Chardonnay - the white grape of domination

Chardonnay; sweet, sweet chardonnay. How we all love you so.

Statistically speaking of course.

So, on day two we went over the fine and the filthy of Chardonnay. Which is supposedly the world's most purchased grape. I don't have a stat for that; it's just what I was told. But it seems believable enough. But why is that? Why are people buying this grape? It's not overly aromatic on its own; it’s generally very neutral over all. Nothing to write home about. It is however incredibly versatile. It can grow in almost any climate and in any number of soils. In the world of grapes it's like Wolverine; (from X-men, don't make the "I don't know what you're talking about" eyebrows. I know you’re just as geeky as me), indestructible and universally cool. Actually it’s probably closer to Mystique, and her ability to transform and shape-shift to her environment. Yeah. Mystique. Totally.

Chardonnay is grown all over the world, but it is best known for is classic regions like White Burgundy, Chablis, Cote d'Or and Marcoconais.  So let's start there.

White Burgundy - this is where you are going to see the most expensive and the best expression of Chardonnay in the world, undoubtedly. What determines the price? Well, that is determined by what's written on the label. Prices vary according to which region, district, village and vineyard the wine is made from.  Specifically we have Chablis; the key to Chablis is to know that it is a bone dry white wine. Which I love. It's a crisp, refreshing, cool climate white. With high acid, austere green fruit and citrus, and notable limestone minerals. And it's got its own rating system - Grand Cru (being the very best), Premier Cru (being exceptional in its own right) and Village Level (which is still a Burgundy wine and still amazing but not as good as Premier Cru).  Then we have the Cote d'Or; there are a few “smaller” regions included in this - we have the Cote de Beane, Puligny - Montrachet, and Mersault. These wines are typically fuller bodied, oaked and are a reference point to most chardonnays on the market. In Maconnais we have the warmest Burgundy climate because it is the furthest south. In here we see the sub regions of Poully-Fuisse and Macon. Because of the warmer climate, we see a larger volume produced and more of a tropical fruit expression - but it's also a bit simpler of a wine. Not necessarily a bad thing because some of these top notch Burgundy wines will cost you well over a thousand dollars a bottle. So selection is good for the non-millionaires among us.

Some other regions where we find excellent expressions from Chardonnay are Australia (Yarra Valley, Adelaide Hills and Margret River), New Zealand (Hawks Bay, Gisborne, and Marlborough), throughout North America in places like California (costal, Sonoma or Carneros), Chile (Casablanca Valley), Argentina (Mendoza) and South Africa (Walker Bay Ward).

Wine making technique plays a huge part in how a Chardonnay is going to taste. It can be tampered with a little or a lot, and its ability to stand up to this tampering is why it’s often called the Photoshop grape. You can take a Chardonnay that is less than what it should be, and makes changes to it after the fact. This can be a good thing, and this can be a bad thing. 

Some of the techniques that we see being used are the use of malolatci fermentation, which creates a buttery cream quality to a wine; it can also be used to soften some of the harsh tannins in a wine from the oaking process. Another one that we see is the Lees. These are the dead yeast cells kept behind after fermentation. These are stirred in to add creamy and savory notes similar to the malolactic fermentation. There is also the (over) use of oak to give wines a toasted, vanilla, coconut, spice flavor. It also adds tannin and gives a wine structure and helps with its age ability. A lot of the new world wines will state the kind of oak they use. A good guideline is that American oak is like American culture – big, fast-acting, sweet flavors that can leave you feeling a bit shocked. And French oak is like French culture – laid back, slow to integrate but generally better in the long term*.

Another thing that winemakers do is ferment in stainless steel and just add oak shavings, chips, dust, and even something called “oak essences”, all of which progressively cheaper then the last. And you can taste the difference. But by using things like oak essence we are able to get bottles of oaked Chardonnay for under 10$.

The above fermentation is seen most often in bulk production for inexpensive Chardonnay, but it’s fairly easy to spot even if you don’t know the price point and have never tried the wine. It’s cheaper to pull grapes from a number of locations than it is to take it from one specific vineyard. However, the areas being sourced from need to be named at least in a general sense. They are often sold as  “South Eastern Australia”, “Western Cape”, “California”, ‘Chile”, or “Vin de France”. Another way that makers cut costs in bulk production is to blend in other less desirable grapes in with the Chardonnay, like Semillon, which adds acidity and citrus notes.

