Wine and Chocolate

Are you a “chocoholic” and wonder what wine works best with it? Normally, wine and chocolate don’t mix. Chocolate has a real coating effect on the palate, with which most wines can’t compete. However, there are some exceptions. Certain “New World” Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz possess a chocolate note so they may work together. Surprisingly, old Amarone provides an interesting partner. Sweet wines tend to mesh better though. Dessert Muscat with its peachy character is actually one of the best matches. Icewine also works. Bottle and wood-aged ports do an admirable job. Even sweet bubbly stands up pretty well. Finally, non-grape wines like strawberry or raspberry can hold their own with chocolate. Enjoy! 

Sur Lie

In winemaking, after fermentation is complete, the dead yeast or “lees”, as they are called, fall to the bottom of the container and the wine usually poured off of it. Some winemakers opt to leave the wine sitting on the lees for a while thus imparting more character. The resulting wine is then said to be bottled “sur lie”. It is most often used in the Loire Valley for Muscadet that is produced between the Sevre and Maine Rivers. Here the wine takes on a light carbonic spritz felt on the tip of the tongue. Sometimes it is used in Chardonnay to give the wine a slight creamy note. Either way, this interesting, winemaking procedure is but another option open to the winemaker to add complexity to a wine.

Viscosity

If you enjoy wine, I’m sure you’ve noticed in your glass after swirling that beading forms and eventually drips down the side. These oozing drips are called “legs”. Both beading and legs indicate viscosity or richness in a wine. How thick the beading is and how fast or slow the legs come down the side can tell you how rich the wine will be when it’s eventually in your mouth. The thicker the beading and slower the legs, the richer the wine! Alcohol levels, oak treatment, fermentation temperatures or sugar content can affect the viscosity. So wines with higher alcohol, more oak or sweetness, generally show better viscosity. Just keep in mind that your glassware must be impeccably clean and void of any residual detergent to properly see this.

Order of Tasting

If tasting many wines at one time, there is a specific order you should go in so as not to fatigue your palate. Stylistically, taste white wine to red, dry to sweet, low alcohol to high alcohol, unoaked to oaky and light-bodied to full-bodied. Crossing over any of these boundaries can easily throw your palate right off and render it useless. Surely you can conceive of how tasting a tannic red wine, for instance, can totally numb your taste buds to something substantially lighter like a Riesling, just because of tannins’ coating action. If you happen to find yourself in this predicament and want to go back and taste a product out of sync, as it were, look for some bubbly in the room. Bubbles have an uncanny knack of cleaning the palate nicely. Happy tasting.

Clinical Evaluation vs. Social Enjoyment

Sampling wine in a clinical setting like a wine tasting and then in a social setting like a dinner or party is quite different. Clinical tasting focuses strictly on the wine without the benefit of extraneous stimuli to play off it. The wine is literally dissected for appearance, smell and taste much like an autopsy in a sterile environment. Social appreciation usually involves food, friends, conversation and a relaxed atmosphere so the wine is interwoven into a hedonistic, enjoyable experience. Often, wine that doesn’t show that well in clinical evaluation comes across far better in a social setting. That’s because wine and food are a marriage made in heaven and together, stimulate social interaction and fun.

De-alcoholized Wine

Ever hear of de-alcoholized wine? It’s one in which the alcohol has been removed. Two methods exist for achieving this. The first is by reverse osmosis called the Ariel Process. Here wine flows along a membrane that separates it into a syrupy concentrate of alcohol and water. Repeated many times, water is reintroduced to the wine to create the finished product. The second method is the Billabong Process where a spinning cone column reduces the ethanol content. Done several times, the first separates the aroma compounds and the second removes the alcohol. In both cases, the finished wine, although quite different, is alcohol free. As far as taste goes, it’s a far cry from the original. 

Wine Competitions

Wine competitions are interesting events taking place worldwide. The purpose of these is to acknowledge wines in specific categories that are exceptional in quality. How they work is after a producer enters their wine in a specific competition and category, all are then judged by numerous panels of experts. Each panel consists of tasters, often international, from many areas of the business: journalists, winemakers, educators, scientists, retailers, etc. The average marks for each wine are tabulated and appropriate medals (Gold, Silver and Bronze) are awarded them. These medals can then be placed on bottles, which in turn, can really aid in their sales. Nothing says “buy me” like a wine sporting a “gold medal”.