Archive for the ‘wine tasting’ Category
Thus unleashing the correct flavor of a wine you need depending on the wine glass and a corresponding. Nowadays wine of colorless, thin and uncut stemware is drunk. The advantage of a clear drinking glass is placed on the hand. One can judge the wine color is better, without touching the glass. This would in fact change the temperature of the wine. The fragrances can also develop a better swing in such glasses when.
White wine is drunk from small glasses, white wine because red wine as opposed to approximately 8-10 ° C is drunk. A small glass has the advantage that it takes only a little wine. This makes the glasses emptied quickly and not heat up so quickly. Because red wine is drunk warm, at about 16-18 ° C, one can enjoy it from larger glasses. For in a larger glass can develop the flavor better.
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For over 150 years Australian winemakers produce (mainly in NSW) heavy, high alcohol port- and sherry-like dessert wines. Resistance from Europe now led to the fact that terms such as “Port”, “Sherry”, “Hermitage”, etc. disappear. That does not detract from the quality and superior price-performance ratio. One of the most famous producer Peter van Gent is in Mudgee / NSW, which produces an outstanding Tawny Port. Absolutely at the top and sweet wines won gold medals with a hundred-fold Darren De Bortoli Botrytis Semillon’s “Noble One”.
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The most important red wines are Shiraz (very juicy, spicy) with approximately 37,000 ha, Cabernet Sauvignon (aroma of pepper, elegant) with about 29,000 ha, Merlot (striking, circular) with approximately 10,000 ha, Pinot Noir (very creamy) with approximately 4,300 hectares and Ruby Cabernet
Often, Shiraz, Merlot and Cabernet and Chardonnay and Semillon to “blends” are (cuvees) married. The Australian “Winemaker” are on the art of assemblage. In the heavyweight Shiraz have some very highest quality, for example, a Rockford Hoffman Vineyard.
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The vineyards of Australia in 2002 was about 160,000 ha (including grapes). About 40% of production in the white wines. On approximately 62,000 acres of vines are the white varieties Chardonnay (strong and spicy) with approximately 24,000 ha, Semillon (elegant) with approximately 6,000 acres, Riesling (fruity, sweet and noble) with approximately 4,000 hectares and Sauvignon Blanc (fine aromatic) grown to about 2,800 ha.
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Understanding the wine you taste is only half the battle; communicating your impressions to others in words is just as big a challenge. And since the wine itself disappears as you drink it, verbal descriptions are the only way to preserve the pleasure wine provides.
It’s easy to ridicule our feeble attempts to put wine into words. Perhaps the most famous satire on tasting notes is a James Thurber cartoon: Three people at a dinner table look quizzically at their host, who’s got a glass in his hand and a manic look in his eye, saying, “It’s merely a naive domestic Burgundy, but I think you’ll be amused by its presumption.”
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More people choose wines by their labels than are comfortable admitting it. Novices reach for pretty pictures; snobs demand famous names. But in fact, a wine label reveals a great deal about the flavors in the bottle. You can begin your tasting even before you’ve pulled the cork.
There are basically three kinds of labels: varietal-based, terroir-based and sheer fantasy. The information they offer–much of it required by law–overlaps to a large extent, but each one reflects a different approach to winemaking.
Have you ever bought a Chardonnay? Then you’re already familiar with the varietal approach: wines named for the grape variety that makes up all (or some legally defined minimum) of the juice in the bottle. California pioneered this method, and most of the New World producers have adopted it. However, some European wine regions–Alsace in France, Friuli in Italy, for example–have traditionally followed this approach.
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Accurate and complete wine tasting depends primarily on the concentration and perspicacity of the taster. But the right tools and an efficient approach can make a big difference, too.
Technical details include the serving temperature of the wine, proper opening and pouring methods, the decision whether or not to decant the bottle and appropriate stemware.
The “correct” temperature, like so many details in wine tasting, is ultimately a matter of personal preference. I know Southerners who simply cannot drink a beverage without ice, and that includes Montrachet and Yquem. But wine temperature influences wine flavor and there are good reasons to follow time-tested practices.
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Most of the time, most of us drink young, simple wines. What you taste is what you get–they may be flavorful and refreshing, but they don’t repay extended analysis. Even so, it can be amusing to taste them blind, to try to reach back through the wine to its components: grape variety, vintage quality, winemaking techniques.
Sometimes we splurge, drinking a bottle from a topflight producer in a great vintage. Then, good tasting technique is essential to full appreciation. If the setting or the company is distracting, or we can’t be bothered to concentrate on the data our senses are providing, then we’ve wasted our money and insulted the winemaker and the wine. Recently a Wine Spectator editor dined with a wealthy collector who opened 17 bottles for eight guests, serving them almost completely at random, pairing, for example, 1985 Krug Champagne and 1929 Château Mouton-Rothschild as apéritifs. Appreciation is impossible when conspicuous consumption is filling the glass. But when you put senses and imagination to work, tasting a great wine can be more than a great pleasure; its memory can illuminate all the other wines we drink, majestic and modest, from then on.
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A wine’s color gives many clues to its character. First, color reflects the specific variety of grape (or grapes) the wine is made from. Take two common red grapes, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir. Cabernet berries are typically smaller, with thicker, darker skins, than Pinot Noir. As a result, wines based on Cabernet tend to show darker colors, leaning toward purple and black, instead of the ruby tones associated with Pinot.
Second, color is influenced by growing conditions in the vineyard. A warm summer and dry autumn produce grapes that are fully ripe, with a high ratio of skin to juice, resulting in dark colors. A cool summer or a rainy harvest can result in unripe or diluted grapes, which will show up in colors with lighter hues and less intensity.
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Wine tasting offers us the best route to understanding the messages hidden in the bottle. You can think of them as poetic, or autobiographical.
Poetry comes easily to sensitive palates confronted with great wines. It’s harder work to tease out the facts that create these feelings. After all,as Peynaud puts it so bluntly, “Considered from a chemical point of view, wine is a hydro-alcoholic solution containing 20 to 30 grams of substances in solution, which constitute the extract and give it flavor, and several hundred milligrams of volatile substances, which constitute its odor.” By deciphering these diverse substances, an attentive taster can learn a great deal about the wine they compose.
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