Over all, I imagine Chardonnay to be less like Photoshop and more like one of those play-dough sets in the hands of a 6 year old. Where the medium holds whatever shape the kid gives it. However, you may feel obligated to praise the child for making you this creation, even though you really aren’t sure what the hell it’s supposed to be.

Cheers!

*This is just my being bias to a preference of French oak, so you should try a few and see what you like.

REVIEW – 2008 GILBERT PICQ & SES FILES PREMIER CRU VOSGROS CHABLIS, FRANCE

REVIEW – 2008 GILBERT PICQ & SES FILES PREMIER CRU VOSGROS CHABLIS, FRANCE           

SKU: 737386  

Agent: Galileo Wine & Spirits Ltd.

In the Glass – clear, pale to medium lemon

On the Nose – clean light to medium intensity, white citrus fruit, with some honey and buttered popcorn on the nose. It’s obvious that this is a cool climate gem.

On the Palate – This wine is dry, with medium to high acid, light to med body, citrus, gooseberry, stone and steely quality. With solid minerality (like oyster shells), orchard fruit, some tropical notes. It has a strong to medium finish.

The winery of Domaine Gilbert Picq et Ses Fils in the village of Chichée. They make this very terrior driven premier cru of Vosgros, from the family’s oldest premier cru vines. The label is now run by two brothers, Didier and Pascal, and sister Marilyn Picq Gilbert after their father retired. The vines they govern are between thirty-five and forty years old.

In Chichée, Vaucoupin is a highly regarded premier cru on the right bank (east side) of the river Serein. The slopes along the Serein River face primarily due south. All seven of Chablis’ grand crus are also on the right bank. This is the steepest section of the vineyard, on a 45 degree slope, obviously its all cared for and harvested by hand. The soil is what gives this wine the oyster shell character because of the slat quality of the soil. Over all right bank premier crus produce heftier and more masculine styled wines and the left bank has more of a feminine and elegant flavor

My closing thoughts - This is a fantastic Chablis, rich austere and great lively acidity. But it can use some more time in the bottle to age. However if you cant wait I would recommend you decant it and give it an hour or two.  This wine will run you less then $45 and would be a great addition to any celler.

Cheers!

WSET Intermediate Day 1 - Hook, Line and Sinker

So! Class one. Exciting stuff!

On day one of my WSET I think one of the best things that I walked away with is the wine tasting and evaluation technique. I kind of went over this when I talked about the foundation course, but this is a more in depth way of breaking it down. You can of course go much further than what I’m going to talk about here, but it’s a great way of distinguishing it from just red white or pink.

How do we break it down? It comes in 3 stages once it’s in the glass: how it looks, what it smells like and how it tastes.

It starts with a look. Regardless of red or white wine you’re going to be looking at the wines clarity, intensity and colour. With clarity you need to take into account if it’s clear or hazy  (turbid). The best advice I was given with this is to put the glass of wine over some writing. Can you see through it? Yes, ok, if it’s an inky wine it’s going to have too much tannin in it but use your best judgment. Next is intensity, is the colour pale, medium or deep intensity. This one is hard to describe in words, but try to think of it like this. Grammas dusty rose couch vs. generic pink vs. electric Barbie lipstick pink. Each one is its own distinct intensity of the same concept of pink. Finally in the glass we see the colour of the wine – red, white, and rose. Colour can indicate age in a wine, but that’s another topic for another day. Each one can be broken down further. In white we range from lemon to gold to amber, in rose we get pink to salmon to orange and in reds we get purple to ruby to garnet to tawny. There are of course a MILLION other options in addition to these, but I feel that WSET and I try to use the same lines when analyzing a wine. KISS – keep it simple, stupid.

Next up we have the nose, how does the wine smell? Does it smell clean, clear and identifiable? Or does it smell muddled and off? How’s the intensity? Is it light and reserved in the glass? Do you need to swirl the crap out of it to make the wine come you? Medium where it comes to you or pronounced where the sucker hits you from across the table with big fruit, floral, spices, vegetables, or oak aromas? This is also where we are going to find our first real fault; cork taint. WSET estimates that between 2-5% of bottles with corks has cork taint. That seems really low to me. I would guess that more than that are off, but people just don’t know what the wine they are drinking should taste like. Cork taint is most easily identifiable by the wet cardboard smell. Not pleasant.

