Monthly Archives: November 2011

Nov 28 2011
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To Cellar or Not To Cellar

Planning on starting a wine cellar?  12, 50, or 250 bottles? Here are a few things to think about before starting.

Planning:

  • Age – young and looking to start early? Empty nesters looking for a new hobby?
  • Drinking and eating habits – Do you entertain often? Is there always a bottle open while cooking? How often do you eat out?
  • Space and economic considerations – how much room is your significant other willing to relinquish in the house or apartment?

Drinking vs Investment Cellar

Your cellar will always be a drinking cellar.  Very few people are building cellars for investment purposes.  This drinking cellar will have three different life cycles: Young Cellar – any cellar that is putting in wine to drink in the future.  Mature, active cellar – developed cellar and still drinking the wine. Mature, inactive cellar – no longer buying, because even if you drank for two bottles everyday for the next 20 years of your life, you still won’t deplete your supply.

Now what do I buy to put in my cellar?

Always taste first!! Buy one bottle, if you enjoy then buy in large quantity.  It is ok to buy in 3,4, or 6 bottle allotments. Your consumption pattern will dictate the quantity you end up purchasing.  Always entertaining or cooking with wine?  Buy more. But please keep costs in perspective.

Diversify

  • Costs -Shop in values for all price ranges or groupings.  Don’t let those rating scores be the sole base of a decision.  Personal taste has a great piece in building a cellar.
  • Food and Occasions – A great cellar might not have 200 wines, but will have one wine for every food or special occasion.  Your neighbor loves to come over and discuss his new investing techniques, well keep his favorite bottle of Riesling on hand.

Final Thoughts

  • Avoid impulse buying, which can prove difficult after a full day of winery tours.
  • Keep organized- arrange the cellar by drinking habits.  Have sections for the following: bottles for everyday, near future and distant future.
  • Once you become a bit more serious, keep cellar records. Know when a bottle might reach maturity.
  • Your palate will develop, expect changes in preference for the first few years.

Keep notes for the next wines that will be added to the cellar. Have them on hand when shopping online or at your local wine shop.

Stockpile wine you like and drink often!!

Need any help or advice for cellar management contact joe@mywinedeal.com

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Nov 25 2011
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Wine Terminology

I recently went to a Wine101 class and he approached it by helping us to just describe what we are smelling and tasting.  With 9 simple wine terms, we are able to communicate what we are looking for in a wine.

Sweet, Dry, and Fruity

Sweet and Dry are opposites and only refer to sugar content in the wine.   A sweet wine usually has alcohol percentage under 10%, while a wine with an alcohol percentage over 13% will have little to no sugar content left leaving it dry.   Fruity is simply referring to an aroma.  And since wine comes from a grape, it should always lead with a fruit based aroma.  Fruity tends to be more dominant in new world wines (USA, Australia, South America etc).

Acidic, Soft, and Tannic

An acidic wine is all about salivating.  How much salivation will tell exactly how much and what type of acids are in the wine.  A wine with a lack of acidity is called a soft wine.  A merlot is usually considered a soft wine.  A wine with tannin leaves a astringent feeling in the mouth.  Tannins can be caused by the following three things: oak, grape skins or grape stems.  That big, bold cabernet from California usually provides a good example.

Body, Balance, and Finish

The body of wine refers to its impression of weight it leaves in your mouth. You can think of it as the richness of the wine.  You can have a light, light-medium, medium,  medium-full and full body wine.  The balance of a wine is how well the fruit, body, acidity, tannins ect. act together.  It’s about getting them to all work in harmony and compliment one another.   Finish is everything that happens when you swallow the wine. Are you salivating? Do you have a bitter taste?  Does it linger?  What impression does it leave?

As confusing as wine can be, these terms should help anyone describe what they want in a wine.  So go ahead and drink a glass and use these terms to help you relay what you smell and taste.

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Nov 22 2011
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Chilly Whites, Warm Reds

Holiday season is upon us.  We pull that red or white out of the cellar, now what? (PS. A Cellar should range from 52-57º) Is it ready to drink? We often drink whites too cold and reds too warm. The following could provide some guidelines for serving temperatures.

