Wine misconceptions

Since there is no single media that educate the people about the wine and with the increased consumption some unusual folklore have crept in.The following 5 misconceptions about wine give some more insights about the true reasons:

1) Wines with screw caps are cheap wines:

The reason for the usage of screw caps instead of cork is only to prevent the famous cork taint in wine. By using screw caps this wine failure can be excluded and less wine has to be wasted due to the cork taint (wine for about 500 Million Euro per year). Furthermore during fermentation of wine, a great number or flavor compounds, among those also very volatile flavors, which make the wine appear very fruity. Screw caps can conserve these volatile flavors a few months longer in the bottle.

2) Sweetness and Fruitiness are the same:

Sweetness is perceived on the tongue and is one of the five basic tastes located on our tongue. In contrast fruitiness consists of many volatile and fruity flavor compounds, which are perceived via the nose and the palate (retro-nasal). Therefore both in their quality and in the area of perception both descriptions can be clearly distinguished.

3) Due to the sulfur content in red wine I get a headache:

This is only partly true. A higher sulfur content in wine can cause a headache for very sensitive persons, which are only a very small percentage of persons. Sulfur rather leads to some stomach pain, as the sulfuric acid is split up in its parts due to the acid milieu in the stomach. The more likely reason for the headache (apart from the alcohol) is histamine.

It increases the blood circulation, comparable with a swelling after an insect bite. Histamine is an undesirable side-product of the biological acid decomposition and can be found in Chardonnay and in general red wines. Already small amounts of histamine (5-8 milligram) can cause reactions.

4) Cheap wines should be used for cooking:

That would be a great mistake. Always choose a wine for cooking, which you also would drink. Cheap wines can even waste a dish instead of enriching it.

5) With cheese red wine matches best:

Red wine matches very good with some cheeses, but for many cheeses also semi-dry aromatic white wines combine as least as good as red wines. Quite often it is even easier to find a well matching white wine rather than a red wine.

How wine is made

By definition, wine is a drink made by the partial or complete fermentation of the juice of fresh grapes. Grapes are the only fruit with a high enough level of sugar and with the proper balance of acid and nutrients to sustain a natural fermentation to dryness with stable results. Other fruits or berries may be fermented, but without additions of sugar, acid, or various yeast nutrients, they are soon to spoil. Although the biochemistry of fermentation was mysterious until the late nineteenth century, the results of the process were known to man for over 5000 years. Fermentation was thought to be a spontaneous act of Nature, merely set up by man. The grapes were crushed to release the juice into a fermentation vessel. When the fermentation was complete, the wine was pressed by some mechanical means to separate the liquid from the stems, skins, pips and pulp. It was then stored to age and clarify until it was drunk. The bloom, that hazy coating on ripe grapes, is actually a collection of single-celled plants called yeast. There are approximately 6000 yeast cells per ounce of fermenting must. When yeast comes in contact with the grape juice, it begins to feed on it. An enzyme within the yeast converts sugar in the grape juice into roughly equal parts of alcohol and carbon dioxide and also releases energy in the form of heat.

 

This process will continue naturally until the sugar is used up or, more likely, until the yeast cells are no longer able to tolerate the level of their waste products: alcohol, carbon dioxide and/or heat. Like all living things, yeast cells have a primary drive to reproduce. In the first and most vigorous stage of fermentation (2 to 4 days), the yeast action mainly produces more yeast. This is the aerobic (contact with air) fermentation. The anaerobic (without air) fermentation follows and produces most of the alcohol. Under optimum conditions, a wine fermentation will last approximately three weeks, but this may take as much as several months, sometimes for no apparent reason. Fermentation can continue until the wine is dry (without residual sugar), or be stopped at some mid-point to make wines at levels of sweetness ranging from the barest hint to extremely sweet. This can be accomplished by killing or removing the yeast cells by one of several methods: adding alcohol to raise the leve 1.to 15% or more (as in port or sherry), adding sulfur dioxide or sorbate (sorbic acid), chilling the must and filtering out the yeast cells, or by simply filtering out the yeast cells using a sterile filter.

How much is too much?

Many factors, such as age, body mass index, ethnicity, family history, general health status and the use of medication, influence the definition of modern drinking guidelines. The speed of alcohol consumption and whether it is accompanied by food - as well as the amount and type of food - are conditions that influence the absorption of alcohol. Consequently, guidelines are likely to vary among population groups, as well as across countries and within them individually.

The recommended levels vary in some countries, sometimes up to 2 or 3 fold. In addition, no consistency exists on the sizes of standard drinks across countries, which generally reflects differences in cultures and customs: the smallest drink is 8 g of alcohol in the UK and the largest is 19.75 g in Japan.

However, based on available scientific evidence and different references provided by various public health authorities, it is accepted that low-risk moderate consumption ranges between the amounts set out in the guidelines below:

Guidelines for low risk moderate consumption:

• Up to 2 drink units a day for women.
• Up to 3 drink units a day for men.
• No more than 4 drink units on any one occasion.
• Alcohol should be avoided in certain situations such as when pregnant, when taking certain medication or when working machinery.

