A Mouthful of Wine

DIY Wine Blends

In the middle of a geeky phase of wine study, I once visited a generous friend with a well stocked cellar who brought out three Bordeaux from different appellations so I could guess which was which when presented with unidentified glasses of wine. I was very pleased with myself. Then someone else handed me a glass to see if I could duplicate my results. And I was stumped! Why had the wine changed so much? I reasoned, I talked it through, I made a guess. Then the friend confessed he had mixed two of the wines. Touché.

Most wines are blends in one way or another. Either wines made from different grapes have been blended (as in a traditional blend such as Côtes du Rhône), or same wines that have been given different treatments are combined to create a final blend (an example would be a single-vineyard Chardonnay, some of which has been aged in oak and some in stainless steel, to achieve a final Chardonnay with a subtler oak presence). But these wines are blended in the cellar by a winemaker.

I’m talking about self-mixology. You might think this is sacrilege, but who says that what comes in the bottle is perfectly tailored to you? Some people add sparkling water, or ice. Others suffer through a wine with too much tannin for their taste, or one that’s sweeter than they’d like.

A few nights ago after a tasting, I was looking for something to sip and enjoy. But the tasting was of Bordeaux reds—not always the most sippable wines without food. One of the wines, a Lalande de Pomerol, was very light-bodied, almost watery, lacking structure but with decent flavor. On the other end of the spectrum was a Cru Bourgeois Superieur from the Haut-Médoc, a cabernet-based wine that was impressively intense, but too tannic for sipping. I added a dash of it to the weaker wine and came up with something reasonable and fairly pleasing.

The “rules” of DIY blending are to combine only same-grape wines or wines that are commonly blended by the winemaker, such as Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon, or Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. It doesn’t always work out, but sometimes the best of two options is to create a third.

The Art of the Slurp

Only with wine is slurping encouraged. Observers may assume the wine slurp is a pretentious insider move, but before you balk: Slurping is the best way to get at retronasal aromas, from airborne molecules that rise into your nasal cavity from your throat when wine (or for that matter, all kinds of un-slurpable foods) is in your mouth.

You can help this process along by drawing air through the wine in your mouth—the air will pick up volatile aromas as it goes—and exhaling it through your nose. To do this, take a medium sip of wine, purse your lips, and, with your tongue lying in the bottom of your mouth, draw air in through the wine. Close your throat (if you don’t, you’ll inhale the wine—with explosive results) and exhale through your nose. If you’re doing it right you 

a) won’t choke; 

b) won’t dribble wine from your lips; and 

c) will make a slurping sound that contradicts everything your mother told you about table manners. 

The amount of wine you take in your sip is key—too little and you’ll smell nothing, too much and you’ll dribble on your shirt.

The retronasal aromas should confirm and add further detail to the nasal aromas—those you detected when the wine was in the glass. For example, maybe you first noticed a citrussy note and now you can tell that it’s actually grapefruit.

And what are a few rude sounds to stand between you and a greater enjoyment of wine?

High-Alcohol Wines: Not So Difficult After All?

The common wisdom in wine and food pairing is that high-alcohol wines (those above, say, 14% by volume—the number is on the label in small type) are incompatible with food, difficult to pair because the wines overwhelm the food and take center stage, a no-no in the pairing game.

It is true that wines with high alcohol can taste “hot” if they are not well balanced; they can have a huge, mouth-filling body; they can even seem somewhat sweet due to a common effect of alcohol, as well as the incredibly ripe fruit that many present on the palate. These are not go-to wines for food, and many wine lovers eschew them altogether as unsubtle and lacking nuance.

Recently, though, at the annual conference of the Society of Wine Educators in Washington, D.C., chef Tony Lawrence presented a fascinating seminar called “Wine & Food Pairing: The High Alcohol Myth,” with Mark Chandler, of the Lodi Winegrape Commission.

Lodi lies south of Sacramento near the northern end of California’s Central Valley. The area is home to some big wines, and those served at the seminar ranged from 14.6% to 16.7% alcohol, six reds (cab, syrah, tempranillo, and zin) and two whites (marsanne and a viognier blend). Chef Lawrence prepared eight diverse sauces—from fresh Jersey tomato sauce to a maple beef coulis to lemon verbena caper sauce—presented with a tiny spoon, to mix and match with these wines. It was one of the more fun tastings I’ve attended.