Red

  • Full Body – 63-67º
  • Medium Body – 55-63º
  • Light Body – 50-58º

White

  • Full Body – 55-60º
  • Medium Body – 53-58º
  • Light Body – 48-55º

 Sparkling – 45º or below, Use brine (salt in ice water) to chill properly

Now, how do we actually achieve these temperatures?  Well, there is a way without a fancy bottle or wine thermometer. However, we need to know two things – room temperature and cellar temperature.  If you pull directly from the cellar then the temperature is known. If the bottle is sitting out, then room temperature will be our starting point.

Items needed – an ice bucket and corkscrew

There is a mathematical formula for this process, in case you want to create a spreadsheet for the cellar.

 t(a)-t(m) / t(a) – t(b)  when,  t(a)=air or water temp., t(m) desired temp., t(b)=initial wine temp.

An Inverse line will run from 1.0 to 27 minutes.

Ok enough mathematics, lets give some examples.

70 room temp to 50 wine temp = 7.5 minutes

70 room temp to 55 wine temp = 5.5 minutes

70 room temp to 65 wine temp = 4 minutes

 Air warming of bottles moves very slow. Do not worry about sitting out for a short period of time.  Example, takes 30-35 minutes for a bottle to go from 55-65º F.

Give it a try, it may change your mind on some of your favorite wines.

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Nov 16 2011
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No Corkscrew, No Problem

You just bought a great bottle of wine and you can’t wait to crack it open.  You head to the kitchen, open up the drawer and guess what you find, or don’t in this case, a CORKSCREW!!!  Does that stop you from enjoying that bottle of wine?  Not anymore! Here are a few tricks on how to open a bottle of wine without a corkscrew.

Screw, Screwdriver, and a Hammer

    1. You need a long screw.  Insert it into the corkscrew and leave about 1/4 to 1/2 inch sticking out of the cork.
    2. Grab the screw with the nail-end of a hammer and gently pry the cork up and out.
    3. Enjoy your wine!

In this 2 part video demonstration we show you how to open a bottle of wine with these three tools.  

A Wire Hanger

    1. Take a wire hanger and untwist till you have a straight piece of metal wire.
    2. Use pliers to make a small hook with the last half inch until it makes an angle of about 30 degrees.
    3. Push the wire down beside the cork until the little hook is below the cork.
    4. Rotate the hook 90 degrees and pull.
    5. Enjoy your wine!

Shoe Method (Ever seen the Modern Family Episode?)

    1. Take a shoe and place the bottom of bottle securely inside.
    2. Keeping the wine firmly inside the shoe hit the shoe against a sturdy wall (I suggest using one on the outside of a building unless you don’t mind chipping some paint)
    3. Keep hitting until you see the cork poking out of the top then pull it out.
    4. Enjoy your Wine!
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Nov 10 2011
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Adios Wine Ratings!

Why do we need a 100 point rating system for wine? Do we not trust our own judgement when it comes to judging a good wine from a bad wine?  Since our sense of taste is completely subjective, we are able to judge wines for ourselves.  The purpose for drinking wine is about personal pleasure, therefore we should know what pleases our own palates.

Putting a rating on a sense of taste would be like putting a rating on our sense of hearing.  For example, we start rating music and Adele’s “Someone Like You” gets a 80 while Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like Its Hot” gets a 95.  That would be completely absurd!  Yes, there are different quality levels, but they are not quantifiable.

As I heard someone once say, “If you have a sense of smell and a sense of taste, you are in many ways already a wine expert.”  So next time you pop open a bottle just remember that YOU are in charge of determining whether or not its 100 points.

Nov 09 2011
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Hello Fellow Wine Lovers!

As my good friend Ben Franklin once said, “Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance,” truer words have rarely been spoken.  I am no sommelier, but I am here to share with you my passion for wine.  This blog will be anything from Wine 101 to how the climate is effecting the way we grow wine.  I would love any feedback or comments.  Feel free to email me at info@mywinedeal.com.

 

 

 

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