Cooking with wine

Here are some ways to use wine in light cooking:

Wine helps cook and add flavor to fish. Deep-fried fish dipped in tartar sauce, albeit tasty, defeats the nutritional purpose of eating fish. One way to add flavor and moisture to fish without adding fat is to cook it with wine. You can add wine to the pan while the fish is simmering, poach the fish over a saucepan of boiling wine, or drizzle fish with a tablespoon or two of wine and bake it in a foil package.

Wine is a great ingredient in marinades. Wine is basically an acid ingredient (which helps tenderize the outside of the meat) and it has a lot of flavor. The wine-based marinade helps keep meat, poultry, or seafood moist while it cooks, too.

Wine can help cook and simmer foods. Add wine to dishes you're cooking in a skillet on the stove, in a slow cooker, or in the oven. Simmered along with the food, it adds flavor and moisture to whatever dish you're making.

Wine can be used in baking, too. For certain types of cakes, using wine or sherry in place of some of the fat not only lightens up the cake but adds complimentary flavors.

Here are some of the subtle food-like flavors that can come through in wine -- which you may want to capitalize on by adding some to dishes containing these foods:

• White wine: melon, apple, pineapple, pear, citrus, vanilla, caramel, olives, and mushrooms
• Red wine: berries, peaches, currants, plums, cherries, oranges, chocolate, and coffee

Recognize defected wine

When should we return wine in a restaurant? More importantly, how do you tell if a wine is defected or if it simply tastes horrible?  

We can usually identify a defected bottle before tasting it. Look for the following: 

Appearance

Clarity: Cloudy wine hints bacteria spoilage. The wine should be clear. There might be deposits (known as sediments) which are normal and provide no indication of their quality. Definitely return all cloudy wines!

Color: The color of the wine reflects its development. Oxidized wine (aged too long or exposed to oxygen) has tints of reddish-brown or amber-tawny for white wines. Oxidized wine tastes flat and stale.

Condition of the cork: If the cork is cracked, or penetrated by wine, the wine is most likely damaged.

Sometime, you might observe clear sugar-like crystals in the bottle of a bottle or glass. These are tartrates. They formed when the wines are stored in very cold temperature. They are harmless to drink. If anything, they indicate a good quality bottle - one that has not been commercially-treated during vinification.

Smell

Besides getting a solid sniff at the bottle, check for 3 smells that indicate potential defects:

Smell of moldy, musty smell of mushrooms or damped earth. This is caused by the Trichloronisole (TCA) in a corked wine. The smell might worsen with exposure to air. 

Smell of vinegar or sherry. This would indicate high level of volatile acidity and oxidation.

Smell of rotten-eggs. These are caused by excessive hydrogen sulfide formed during the fermentation process. Though unpleasant, the wine is drinkable. One traditional remedy is to drop a copper coin into the wine to eliminate the odor. 

Often, the wine will smell of burnt-matches when uncorked. This is the smell of sulphur dioxide, which was added in the bottling process to keep the wine fresh. There is no need to return the wine. The smell will go away after a few minutes of aeration. 

Taste

An oxidized wine is flat and tastes like sherry/vinegar.

Definitely smell and taste the wine before going along with it at a restaurant. Statistics has it that one in 30 bottles of wines in the past 10 years are corked. Wine experts believe the statistics can be as high as one in every 10 bottles for aged wines.

Wine grape varieties

White and red grapes are the major grape varieties. Varietal wines are wines that are made from single grape breed. But many wines combine numerous grape varieties.

Wine quality is affected by the factors such as soil, climate, viticulture and wine making techniques. When the grape variety is well suited to the soil and climatic structure the quality of wine is maximized. Wine types with distinct flavor are produced by many native grape varieties.

To give different taste and color each type of wine uses different grape variety. Attributes such as color, size, skin thickness and acidity differ in all kinds of grapes. These attributes are influenced by the area in which the grapes are cultivated. To manufacture a high quality wine, a qualified winemaker knows how to merge and choose the grapes from many varieties.

The Wine grapes categories are:

Red grapes. During the month of August to November the red grapes grow in plenty. These grapes are rich in vitamin c and have a sweet pulp. Pinot noir, Syrah, Nebbiolo and Zinfandel are some of famous red grapes.

White grapes. Grapes that are green, yellow, pink or brown in color are called white grapes. The world's famous white wine is the Chardonnay, because of its gamut flavors and styles.

Touriga Nacional

Touriga Nacional comes from Portugal, which boasts a huge array of grape varieties that are in most cases barely seen anywhere else. It makes brilliant, fascinating, deeply coloured, world-class, spicy, ageworthy wine. 

