Happy Hallowed Wine

Wine, in its Western world form in any rate, owes a great debt to religion. Long linked to the Judeo-Christian forms of worship, wine evolved in Europe differently than in the East. Mostly.

When I was in China most of the European style wines were actually being made by Europeans. The traditional styled Chinese wines are more akin to medicine, than a delightful sipper. At first blush this looks different than what most of us think of as wine, but then there is cold medicine.

Alcohol's ability to relax us is often overlooked. Many people drink wine because it is less intoxicating than a cocktail. It has a mellower buzz as it were - and some wines have different buzzes altogether, but that is for another column.

The health benefits that many studies have shown wine to possess come in no small part from stress reduction. I am not advocating wine in any form or shape as medicinal (no need to dial your attorneys quite yet), but it certainly has been considered so throughout history, even in Europe.

And so it is that wine has been prescribed for centuries for everything that ails us, including our spiritual health (bet you wondered how I was going to work that back in, huh?).

It is only because wine was considered so important for our physical and spiritual health that it evolved into today's favorite quaff. Thought history grape growing regions have been under pressure to switch to food crops. Only the need for wine as a sacrament, and its reported curative attributes, staved off the plows.

As the churches continued to nurture the vine, so did they learn more about growing grapes and making wine (many a monk had time on his hands). By the time of the French Revolution, which placed the vine into the hands of the secular, there was a rich tradition on which to build.

Meanwhile, China revered wine for its medicinal prowess above all, and so today we have examples of wine that would be unrecognizable to the rest of the world. Seeped through herbs, infused with everything from flowers to male animal parts (remind me to tell you about this one some time), Chinese traditional wines are down right spooky by Western standards.

In Europe wine science overtook superstition and the beverage continued to improve into the reliable and consistent products we have today. So on this day of superstition and reverence to things hallowed, I tip my hat to the history of wine in Europe and give at least a nod to its traditional medicinal use.

So what wine goes with Halloween Candy? A nice sweet Orange Muscat of course.

Excuse my forwardness

One of the great things about teaching, is how much you learn. While this term was not new to me, I was surprised to find how universal the concept was for my students. They immediately understood the distinction between Fruit Forward and Structure Forward wines.

A wine that is balanced on the side of the fruit is fruit forward. Wines that emphasize acidity and tannin over fruit, are structure forward. Most wines tend to fall into one of these two classes, and as often as not, it is a geographical distinction.

Wines of the New World tend to be fruitier. The wines of Europe tend to be more structured. Some may equate this with the outgoing nature of the New World, but I think it has less to do with taste and more to do with application, and climate.

Europe can be grey and dingy compared to some wine making regions in the New World (with California being the notable example). Sunshine translates to higher sugar potential, and since sugar and acidity are in inverse proportion in the ripening grape, these sun soaked wines will almost always lean towards the fruitier side.

In the US in particular, wine is often served as and almost considered, a cocktail. In Europe people are brought up with wine at the table. They are used to having it served with most meals, and so they almost always have food with their wines.

Structured wines tend to be less delightful when they are just consumed on their own, as opposed to with a meal. The acidity in particular is tempered by the addition of food, and occasionally the food is that much better for the accompaniment.

This does not mean that fruit forward wines do poorly with food, but the emphasis on fruit over acidity does make them easier to enjoy on their own.

This emphasis on fruit reaches its apex in the wines made from the Zinfandel grape. While almost all Zins are fruit forward, some like Turley and Biale can be so intensely fruity as to have detractors. Personally I love these types of wines, so I will not join in with the nay sayers.

Taste comes into play when you select a wine. The winemakers have already made their choice and have emphasized fruit or structure (or in same scenarios found a perfect balance between the two). Now you have to choose.

Do you want a wine that is easy to enjoy before a bite of food has passed your lips, or do you want a wine that will create a synergistic food pairing (the whole being greater than the sum of the parts)?

It is harder to make a fruit forward wine in the Old World than it is to make a structure forward wine in the New. Wine making techniques are leveling the playing field, but for fruit lovers, the wines of the Americas, and Australasia will always have an edge.

For those that prefer their wines to be a bit more austere, with the hopes for a greater food affinity, Europe will almost always be your first choice.

I am well known for preferring a nice Zin to an Italian wine, especially of comparable cost. Now I have an easy way to explain my inclination. Fruit vs. structure. It is all a matter of taste, both yours, and the wine's.

Oh, and for those of you keeping track, this posting could be considered the second anniversary of this blog.

White Powder and Wine

As I was cutting drywall to repair the damage from our recent flood, I couldn't help but notice the copious amounts of white powder collecting around my feet. Mysterious white powders have a villainy of their own in this day and age, and yet being the wine guy I am, that was not what came to my mind. [Interestingly enough it wasn't until I was coming up with the title for this blog that the other infamous white powders Aspen is known for came to me.]

Instead what popped into my wine soaked brain was Diatomaceous Earth. Diatoms are microscopic algae that have been around as long as life on earth has. Given the right circumstances when they die, they fossilize into a rock called diatomite. It is the powdered version of this that is used in filtering wine.

Few parts of the wine making process give rise to more controversy than filtering wine. I am already on the record, more than thrice, for defending the practice, when done correctly.

So why the hoopla? Why have some importers such as Kermit Lynch based their reputations on not filtering wine? The easy answer is that done poorly, filtering is bad for the wine.

Wine filters are not altogether that different than coffee filters. A piece of paper with specific sized holes is used to trap the impurities. in the case of wine, and many other forms of filtering, the addition of a powder such as diatomaceous earth can trap even more of anything undesirable in wine.

The trick is in using appropriate technology. You don't want to filter out the good parts of the wine. A half century ago this may have been a hit or miss proposition, but the amount of precise control in modern applications has greatly reduced the dangers of this valuable technique.

Bacteria in wine is not a good thing. While we want it there (in the form of yeast) during the wine making process, we want the wine to be sterile when it is bottled. Otherwise, the wine can become slightly sparkling (frizante) in the bottle, and even cause the bottle to explode. Any number of off aromas and undesirable flavors may also be found in wine that is less than sterile.

This is but one of the main reasons to filter (usually as a secondary filtering just before bottling).

In this day and age a cloudy wine is an aberration. Most consumers are distraught to see signs of the totally harmless tartaric precipitate (little crystals you find on the cork sometimes). Imagine how they would react to a wine that had various bits of stuff (colloidal matter) floating about.

Sure, finding the right combination of filtering materials and pressure as well as protecting from exposure to oxygen are all parts of what makes filtering a challenge; but the results are a brilliantly clear, sterile wine, with all of its flavors and aromas intact.

The alternative, simply skipping the filtering step, seems to be the easy way out, with lowered expectations.

And so I throw a gauntlet into the face of Kermit Lynch and any and all others that eschew filtering out of hand. If you think that your way is better, prove it to me with a double blind tasting. Let me see your procedures and data, and or better yet, let me participate.

In the mean time, and since I don't expect to receive an invitation soon, try the tasting yourself. While you will rarely have the chance to try the same wine both filtered and unfiltered, you can find similar wines. Just look for "unfiltered" on the label, and try to find a wine of the same type, region and vintage.

Do it more than once, with different types of wine. Come to your own conclusions, and let us all know what you think.