by Brothers Drake
Is it like wine? Or is it like beer?Mead is alcohol made from honey. It is not wine and it is not beer. It’s mead.There are 3 basic forms of fermented alcohol in human history: There is beer, wine, and mead. We enjoy them all! However, all of them start from some kind sugar and it is the source and amount of sugar that primarily defines the fermentation style:If the primary sugar source is grain, it is beer.If the primary sugar source is fruit, it is wine.If 50% or more of the sugar source is honey, it is mead.Mead is not a kind of wine or a kind of beer. It is historically our 1st major form of fermented alcohol because we had access to honey everywhere we hunted or gathered food. It’s an amazing gift from nature… and it’s the mother of wine and beer. Humankind had mead lo...
by Ron Kapon
Americans love lists so while visiting Graycliff Hotel and Restaurant in mid-December I asked owner Enrico Garzaroli how many bottles of wine were in his cellar. He mentioned 250,000 so I researched larger cellars to compare and came up with two names: Berns Steak House in Tampa, Florida has 500,000 bottles and Tour d’Argent in Paris has 450,000 bottles. Graycliff has at least a container load of each of the 10 wines they serve by the glass (that’s 40-ft containers). The majority of the wines are direct buys from the winery or several wineries close by, so to minimize the transportation costs they receive wines by the container load, not just a couple of cases here and there.Captain Howard Graysmith, a famous pirate of the Caribbean, originally built the Graycliff mansion in 1740. In ...
by Paul W. Jameson
How many times have you read a wine review or had a wine salesman tell you, “this wine really expresses its terroir,” and you nod knowingly without knowing what that person is talking about?Can you taste slate in a wine whose grapes were grown on soil covered with slate? Does a wine smell and taste the way it does because of the exact place where the grapes were grown? One of the most controversial concepts in wine is the notion of terroir (pronounced tair WAHR). At a basic level, terroir is the characteristics of the particular place in which the grapes were grown—including soil and subsoil, elevation and aspect, precipitation, air flow, water drainage, sunlight, and temperature—that give a distinctive aroma and flavor to the wine. For some, terroir is more mystical than that,...
by Stefanie Phillips
Anyone who knows about wine will tell you there’s no better way to learn about it than through the senses. This means tasting, smelling and analyzing. There is a lot to learn and wine tastings are the best way to affordably taste a variety of wines. Company representatives can also offer their knowledge and recommendations. Even if you are just beginning to learn about wine, there is no reason to feel intimidated or overwhelmed.The best way to start learning about wine is by identifying characteristics of varietals and regions. This allows for development of wine knowledge and your own personal tastes. You may also discover wines you never have tasted before and find wines you didn’t think you liked. For example, California chardonnay is oaky and buttery from aging in oak barrels, but ...
by Laura Ness
Pinot Noir is like a paramecium: it evolves constantly. In a matter of moments, it can change personality like single-celled creatures under a microscope, becoming a bipolar calamity, even turning into Cerberus, dog of the underworld. Hey, wait!! I liked you better before you grew two heads! That’s Pinot for you. Don’t turn your back on the possibility that the golden retriever you loved at first sniff can turn into the Rottweiler that will bite the back of your tongue off upon ingestion. Few wines can masquerade as something so jailbaity on the nose and turn into such long prison sentences when they cross your lips. Ouch. And that’s on a normal day, when conditions are ideal. Pinot, you are a harlot.logo1At the Pinot Shootout finals (organized by Barbara Drady of Affairs of the Vine...
by Paul W. Jameson
A major trend in wine sales in the last couple of decades has been the increasing reliance on point scores to sell wines. Retail shops make sure to have shelf talkers hanging by wines that have scored well. Ads proclaim “90 point wine by Robert Parker!” or “91 point wine by Wine Spectator!” When a customer goes into a store to choose from a vast selection of wines, he or she often feels that lacking any other means to judge a wine, a point score is the best way to decide.One hundred point scoring systems were introduced into the wine world by Robert Parker in the late ‘70s, when, if point scoring was done at all, it was done on a 20-point scale. The Department of Viticulture and Enology at the University of California at Davis had a 20-point system that subtracted or awarded ...
by Stefanie Phillips
Whether storing wine in a cellar, wine refrigerator or even a converted closet, there are some fundamental rules to follow in terms of light exposure, temperature, humidity, orientation, odors, vibration and movement.Though most of the wine we buy in the United States in meant to be opened within two to three years, you may be storing something older and valuable in your wine cellar that you want to improve with age. Storing wine correctly will ensure it ages properly.Light ExposureWhy are most wine cellars dimly lit? Direct light, particularly sunlight and fluorescent light, is damaging and can cause unpleasant odors. Some bottles protect wine from UV rays better than others, but wine should be kept in a dark place to avoid spoilage. If you can’t avoid all light sources, store the bottl...
by Tom Lewis
Most of Burgundy's wines come from just two grapes - Chardonnay for whites and Pinot Noir for reds - and they could not be more different in their fortunes.For whilst Chardonnay has found a home just about everywhere that wine is made, success with Pinot Noir has proven more elusive and very few places can claim to have any real success with it.When oaked, Chardonnay generally produces reliable wines with easy-drinking tropical fruit and layers of rich, buttery toffee, whilst Pinot's hedonistic mix of red-berry fruit, truffley forest floor and soft texture is much harder to achieve (and to find) consistently.Moreover, whilst a bottle of Chardonnay is often amongst the cheapest on the supermarket shelf, any Pinot at under a tenner is something of a bargain - even better if it's halfway dece...
by Tom Lewis
Aeration is the process of bring wine into contact with air - as wine is a living, breathing product, it changes over time and exposure to air is the main factor in causing those changes.Wine's complex relationship with air starts during fermentation, be it in stainless steel tanks, concrete or oak. Then there is aging - again in tanks or oak, followed by bottle-aging either under cork, synthetic stopper, screw-cap or some other closure.The size of bottle will also be a factor - magnums, for example, have twice the amount of wine with the same amount of air.Finally, there is the serving - pouring either straight from a bottle or into a broad-bottomed decanter, whilst the size and shape of the tasting glass will also be a factor.Given all this, I wondered whether there is any way to predict...
by David Gaier
It’s not only a lot of fun but also a great learning experience when you get to sit down and talk with a winemaker (without his boss around).I had the pleasure of doing just that at a small, private tasting sponsored by Snooth, an online wine database and portal for consumers to find and purchase wine online. The winemaker, Concha Y Toro’s Marcelo Papa, joined the company about 12 years ago with degrees in agriculture and winemaking, and a ton of experience at Viñedos Emiliana, a pioneer in organic winemaking in Chile five years with that behemoth of the US wine industry Kendall-Jackson. He worked two harvests each year, one in California and the other at K-J’s Viña Calina in Chile, and took lessons learned in each place to the other.Concha is part of a real renaissance in Chilean ...