Touriga Nacional is most famously found in Porto, and is grown all over the Douro (the port region). It is universally recognised as being the best port grape. However, since it has become difficult for the producers in the Douro to sell all their production of port, they are making more and more table wines, with the Touriga Nacional being widely used. Quite right too. The Douro is definitely the region to watch currently for the finest Touriga Nacional table wines. It does have a major drawback: it produces extremely low yields, in the Douro each vine produces on average around 300 g of grapes when other varieties will produce 2 kg. The vine is vigorous and healthy (not susceptible to fungal diseases), and needs to be pruned very hard, it produces tiny, jet-black-coloured grapes.

Touriga Nacional has a thick skin and small clusters of berries which help to contribute to the colorful and tannic wine it creates. In addition to the flowers, tannins and extract the Touriga Nacional brings to the Port table, the grape is an integral part of the blends of still red wine found in both the Douro and Dao valleys, producing wines that are heavy in both red fruits and structure. Yields are low, but recent clonal selection has improved production.

While some of the best and most expensive wines of the Douro and the Dao contain high percentages of Touriga Nacional, usually even the every day reds have at least a small portion of this varietal.

In theses days Touriga Nacional became popular grape variety in almost every wine region of Portugal and gives very good and high quality red wine.  Touriga Nacional grapes gives the amount of extract in the wines. The grapes can produce intense, very aromatic wines with high tannin content. 

Tannins

The term ''tannin'' is commonly used in wine circles, but many people aren't really sure exactly what it means.

Why is the subject of tannins an important one for the wine trade at large, and not just winemakers and anoraks? First, suspect that whatever your involvement in the trade, you’ll be familiar with the term ''tannin'' and it’s a word that you’ll have used frequently, perhaps, without a clear idea of what you are referring to. Second, it’s a field of active current research, and data that are only now just accumulating are pointing towards a very different understanding of the role of tannins in red wines than that traditionally espoused by wine textbooks. 

Introducing tannins

The term ''tannin'' is an old one, and comes from the practice of using extracts from plants to cure leather (the process referred to as ‘tanning’). This process exploits one of the key properties of tannins: they have a strong tendency to link up with a range of other chemical entities, most particularly proteins.

Tannins are therefore defined functionally. They are polyphenolic compounds that bind to and precipitate proteins. It’s a slightly complicated picture: not all polyphenols can act as tannins, and not all phenolics that bind proteins are tannins, but it’s still a useful definition.

Tannins and red wine colour

Here’s another story that could do with some revision. Researchers are now beginning to understand the nature of colour in red wines, and the picture emerging is challenging traditional understanding in this area. Colour in red wines actually falls into three categories. First we have the anthocyanins, the primary pool of colour from the grape. Young wine is packed with anthocyanins, which are very reactive: they interact with both sulphur dioxide and oxygen, which bleaches them. Their colour is also influenced by the pH of the must. At lower (more acidic) pH they are redder; at higher (less acidic) pH they are bluer. It turns out that anthocyanins are unstable, and aren’t that important for the long-term colour of red wines. In addition to anthocyanins there are two major fermentation-derived colour groups. The first of these is the pigmented polymers. These are formed by the chemical linkage between tannins and anthocyanins. This is a covalent (strong) linkage and is very important in forming stable colour in wines. The evidence suggests that most of the pigmented polymer formation occurs during fermentation. The third group is called the anthocyanin-derived pigments, which arise from reactions between anthocyanins and other phenolics and aldehydes. This is a massive, complicated class of non-bleachable pigments, and is an area of intense current research, with new members are being added all the time. The anthocyanin-derived pigments are still quite reactive and they can go and form further combinations with tannins to form pigmented polymers. There’s also current interest in the phenomenon known as copigmentation. This is the stable combination of anthocyanins with phenolic ''copigments''—colourless molecules which combine with the anthocyanins to increase colour intensity.  

Wine coolers

Wine coolers are used to store wine bottles and chill them to the right temperature. It is also called wine refrigerator. Regular refrigerator could be suitable for storing wine, too. But since, it may be too cool or constant opening of the door causes a fluctuation in the wine temperature, it is not suitable at all. Temperature that is essential for the integrity of the wine is maintained by the cooler. Along with the some refrigerator units the wine cabinets is fixed. Wine cooler maintains a temperature of about 8º to 12º C and about 60-70% humidity. Some cooler allow you to maintain different temperature for storing and chilling different varieties of wine. The wine lover can taste the wine at its appropriate temperature, thereby enhancing its texture and flavor if it is placed in the wine cooler.

The wine cooler is equipment that may refer to:

Small table top used to chill a single bottle. These coolers are useful particularly in the warmer climates to serve the wine at the right serving temperature. These coolers are suitable for white, rose and sparkling wines.

Large ones in the refrigerator style used to store dozens of bottles. This model is used by the people who are accessible to the wine basement. These units allow the user to select the temperature suitable for the wine and even have options that manage two separate areas for different wines. Thermostat controls some of these units.