Finally we have the palate. How do we break down all those flavors into the good, the bad and the ugly? WSET recommends that you do it like this. Start with sweetness, is it dry, off-dry, medium or sweet. Sugar is first registered on the palete at approximately 4grams of sugar per liter, which with all things considered it a fair amount of sugar, so sometimes when we think we taste sweetness in a wine it may just be the fruit. Acidity is next; this is the balancing force with sugar. We describe acidity in a range of low, medium and high. A good indicator is how your tongue feels after the wine has left your mouth. Does your mouth water along the sides? If so how much, acidity makes a wine feel bright and refreshing and it makes your mouth water. Next we have tannins and like acidity it’s measured in a low to high scale - but this isn’t just for red wine. Because a lot of white wines are oaked they gather tannins from the types of oaks they are fermented or aged in. Keep this in mind when tasting some buttery chardonnays.

Next we have body, this can be described as light, medium and full. This is the key to most food pairings and is why a light body red can go just as well with a fish as a big oaky white will stand up to red meat or heavy sauce.

Next we have flavors but lets do this with length, which is just as important. We can get hints, memories and nuances of almost any flavor, good or bad, on a wine. Some wines are going to be true to there varietals or regional flavors while some blends will leave you guessing and reaching in all directions for a hand full of different flavors. But what matters is narrowing it down, going from fruit to stone fruit to peach. Build up your own flavor and memory banks, try new things; you’d be amazed at the way it comes out in a wine. And length ties in to this a lot. So you taste peaches on a wine, so what if it’s gone in less than 5 seconds? (That would be a short finish) what if it tastes like dirt and it lasts for over 3 minutes? (That would be a long finish) the length of the wine should reflect the wine itself, specifically the quality. As far as measuring a length of time, I would say it’s mostly instinctual, but a 1-2 minute finish is where I like my wines because I typically try to pair food.

Before any of this can really be done, rather, before it can be done accurately, you need to make sure you’re in the right circumstances to taste. You need to not be sick, or have coffee breath, and please don’t have a smoke before you taste. Yes after a time these flavors become part of the back ground and you can say they wont impede your tasting and flavors. But what if you’re tasting a 1992 Freemark Abbey, where it’s got that gentle tobacco finish? It’s going to get lost ‘cause you’re used to that taste of cigarette tobacco on your pallet. Or espresso in a merlot after a tall triple shot mocha latte, or anything that offers small wisps of animal or telling the differences between cooked and stewed fruit when your sick and your senses are dulled. Not judging, just sayin’. I’m not to say don’t do have your cigar or your banana nut muffin, everyone’s got their own vice, but maybe don’t mix those vices with the wine.

Cheers!

Wine and You - The Restaurant

Carrying on with a series of ideas on how we interpret the commodity of wine, we have wine and the restaurant. As I said in the consumer-based post, there are a much higher percentage of people that are open to trying something new. Because most people treat dining out as a ‘new experience’ they become more open to the inspirations and suggestions of their fellow diners and service staff.  This gives us the ability to discuss, segue and over all generate conversation over a bottle, or glass, of wine and is an often-utilized tactic with people that you may not know or like. How do I know? Because I’ve used it.

For a restaurant there are many things to consider for their wine service, from staff knowledge and incentive to sell, wine makers dinners and tastings, the actually wine list and wine availability and how it goes together with their menu and atmosphere.

A restaurants service staff is like its front lines. They immediately reflect how much time and care the establishment has put into their wine. You want them trained, in how to serve wine, not just properly but with style, you want them knowledgeable and most importantly you want them to SELL. And I say that with no shame. Wine is a commodity, just as cars, paintings and toilet paper is. So you just gotta sell it.

So how do restaurants sell it? First and foremost you want your staff to know about the wines that you carry. From my personal experience in this side of the industry I know that most of the restaurants that pride themselves on their wine list will do tastings with their staff on all their wines by the glass. They can have different companies, some retailers and some importers, that will come in and train them on wines that they do by the bottle.  I LOVED these events, and quite honestly it’s where I started. I feel that providing staff training is not only good for sales but also very much drives staff moral. ‘Cause who wouldn’t want a glass of wine after work once a week? During these tastings we can also address staff incentive – “ if you sell the most glasses of XYZ wine then you get a free bottle to take home”. Uhhh Score! This is even more motivation for the staff to get out there, get educated and sell it to the patrons.

