Increasingly wine makers have become aware of, and concerned about their impact on the planet. Here is an interesting article on some measures being used and considered to help mitigate that impact. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/15/solar-powered-robots-coming-to-greener-french-wine-future/
The Wine Populist would like to wish everyone happy and safe holidays filled with good food, good company, and good wine.
Last night a friend brought over a nice bottle of rosé from Mattebelle Vineyards on the NorthFork of Long Island. We had it with a Provençal inspired shellfish stew I made. It went very well and oh by the way, it was snowing out.
Why do I mention that? Because for many, even most people, rosé is a summer wine. To my thinking people who restrict their enjoyment of rosé to a few months out of the year are shortchanging themselves and rose. Rosé is a versatile wine, handling traditional white wine foods like poultry and seafood but also going well with spicy Asian dishes. It works very well with many vegetarian dishes and even with asparagus which can be hard on wine. It can be a nice aperitif too.
So the next time you can’t think of what to drink with a dish, consider a rosé. Enjoy.
Suggesting wines for holidays can be tricky as everyone has their own traditions. Thanksgiving is a bit easier as the menu tends to revolve around turkey and sweet and sour flavors like candied yams and cranberry sauce. For me the holiday meal should be about the food, not the wine. So, I tend to look for food friendly wines that can stand up the strong flavors of the meal without overwhelming it.
For years I have been a fan of Beaujolais for Thanksgiving. Properly made it has plenty of fruit flavors to complement the food, balanced with acidity to keep the palate fresh. Traditionally it has been fairly low in alcohol too which can be a real benefit during a long meal. Unfortunately, Beaujolais like this have become harder to find. Many have become factory wines, particularly those from the House of George Dubouef. These wines overwhelm with fruit and have little acidity to balance them. Some of them have alcohol contents reaching over 14%. Now Dubouef does make some nice wines but I tend to look for other producers. I also find that the “Cru” Beaujolais are more likely to have what I think of as “real Beaujolais character”. The Cru’s are regions that have been raised in the French AOC system to having their own appellation. They are Saint-Amour, Juliénas, Chénas, Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, Chiroubles, Morgon, Régnié, Brouilly and Côte de Brouilly. The Cru’s used to cost a few dollars more but not only are they worth it but nowadays the frequently are no more expensive.
For Italian wines I like to have a Barbera, either from Asti or Alba. These work particularly well if you are going with the Italian-American tradition of having Lasagna with your meal. La Orme from Michelle Chiarlo is a nice inexpensive one. Hilberg, La Spinetta, and Pio Cesare (among many others) make good ones at moderate, if slightly higher, prices.
If you want to have an American wine with your American meal I used to go for a Zinfandel. Like Beaujolais they have tended to evolve into bigger and fruitier wines that can overwhelm the meal. Now I am more likely to look for Pinot Noir from the northwest. Lately I have come to enjoy Cabernet Franc based wines, including Chinon (another French choice). Wolffer Estate on Long Island makes a nice one and they are local to me too.
Enjoy.
I hope everyone made it out OK from Sandy. My thoughts are with those who suffered the most from the storm. Things are slowly getting back to normal here in New York but it may be a week or two before I turn to writing about wine again. Stay well all.
Last night my wife and I ate at SK Bistro on City Island in New York. In addition to enjoying the good food and the very reasonable wine list, the owner Stephane gave us a taste of a Champagne style sparkling wine from Long Island, Sparkling Pointe. I usually find Champagne style sparkling wines (that are not actually Champagne) to be a bit lacking. This one was very nice and would have fooled me if given blind. The price is around the same as many NV Champagnes but it is nice to have a local option.
As mentioned in my post on wine ratings http://thewinepopulist.com/?p=169 I attended a tasting of wines from New York State a bit over a week ago. New York has long made quality wines in the Finger Lakes region and on the east end of Long Island. Once again there were some very nice wines from that area though many were not such good values when you looked at the suggested retail prices.
What surprised me was the high quality and relatively low prices of wines from the Hudson Valley. I have known of the wines from this area for years but never tried them as I always thought that the climate was not hospitable to making good wine. Well I was wrong. Also a surprise was that one of the wines I liked best at the tasting was made from Seyval Blanc, a grape variety much maligned by wine snobs. It was a wine with character and balance, two things for which wines from this grape have been attacked for lacking.
