Decoding the wine list [ March 20th, 2010 ] Posted in » Wine Article archive, wine education
There’s a secret to ordering wine at a restaurant. But like making cheap long distance phone calls–first you have to know the code. Most restaurants have two wine lists. There’s the one they put on your table, which may be as simple as a choice between the house red and the house white, or as complex as the blueprint for the B-2 bomber. This first wine list is the public list, known as the “regular” or “standard” list. The second list, the “reserve,” is the one kept in the back for the true connoisseurs, and the prices reflect the rarity of the wines. This list is for people with expertise and the financial wherewithal to indulge their tastes. If you’re someone who is used to buying off this second list, you’re way ahead of us.
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Any wine is a product of fermented juice of various fruits and fruit. Wines are classified in many ways affecting both the physical properties of wine, and with the qualitative characteristics.
The skin of grapes and derived from it during fermentation tannins, pigments and aromatic substances are paramount in the creation of red wine. During the fermentation, and often after its completion, is the extraction of poly phenols. The art of creating red wine - to make this process efficient and on time to stop him. As for the white varieties, an important criterion for the maturity of red grapes is the level of sugar and acids in berries, as well as the quantity and quality of tannins in their skin and bones.
Malcolm Kushner has done the often too stuffy world of wine a favor by writing the long awaited book “Vintage Humor for Wine Lovers.” To this point, wine humor was generally limited to an occasional cartoon in The New Yorker, too often about a wine snob.