But how does the specific selling work? Way back when I was a server *insert flash back sequences here* I would often start out by trying to get to know my customer, seeing what they were in the mood for, even if they didn’t know the what they were ordering to eat yet. From there I would make a few suggestions and tell them why.  This is where a lot of food pairing knowledge came in handy. But more often than not it didn’t matter what they were having as long as I knew about the wine. For example (and I don’t mean to step on any toes here) the wines produced by Blasted Church in BC, were super easy to sell because they blew up a church; hence the name. Of course, my selling it was much more then “it got blowed up” but it made for a nifty story. And stories lead to conversation, conversations lead to memorable experiences and now suddenly you have a restaurant that has become a part of an experience. What greater publicity can you ask for?

Now, depending on the restaurant, there may be the possibility of wine makers dinners. This is where a wine maker, or producer actually comes in to the restaurant and host a dinner for 10 – 25 people. Typically the menu is crafted to specifically match the wines that the host represents.  They are an immense amount of fun and incredibly informative. If you ever get the chance to go to one of these – JUMP ON IT. You won’t regret it, I promise.  Typically tickets to these events are all inclusive. As in, they include dinner, drinks and typically as well gratuity.

The most essential item that a restaurant has in selling wine, aside from their staff, is their wine list. Just in case you don’t know what a wine list is lets go to wiki for a definition.

“A wine list is a menu of wine selections for purchase, typically in a restaurant setting. A restaurant may include a list of available wines on its main menu, but usually provides a separate menu just for wines. Wine lists in the form of tasting menus and wines for purchase are also offered by wineries and wine stores.”

Typically a wine list is built by the restaurants’ sommelier but there are some companies that offer this services to places that don’t employ sommeliers. Over all, an effective wine list covers all counties and appellations - within reason - and it accents, highlights and in some cases, compensates for their food menu. For example, if there is a lot of red meat on the menu, then you wont see a lot of white wine on the list. If there is a lot of spicy food, then you’re going to see a higher proportion of sweet wines on the list.

The retailer(s) the restaurants buy their wine from and also the availability to get the wines in the province (or state) can limit a wine list. However, a good wine list will have enough selection to compensate in the event of a shortage, or it should be updated to include wines that they can get. Over all a wine list is can be viewed like the restaurants resume of wines.

In general for what a wine is to a restaurant is still a commodity, but just like a painting it needs to fit with is surrounds and accent the decorum. A lot of time and preparation goes into the training of the people who sell and serve it, its availability to be sold and the way it interacts with the other components of the diners’ experience. Finely picked and cared for it can truly make a great restaurant exceptional.

Cheers!

Review 1884 Malbec Reservado 2009

Review - 1884 RESERVADO MALBEC 2009

SKU: 770925 

Agent: David Herman & Son Ltd. 

So last night was had a bit of a family get together dinner and we were pleasantly gifted with this deceiving little wine.

On the Nose; full, warm plump berries, red fruit but it was slightly restrained which I found surprising. With a lot of the Argentina wines I’ve had lately, it’s a bit like being assaulted with a fist of hot ripe fruit. I very much appreciated and enjoyed not being punched in the face by a wine

On the Pallet; Smooth, smoky and sweet, with soft tannins.  It has a short to medium finish. I didn’t find a lot of follow through on this one. It may have been due to the sweetness of it, which I think comes from the oak. But don’t get me wrong it wasn’t offensively sweet. I think this wine would make an excellent cold night next to the fireplace wine. I wouldn’t want to pair it with anything to heavy, because it’s so timid and reined in. For example I had this with BBQ’d burgers and I had to put the wine down while I was eating because it was all but lost in the meal.

Over all I like the throw back to the old malbec styles with wine, where it’s not the huge over the top fruit bombs like we’ve seen coming out of Australia in recent years. I liked that you could sit back and just enjoy it without the flavors and mouth feeling distracting me. But that is also its downfall in my opinion. It is soo mild, so if you are even considering pairing something with this, it’s going to be left behind.

 For under $15 a bottle and it being in most retail liquor stores it’s pretty easy to get your hands on. If you are looking for a cheap red to try with a friend or a date and watch a movie, over all I would recommend this one.

Cheers!