If the huge body and richness of high-alcohol wines are one of the main pairing problems, Lawrence planned his sauces well: All of them had an intensity of flavor that stood up to the intensity of the wines. St. Amant Winery Marian’s Vineyard Old Vine Zinfandel and Macchia’s Soucie Vineyard Old Vine Zin (at 15.8 and 16.7% respectively) paired flawlessly with a chocolate blue cheese coulis.

Perhaps equally important was that each of the sauces was distinctly sweet—a quality that helped the sauces balance the sweet impression of some of these wines, whether coming from alcohol, extracted fruit, or oak.

Lawrence stressed throughout the tasting that it is important to serve the wines cool, not at room temperature. As our perception of alcohol’s “heat” is greater at higher temperature, lightly chilling the wines reduces this heat, making it less of an obstacle in food pairing.

Regardless of one’s opinion of high-alcohol wines—and there are strongly held opinions—they can be paired with food successfully if the richness and intensity of the wines is the foremost consideration.

Perfect Panna Cotta Pairing

My father likes Moscato D’Asti, so when I went home recently for a visit, I brought a variation on the usual offering: Elio Perrone’s Bigarò 2009 ($25), a frizzante rosé wine with very low alcohol (5%) because the grape must is only partially fermented. Because of this, too, some of the grape sugar remains in the wine, for a lightly sweet effect. The rosé color comes from 50% Brachetto grapes, a black Piedmont variety that is blended with the white Moscato variety. The Brachetto also lends notable raspberry and bramble aromas to a wine that would, as Moscato alone, be floral with light nectarine or tropical aromas, but there is also a distinct grape juice flavor here. It’s Moscato d'Asti with a wild streak.  

Meanwhile, my mother was testing recipes on us—one of the best reasons to go home. She happened to choose a Blackberry Buttermilk Panna Cotta with Blackberry Compote that was just a little less sweet than the wine, and whose berry flavors and slight buttermilk sourness played off the wine beautifully—the kind of pairing where the wine and the food each create nuances in the other that weren’t there before. It couldn’t have happened better if we’d planned it.

A Good Question: The Word "Dry"

The question came up at a tasting a few nights ago: If my mouth feels dry when I drink a wine with tannin, is that what a “dry wine” means?

The answer is no. The word is valid to describe the dry, cottony feeling caused by red wine tannins on your cheeks and gums, but a dry wine is something different. It is a wine in which almost all of the natural grape sugars at harvest have been consumed by yeast during fermentation (and converted to alcohol)--that is, it's a wine with very little sugar. The level of sugar left in a wine that can be considered dry is determined by law in each wine region. Over that level, the wine is considered “off-dry” or a number of other terms describing the sugar level on an ascending scale to "sweet." So, if you ask for a wine that is “not too dry,” you risk being poured a slightly sweet wine. If you like a wine with low tannin, you’ll need to ask for exactly that.

Water Into Wine

In an interview of Cameron Diaz in a fashion magazine I perused a few days ago, the writer mentions that Diaz adds ice cubes to her white wine as they sit talking at Gemma on the Bowery. The comment seemed meant to suggest that Diaz takes a relaxed approach to life, that she doesn’t get hung up on rules. This made me wonder about the rest of us: Why don’t we put ice in white wine? Are we hung up on some outmoded rule?  

Adding ice to a drink has two results: it chills the drink, and it dilutes it as the ice melts. Chilling is often desirable for more than its refreshing effect. In cocktails, for instance, a chill inhibits your perception of “heat” from the high alcohol. In wine, high alcohol is not an issue, but heavily chilling a wine can cover a multitude of winemaking sins. (Someone brought plonk to your party? Chill the heck out of it and then serve—it will be refreshing, and too cold to taste much.) Still, this is easily done with 20 minutes in the freezer—no ice necessary.

Some whisky drinkers order their whisky with water or a single ice cube because they feel the slight dilution opens the drink to their senses, allowing them to perceive enhanced aromas through the alcohol. Diluting wine, on the other hand, can be taboo. If you were drinking a fine white Burgundy, for instance, you wouldn’t want to dilute its subtle nuances with meltwater (although, see Dr. Vino’s recent post on this subject). Sometimes the goal is a practical one, though: Infrequent drinkers of white wine and rosé often ask for ice (or a spritzer) to intentionally dilute the drink and delay the effect of the alcohol.

I suggest we take a cue from Cameron and update the rules. Today, the vast majority of white wine sold in the U.S. is inexpensive and meant to be opened within a year of the vintage. Much of it is made in huge plants, like any other popular beverage. Why shouldn’t we treat it like one and toss in a few cubes? The straw is optional.