somehow wine always degrades anyhow, no matter what you do. The one final thing you can do to slow oxidation and give your wine another day or two of life turns out to be the most effective. Just put it in the fridge. Then all you have to do is remember to take it out in time to warm up (if it’s a red).
Hope this will allow you to keep your wine longer, without feeling the pressure to kill every bottle the night you open it. Wine should be enjoyed, and this should help you enjoy a few good bottles over two or more nights. -
Help teen bingers drink less with wine tastings, say French advisers
[When I read stuff like this, I think, maybe for the millionth time, damn, the French just have life better figured out than we do.]
Most countries struggling to deal with the scourge of teenage binge drinking attempt to separate bottle and drinker. In France they do things differently. A government-commissioned report is advising university canteens to hold wine-tasting sessions to educate the young in the virtues of moderate consumption.
According to Jean-Pierre Coffe, a television presenter and celebrated gastronome who co-wrote the study, universities should give young people an education in wine as well as in academia.
“Why is there sexual education and not viticultural education? You can learn wine too,” he told French radio. He believes students can be taught the joys of drinking with restraint. “Drinking is not drinking a bottle. Wine is pleasure. It’s like love. It’s the same.”
The report, which was commissioned by Valérie Pécresse, the minister for higher education, gives a wide range of recommendations on how to improve students’ consumption. But the proposal outlining “initiation to a moderate consumption of wine” has attracted most attention.
Jean-Robert Pitte, a former director of Paris’s Sorbonne, believes lunchtime canteen tastings would provide the perfect opportunity for students to learn to drink sensibly. “In order to avoid the total freak-out that happens every Friday night and Saturday night … we want to try to teach students a sense of responsibility, to allow them to taste wine in very moderate quantities, and to show them that it is both a pleasure, good for their health … and a part of their national heritage.”
But the proposal, which comes as France faces up to the fact that its teenagers are entering into the same drinking habits as their counterparts in the UK, has gone down less well elsewhere.
Alain Rigaud, president of the national association for the prevention of alcoholism and addiction (Anpaa), thought it shocking that respected figures could still be advocating those arguments. “It’s naive to think we’re going to reduce binge drinking in this way,” he said, dismissing Coffe’s and Pitte’s proposal as marketing for the wine industry.
Pécresse, who received the report on Wednesday, was also quick to dismiss the recommendation. “Yes to education of taste, no to wine at lunchtime for students,” she said.
In November, the Paris city hall launched an awareness campaign aimed at the capital’s 15-25-year-olds, warning of the dangers of “le binge drinking”.
Experts believe such heavy and rapid drinking, unfamiliar in a country that has relied on watered-down wine being given to children as an introduction, increased by about 10% between 2005 and 2008. According to the Paris authorities, a fifth of 17-year-olds now drink at least five glasses of wine in a single sitting at least three times a month.
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PROVERBS 21:17
I too can live with the consequences. It’s totally worth it.
Whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man;
he who loves wine and oil will not be rich.I’M TOTALLY OK WITH THIS.
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The Broke Wino Creed
Totally.
1. WINE IS TO BE DRUNK, NOT BLOVIATED.
2. IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, THEN IT’S NOT GOOD.
3. THERE’S AN AWFUL LOT TO SAY ABOUT GOOD WINE.
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How to Pair Red Meat with Red Wine : Recipes and Cooking : Food Network
This is a pretty helpful, really broken down list for wine pairing according to how the meat is prepared:
Red wine and beef is a match made in heaven. Which red, however, depends on the cut of beef, the preparation and other flavors in the dish.
Steaks
Grilled:
You’ll want something with enough heft, depth of fruit and smoky oak to stand up to all the char and fat. Look for:- American red Zinfandel
- Cabernet
- Spanish Rioja
- Priorat
Pan-fried:
Go fruitier, jammier and spicier:- California, Oregon or Washington Merlot
- Australian Shiraz or Cabernet blends
- Argentinean Malbec or Merlot
With sauce:
- For a rich-and-vinegary Béarnaise, American Cabernet is perfect
- With South American-style Chimichurri, go for Chilean or Argentinean Cabernet or Merlot
- With blue cheese and butter, go for a Southern Italian red
Braises
Wine-braised:
Pick a wine similar in flavor to what you’re cooking with-you don’t need to break the bank on braising wine, but stick to a similar region and grape.Stock-braised:
Rich, meaty braises like Osso Buco need higher-acidity reds to cut the richness; think of funky, earthy French reds from the Rhone or Loire Valleys, Chianti Classico, Pinot Noir from Oregon or Spanish wines from Penedes.Roasts
Pretty much anything works well with a roast, especially lighter reds. Try:- Pinot Noirs from the US
- Burgundy or Rhone-style blends from the US or Australia
Seared
Carpaccio: If you’re serving Carpaccio as an appetizer, a full-flavored sparkling rose whets the palate for later courses; or, play to the traditional garnish of Parmesan with a young Barbera. -
Damn Good Value Wine
My goal for this series on good cheap wine will be to help you all explore a new wine grape variety or region on the cheap. I’m setting a VERY strict $10 price limit, which will be a good challenge, as it will allow us to explore more wines more economically.
For my first value pick of the month I decided to look for a good example of the grape variety Sauvignon Blanc, since my wine region featured this month was Sancerre, the home of this grape. Unfortunately, I can’t find a Sancerre in that price range anywhere. So I decided to look to the second most famous Sauvignon Blanc home: New Zealand!
So without further fanfare, my recommendation to you is: Matua Sauvignon Blanc 2008, from Marlborough, New Zealand.
Why? It smells like pears, tastes a bit like apples, has a really nice, long finish, and will pair wonderfully with almost any fish or non-spicy vegetarian meal you throw at it. Try it, enjoy it, and then tell me how much you liked it. -
Your Weekly Wine Geography Lesson
Looking to explore other food-friendly white wines that are also good on their own? Something elegant? Something crisp? Something not too fruity? An obvious choice to add variety to your white wine drinking is the Sauvignon Blanc. And the historical home of this grape is France’s Loire Valley, notably Sancerre.
When it comes to the character of a wine, geography matters. Sauvignon Blanc is grown in many different parts of the world, and expresses itself differently depending on the climate and soil where it finds itself. In Sancerre, cool summer climates give the grape its crisp acidity (what makes it pair so well with food). And since there is a lot of chalk and limestone in the soil, the wine will take on this flavor rather than being all fruit. Its herbal character can sometimes be compared to a grassiness if it is strong. The result is, when it comes out right, a white wine that is gentle, with an herbal perfume smell to it, and a crispness that allows it to pair particularly beautifully with different kinds of fish dishes.
So if you are shopping for a Sancerre wine, what should you look for? A total of 14 villages and three hamlets have the right to produce Sancerre. The two most recognized areas in Sancerre are Chene Marchand in the village of Bue, and the Monts Damnes in Chavignol, which would be the likely locations for the more expensive bottles. Regardless of where it comes from, these wines typically aren’t meant to be aged, and should be enjoyed within a year or two of bottling. A Sancerre Savignon Blanc typically starts around $20 - not at all in the value wines category - and can easily be found in the $50 range as well.
So the next time you are in your local wine shop, make your way to the Loire, and try something truly exceptional.
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one day I’ll be rich and spend my days like this.
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Absolut Vodka X Philipp Plein
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