Wine and You - The Consumer

So I’m all set to start my WSET level 2 in the next 3 weeks.  But before I start up on all that fun stuff, I want to discuss with you a series of ideas on how we interpret the commodity of wine as consumers, retailers, restaurants, importers and makers. These aspects are all very much related.

First, and most importantly in my opinion, we have wine and the consumer. I am a wine consumer, and if you’re reading this blog, then I can only assume that you have consumed wine yourself. If not, then you should, I definitely recommend it.

When we go into a liquor store or a restaurant, what exactly are we looking for in a wine? Do we know what we want or do we let inspiration take us? Do we actually see it as an experience we are purchasing, be it the flavor of the wine or the company and atmosphere we whish to propagate?

Yes and no… ehh, lets go with “kinda”.

I think as a consumer we are looking for something that does speak to our specific taste and when we go shopping for a wine in a store, none of us bring a strict shopping list but we do have a motivation. Be it price point, varietal or food to go with it, we have something in mind. It’s not often we just magically find our selves in a liquor store with our eyes closed as we blindly fumble down the isle playing musical chairs with our wines. How ever entertaining that notion may be.

I would estimate that 4 out of 5 times that a normal consumer buys a wine from a liquor store, they have gone in for a purpose; be it a brand they recognize or a pairing they’ve been told about.  It’s safe. There is a list to follow. Just in and out. Hopefully there’re no lines.

But that 1 out of 5, and honestly them ain’t bad odds, will meander through the store, picking which isle to go down and looking at labels and reading descriptions. Waiting for a gem to call out to them so they can try something new. I think the BEST wine shops hire people that do that themselves. Because it takes one to know one. And while the staff may lose 15 minutes discussing 2003 California wines, the consumer is going to be happy as a clam, and satisfied with their experience even if they don’t take to the wine they’ve bought. And heaven forbid if one of these wine pioneers finds the boutique and high-end wine! The racks become library shelves and hours can be lost.

However when a consumer buys a wine in a restaurant, there is a much higher percentage that are open to trying something new. Most people I believe treat dining out as a ‘new experience’ and open to the inspirations and suggestions of their dining guests and service staff.  The whole notion of going out and ordering a bottle of wine with dinner, or even just a glass, is seen as an event and people are with peers where they can discuss this new experience.

I think a wine that will ultimately appeal to a consumer is one that they know about, which is hard, because lets face it. Wine isn’t self-explanatory. There are so many label variations, varietals, appellations and years that it simply cant be helped that you don’t know what the stuff in the bottle is going to taste like. I think some of the best ways to counteract this is simply to educate yourself. Ask your friends, what wines they drink what they like in wine and why. Or ask your store clerk, or your server. If you’re too shy to ask, or if you are unfortunate enough to have been dealing with someone who knows less then you do, then Google is going to be your best friend. But even then, it’s not like buying a liter of Pepsi, where it’s the same flavor every time. Get informed on your wines and keep an open mind. Just as it is with most product choices; you wouldn’t go with the first insurance company you found, you’d shop around and see what other quotes you could get and educate yourself.

And yes, I know for most people picking a wine isn’t as important as insurance. Well, maybe for me it is. Kinda.

Cheers!

Review - 2009 Michael and David Vineyards 6th Sense Petite Syrah

Review 2009 Michael & David Vineyards 6^th Sense Petite Syrah Lodi California

It’s a petite syrah not actually a syrah. The difference being?? The flavor, syrah has always stuck me as more of a jam based Australian wine but that’s probably because the time frame that I was first really introduced into wine, Calgary had HUGE influx of big jammy auzzie wines. All you had to do to sell a $100 bottle of wine was tell them it grew next to a kangaroo farm and was personally touched by Steve Irwin. The wines themselves were the kind of wines where it felt as if you were punched in the mouth by the grape Kool-Aid guy. OHHH YEAHH!! Not a lot of finesse. Just FRUIT.

 With petite syrah I find it to be a lot more about then finesse. Similar to Pinot Noir in that it has got some class and style to it. But much heavier on the smoke, cedar and forest flavors. If pinot noir is Lumière  from Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”, petite syrah would be Cogsworth.

Just like all of Michael & David creations, the marketing on it is fantastic! The Back of the wine bottle has an eerie poem and is reportedly named after a relative of theirs whom had a 6^th senses himself!

