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Monthly Archives: September 2014

Little Big Wine

14 Sunday Sep 2014

Posted by juleslewis in Wine

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Beaujolais Nouveau, Gamay, vin de primeur, vin ordinaire, Wine

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The question went something like this. ‘Would you [as a wine snob] consider writing a piece on Beaujolais Nouveau for our magazine’? I said yes, partly following P.T. Barnum’s lead on publicity, but mainly because I actually rather like vins de primeur. They hark back to simpler, halcyon days before big, blowsy, brands bestrode the world like Tyrannosaurs, ravenously gobbling up every little, low alcohol, wine in their voracious path.

Back then, traditional wine merchants would eagerly, if somewhat self-consciously, swap their pinstripes and food stained ties for breezy, Chanelesque, Breton shirts and make their jaunty be- bereted way back and forth across the English channel – on a range of eccentric and dangerous transports – vying to be the first the bring back the, barely fermented, first wines of the harvest – before the stroke of midnight morphed them into pumpkins on the third Thursday of November. They would then assemble riotously at the nearest ‘stand up and shout’ for the start of a gloriously bibulous weekend, in what was described by Le Figaro, as ”The greatest marketing stroke since the end of World War Two”.

Admittedly great for cash flow, this poor mans en primeur allows producers to release their vin ordinaire on the open market, mere weeks after fermentation ends – providing some much needed brass in pocket to lavish on their more serious vinous offspring. But what else accounts for their popularity – particularly in the U.S where wine consumption per capita is less than 30%.

Well, to begin with, it’s the nearest a red wine can get to a white, and yes there’s some nerdiness involved, but it’s the kind of chemistry our distant ancestors with their earthenware pots would have been familiar. All Beaujolais wines are made entirely from one single grape variety, the Gamay Noir a Jus Blanc and display a remarkable bugle clear, youthful, zingy freshness, from Villages level through to the nine Crus. The phenolics are low and the astringent tannins or extract normally associated with red wines are absent. Acidity is naturally high, making it refreshing, and alcohol levels in the best examples are low at around 11- 12% abv – meaning you can drink a lot of it!

The bunches are hand harvested, to keep them intact, then fermented whole to preserve the purity and freshness of the fruit. The lower berries in the vat are split by the increased weight of the new bunches at the top, and a unique intracellular fermentation takes place, where the compote of fruit consumes its own grape sugars releasing CO2 which in turn attacks the sugars in the remaining juice initiating the alcoholic fermentation. Accetification at the top of the vat is avoided as the remaining bunches collapse into the bubbling must. The wine is ‘run off’, after three days, in two parts. The ‘free run’ juice, which contains little or no residual sugars, and the must still with some whole berries intact. Rapid fermentation of the whole then takes place naturally, due to high ph and amino acids, then the wine is racked, fined, filtered, bottled and dispatched to the cafes of Paris and Lyon where they are greeted as eagerly as a family birth.

So why do I like simple vins de bouche? Well its part nostalgia and part practicality. These light purple, high acid, low tannin, medium weight elixirs, reeking of strawberry jam and nail polish, served in a ludicrously small glass or a pichet remind me of carefree, impoverished, art student days trawling the galleries and bar tabacs of Paris and the South of France.  The less romantic reason is that they are a great autumnal lunchtime drink, possessing a straightforward glugability, unworthy of cerebral comment, to slake the generational thirsts of farm workers and artisans alike in a manner to make Ugolin and Papet proud.

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Temperature Control

11 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by juleslewis in Wine

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Serving Wine, Wine, Wine tasting, Wine temperature

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When I select wines for buying, I often taste blind, where possible, and always at room temperature – especially the whites. This allows the aromas present in the wine to come to the fore (often pre swirl) and an accurate assessment of their true quality to be made, as well as any obvious, or less obvious, examples of physicochemical spoilage such as; oxidation, chemical or enzymatic reduction, microbial spoilage or precipitation by crystallisation or polymerisation.

I taste alone most of the time, finding this suits my rather misanthropic temperament, and as most of my selections are based on personal opinion it helps eliminate distractions making it easier to concentrate on the wine in the glass.

At the end of the week we taste as a team, this is a great way to round out the week, engender that Friday feeling and swap opinions and perceptions. On a monthly basis I meet with a control group, of like and unlike minded palates, to broaden out and level the tasting field and receive some invaluable market research into the bargain.

This has been the norm for the past three years, we taste all the wines as a double blind, and agree to disagree on a regular basis. One thing we always agree on however, is the correct or optimum temperature at which the tasting samples should be served. Sommeliers and Restaurateurs are aware of this, as a matter of course, but how many members of the wine buying public are so well informed.

I’ll walk you through it, excuse the dryness wine nerds, but it will help enormously:

Dry, white, wines should be served between 8 and 14°C, this spectrum covers most eventualities such as time of year, season and temperature of surroundings. The lower end of the scale is better for simple, primary-fruited wines such as Sauvignon Blanc, while the higher end is for more robust, complex, secondary-fruited wines such as White Burgundies.

Champagnes should be drunk at around 8 or 9°C, cold but not too cold, vintage wines can take 10°C.

Rose´s and Clairetes between 8 and 12°C, higher end for serious cru classe rose’ with the lower price bracket benefiting from pre chilled glasses prior to pouring and, in extemis, even accepting an ice cube or two on a hot summer’s day.

Sweet, white, wines should be served between 6 and 10°C depending on age, the older the wine the higher the temp. Sweet reds at between 10 and 15°C – tannins depending.

Fruity, juicy, thirst-quenching reds with simple aromatics, such as Beaujolais can be served around 11 to 14°C, with the lower end reserved for vin de primeur (Beaujolais Nouveau) and the higher end for the Crus. You can even go cooler for Nouveau and room temp for Moulin a Vent.

Rhone wines range from as low as 13°C for basic CDR Villages rising to around 18 or even 19°C for the serious kit such as Northern Rhone Syrah and Southern Rhone Grenache. A good rule of thumb here is that the bigger the structure of the wine (tannins and extract) and the more complex the vinification and maturation methods, the higher the serving temperature – so you can go up to around 19 or 20°C for red Bordeaux.

Red Burgundies should be served between 14 and 17°C dependant on the style and weight of the wines.

What about Italian, Spanish and Portuguese reds? I hear you cry. Well you should have learned a thing or two by now, the higher the tannin the higher the serving temperature should be.

And finally. If you are serving cheap, white wines, to people who get through a lot of volume but don’t care about the taste, then chill the bejaysus out of it so as to mask any neutrality, lack of structure and faults therein.

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