It is always good to test your prejudices and in this case I got a happy surprise.
There are a lot of different wine rating systems out there and a fair amount of controversy surrounding rating wines. A few days ago I went to a tasting of New York State wines with my wife. She took the notes both of us and her rating system was a paragon of elegant simplicity. If she liked a wine and would buy it at the suggested retail price it got a check. If she didn’t like it or thought it wasn’t worth the price it got an “X”. That is the best rating system yet.
We opened a bottle of wine the other night to have when some friends came over for dinner. It was an inexpensive but nice red from the Vaucluse region of France. About halfway into the bottle, my wife got a mouthful of sediment. This gave me the idea for this post as sediment is misunderstood by many wine buyers.
Sediment is a natural part of wine. All wine starts out with solid material in suspension. When the solids (mostly bits of grape skin and yeast) settles out you get sediment. Red wines which are vinified in contact with the grape skin and are frequently aged long enough for solids to settle out, are more prone to having sediment than whites and rosés.
A quick note, white wines and rosés that have been chilled a bit too much can have clear or white crystals form in the bottom of the bottle. This is a precipitate, tartaric acid. It is not sediment and it is harmless. Just let the bottle warm up a bit.
It can be unpleasant to get a mouthful of wine with sediment in it. As a result many people think of sediment as a flaw. To remove this “flaw” many winemakers use techniques such as filtering, fining, and even centrifuging wine to remove it. The problem is you can’t remove sediment without also removing some flavor.
So what should you do? Well the easiest thing is to let the bottle sit upright for several hours before you serve it. This allows the sediment that may have been stirred up on the trip home to settle. This is what I did wrong. I bought the wine only a couple of hours before we poured it and it was moved around the kitchen as we cooked and cleaned up. But if you do it right, after the wine has had a chance to settle, take a look at the bottom of the bottle in good light. If there is sediment, decant the wine, or just be careful pouring it. Enjoy.
It can be really hard to tell when a wine is ready to drink. Even experts get it wrong frequently. What I have put together in this post are some general guidelines that can help.
Rosé is one of the easiest wines to know. Almost all of them are ready to drink when they are released. Very few of them improve with age. So drink them when you get them or in a year or two at most.
Most white wines are ready to drink when they are released but some will improve with age. Rieslings and Chardonnays frequently improved with age. Some Rieslings can last decades. I have had 15 year old white Burgundy’s (made with Chardonnay) that were fantastic. In my experience white wines that have a bit of residual sugar, such as those from Alsace, also tend to age well. That said, even within these varieties most white wines are made to be opened within five or so years.
There are some white wines that are best within one to three years. Viognier is known to be a bit delicate for aging. Most Sauvignon Blanc’s do not benefit from aging. Almost all of the Italian white wines are made to be drunk fairly young.
Red wines are much trickier. Some are ready to drink when released but even than they may benefit from a few years more age. Many reds are released before they are ready to drink. In general the more tannic varieties such as Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Nebbiolo need some additional time. Softer varieties such as Merlot are frequently made for faster consumption. It used to be recommended that wines with higher alcohol levels, 14% and up, needed to age. With the steady rise in alcohol content over the last several years that is no longer a good gauge. It is true that more alcohol does make it less likely that a wine will go bad if it is aged. It does not mean it will improve.
Dessert wines such as Sauternes and ice wines tend to age well. Fortified wines such as Port and Sherry keep well for very long periods of time but don’t normally improve with time.
A quick note; and here I am treading on thin ice, inexpensive wines are more likely to have been bottled with the intent of quick consumption than more expensive wines. That said, many inexpensive red wines are released too young. If you have the ability to store them properly, they can mature into wines that make you congratulate yourself for having bought them at such a low price.
One of the pleasures of wine is to buy a case and drink the wine over time experiencing the changes that a wine goes through. The beginning of the case may be too young, and the end over the hill. Still you will gain the experience of knowing how a wine matures. With a little luck you will have had the majority of the wine at its peak.
Enjoy.