I smell with one nose, an ancient black rose, a memory lingering, briefly exposed. I see with two eyes, through shadows and lies, a secret revealing, wrapped in disguise. I hear with my ears, three fallen tears, echoing softly, heightening my fears. I taste with my tongue, my panics begun, four sides enclosed, melding as one. I touch with my hands, a sinister plan, five fingers discerning where I do stand. I sense with my mind, a thought so unkind. I’m trapped six feet under in a bottle of wine.

On the Nose we get good oak and smoky aromas with a hint of vanilla and dark fruits. But it doesn’t really give any hints to the pallet.

On the pallet I find that it has this incredible full mouth feel that I was having trouble describing but is so a kin to bacon fat that its unreal. It stands up with cracked black pepper and a variety of dried herbs and dark berries.

It was absolutely delicious and a great mid-level wine for someone who doesn’t want to invest into the $90 trio of seven deadly Zins done by the same makers

Cheers!

Daily dose of yesterday - Day 4 of the WSET foundation course

So in the last night of the WSET wine training we, again, covered a pretty mass amount of material. From locally produced wine to wines out of Italy, Portugal and Spain. We covered tips on purchasing and working in the business. We then reviewed and had our exam.

Out of all the topics I think the Canadian wine was the most interesting.

We stared with a very brief history of wine in Canada, specifically in BC. Over all its safe to say that it wasn’t that bloody eventful. People go drunk, it was deemed bad, and they kept getting drunk anyways. But here are a few points that I thought were neat.

1860  -           The first Canadian vineyard was planted by Father Pandosy for his church and personal use at the Oblate missionary near what is now Kelowna

1916 - 1922 -Prohibition came to Canada. Pfft! See how long that lasted… and how well too…

1974  -            There were 3000 resisted acres are dedicated to grapes and vineyards

1984  -            There are 13 registered wineries registered in British Columbia

1988  -            We get free trade and we drop to only 1,000 vineyard acres’. This is because the government paid the growers over $8,000 and acre to focus on quality as apposed to quantity.

1990  -            We see a huge boom in vine planting in BC because the VQA is adopted as wine law. It forced BC growers to ensure that their wines were 100% produced inside of BC.

1994  - Mission Hills Winery wins IWSC and the real BC wine boom begins

2011  -            We have over 160 wineries and over 10,000 acres dedicated to grape and wine production

In addition to the history we also talked a bit about the different growing regions and what the VQA means for wines coming out of Canada.

The biggest region that I think everyone will know is the Okanagan. This includes sub regions like Kelowna, Naramata, Osoyoos Westbank, and Summerland. The climates here are fairly continental, with a hot dry south and cooler north. Its soils having a very wide range, from sandy in some regions and volcanic in others.

Some of the lesser-known regions are the Frasier valley and the Similkameen valley. The Frasier valley has a more humid climate that produces small local but hearty red wines, like Merlot, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. I’m not overly familiar with the Similkameen valley but its relative lack of lakes would make for cheaper and more arid climate.

In the end our wine history is really just a little blip on the entire history of wine and grape growing. But its still relatively neat to see where we started from and all the little steps we have taken to get to where we are now.

Cheers!

Lady in Red - day 3 of wine training

So on the third day of wine training with WSET we covered a fair bit of information. We talked about wine and health, services and storage and the main red grape varieties. The most interesting of all these being the last one. Obviously.

Okay so how do we get the "red" into a wine and why does it vary between wines? Great question! Basically when the grapes are crushed, they are left to sit on “the must”. The must is the pulp, the skin and sometimes even the stems of the grapes.

The wine then goes into a process called maturation; this is where the juice and the must are kind of stirred together to help extract the tannins and flavors out of the must. Some other methods are racking and pressing, but maturation is the most effect and time efficient.

Now, our biggest red wine varietals are Pinot Noir (my personal obsession), Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Syrah/Shiraz. Now each varietal is going to be different because of their terrior, any blending, aging, what they are barreled in, and countless other things that wine makers do to make a wine their own. However each grape is going to have its own set of boundaries that it exists in so lets take a look at some of those.

Pinot Noir – aka The Heart Break Grape

This wine is typically very light in it colour, this is because the grape skins them selves are very thin. This wine is also considered This wine is light to medium body, medium acidity and dry, with soft tannins, often described as elegant, complex, with finesse and this sort of elusive power. I don’t know about you but the last one might be a bit much but it is a very sexy kind of wine when done well. Coming from a variety of places it is known best from Burgundy (mid region of Burgundy is known for an earthy barn quality in their wine), Oregon (because this is considered a newer region they are prone to a lot of vintage variation, but we are seeing some really great stuff starting to come out), New Zealand (pinot noir is the second most grape produced there and for good reason. They produce some of the world’s finest light and fruity pinot noirs) and Champagne (pinot noir is one of the 3 grapes they use in the bubbly).  As for flavors in most pinot noirs you get a range from cherries, strawberries, vegetal, spice, red fruits and even to that French barnyard I was talking about earlier.

Merlot – “if any body orders merlot, I’m leaving!”

Merlot, despite its Hollywood bad rap is actually quite the little grape. Remarkably resilient, incredibly versatile and has the ability to stand up to almost anything. Even bad PR. Often deep in colour, dry and medium to full body but softer and more approachable then a Cabernet Sauvignon, ages incredibly well in top tier wines. We see a lot of well-done Merlots coming from places like Bordeaux (St.Emilion and Pomerol), California (Sonoma and Napa) and Chile. With right bank French Merlots we have vines that are grown in clay and moist soils, where they absolutely thrive!

In my honest opinion I believe that merlots, or any wines for that matter, are always going to be better when done in small 10 to 30 thousand lots rather then being mass-produced.

Cabernet Sauvignon – Rawr

This wine is usually deep in colour, dry, medium to full body, firm and grippy tannins, often blended, it matures well and has huge aging potential. Some of its key regions are Bordeaux (left bank specifically because its gravel and these vines don’t like to get their feet wet), California (single varietal wines that often have a benchmark flavor of dill), Australian, specifically Barossa Valley and Chile – Colchagua Province (where we see a lot of mint and cassis, and over all is excellent value on cabernets).  Some of the main flavors we find are black currant, cedar, bell pepper in cooler site, but this is often seen as a fault. Over all we get complex earthy notes and tobacco. It’s typically ages in some sort of oak barrels where we can get another huge range of flavors.

Syrah/Shiraz – What’s in a name?

Theses two wines are actually the same grape, deep colour, full bodied and rich. Medium to high tannins, and yet another very versatile grape. Some of its most common regions are Northern Rhones, France, where it can age 10- 20 years, Hermitage, where it can age 30 – 40 years, and Côte-Rôtie. Out of Barossa Australia we see wines that are developing towards hedonistic flavors with. With this grape we taste a lot of spice! White pepper to baking spice, black and blue berries, raisins, leather, black current, and smoked meat. This wine is often oaked to soften tannins.

There are thousand of types of grapes that are produced through out the world, these just happen to be the most main stream ones that I know of. If you want a complete list you can click here, but as this blog goes on I’ll go into discussing them as we meet them.

Cheers!

Blush, Rosé , Pink, and Delicious

 So I know I’m going through my 4 week course with WSET here in Calgary but I had some one ask why pink wines are pink, so I’m going to interrupt my flow again with a quick service announcement.



 There are really only 2 ways that rosé wines are created. One being a strictly controlled skin contact process with the red grape must. This is where grapes are pressed quickly, as to only extract a clear white juice for fermentation. Typically the juice is only left to sit on the must for 12- 48 hours depending on the grape and the amount of colour you wish to extract from it ( light blush to a vibrant pink). The other is to actually blend white and red juice together at some point in the wine making process. That is really winery specific for what they want to achieve with their wine. Also you can blend a pink juice with white juice to achieve the same thing.  



 Typically with a rosé wine you see a rather short maturation time, and typically it’s in stainless steel to help keep the rich fruit flavors in the juice, as it is impenetrable to oxygen. But it can also be done in concrete and oak barrels. The oak will impart vanilla and spices in to a wine, along with softening acids and giving it a bit of micro oxidization, this is where we start to come across rosés that have a creamier and dustier colour.

 I haven’t seen a lot of concrete barrels used but my understanding is that the porous nature of concrete allows a slight blending of vintages through the years. I’ve only ever really heard of this being used in the big robust reds but I don’t see why it wouldn’t have applications in all types of wines

 As the wine ages, either in the barrels or in the bottles, it may change in colour as well. However most rosé wines are bottled and available to consumers at a rather young age, compared to the white and red wines, that this isn’t necessarily applicable. They are sent out young because of their light, fruity and refreshing nature. Too much time and they could start to lose their acids and get dull.

 Cheers!