Our Wine Review of the Week celebrates summer with this classic Californian Chardonnay reviewed by Deborah Podurgiel. Deborah has completed the Wine & Spirits Education Trust (WSET) Level 3, and is now a candidate studying for the WSET Diploma. She’s an active wine blogger in Vancouver, as well as a journalist who writes about food, wine and home decor for various magazines and newspapers. Summer Barbie parties are great, but how does one manage to have stellar wines without busting the budget? Well, you can rely on word of mouth from friends, or your very helpful and knowledgeable local wine store […]
Month: August 2014
Some Like It Hot: Do You Like High Alcohol in Wine?
My head pounds. My lips burn. My teeth sting. How could I have been so naïve? When the invitation arrived for “a tasting of one hundred blockbuster reds from the new vintage,” I was pleased, even a bit excited. Now I feel as though I’ve spent two hours with a drill-crazed dentist who thinks anaesthetic is for wimps. At this tasting, five local importers are showcasing their wines to a handful of writers. The room is thick with the sweet smell of alcohol. On a long table in front of me are 65 bottles of powerhouse Australian shiraz. The next […]
The Rising Tide: Alcohol in Wine Creeps Up the Glass
Continued from Part 1 of High Alcohol Wine … Otherwise, drinkers have to wait years for all of the wine’s disjointed elements to knit together. They also claim that it’s unfair to judge New World wines by Old World standards. Wines from hot climates, they point out, are being true to their locale by being riper and more alcoholic. Grapes in these regions, such as zinfandel, shiraz and grenache, only start to express themselves at 14 or 15 percent alcohol. Similarly, chardonnay from these areas at 12 percent alcohol would taste green and stemmy, and is best at 14 and […]
Hot, Hot, Hot! What Does Alcohol Do for Wine?
Continued from Part 2 of High Alcohol Wine … So for every fifty samples I taste, I probably consume the equivalent of a glass of wine—and that adds up. As the day wears on, my spitting technique becomes less refined, more like dribbling. Between that and my increasing enthusiasm for swirling my samples, the purple-stained napkins are piling up around me. My voice rises, my carefree laugh floats across the room, until someone inevitably asks, “Enjoying yourself, Natalie?” Where was I? Oh yes, back in the vineyard, talking about grapes. “Ripeness is all,” as Shakespeare once said and a growing […]
Big, Bad and Scary: Who’s to Blame for High Alcohol Wines?
Continued from Part 3 of High Alcohol Wine … This is legal in some regions, especially in cool climates where the grapes don’t fully ripen, but not in others. Some critics liken feeding more sugar to yeast cells to force-feeding geese to make foie gras. Even the yeasts themselves are changing. Ten years ago, most natural yeasts produced 13.2 percent alcohol from grapes harvested with 24 brix. However, modern cultured strains can convert that same sugar into 14.8 percent. These Godzilla yeasts can also survive high-alcohol environments of 16 percent or more, which kill natural yeasts. The fermentation vessel is […]
Is High Alcohol a Wine Fault or Freedom of Liquid Expression?
Continued from Part 4 of High Alcohol Wine … It’s like the difference between attending a concert and putting on some music as background while I’m working. At the tasting, I’m sampling my forty-seventh Chilean cabernet. A crimson flower blooms inside my mouth, its fiery tendrils licking at the back of my throat. I think my lips are starting to peel off. I’ve definitely lost a layer of enamel from my teeth: bathing them in acidity for five hours will do that. For the drive home, I’m not calling a cab, I’m calling an ambulance. This physical anguish gets me […]
Best LCBO Wines: Vintages Release August 16
You can access the 79 wines that I reviewed for August 16 as a text wine list with my complete tasting notes, scores, food matches and the stock for each bottle in their closest LCBO stores. You can also see my wine reviews for August 2. You can add my wine picks to their custom shopping list with one click and access that list on their smartphone. This is one of the benefits of becoming a Paid Member. Inventory stock numbers are usually posted online a day or two before the release based on the LCBO doing so. Here […]
Is This Taking Airline #Wine to a Whole New Plane?
Continued from Part 1 of Airline Wine … Turns out, of course, the same wines were served in all three tastings. Before the wine even gets on board, it must survive the labyrinthine logistics of thousands of flights and destinations. Ken Chase, who consults to Delta, admits to doing strange things with wine, such as heating, chilling and shaking it, to ensure that the wine can withstand the cooking on the tarmac in Mexico or being rick-shawed through bumpy streets in Bangkok. Will the wine still perform in your glass after it’s been rerouted through Iceland? Fortunately, most airlines have […]
Flying First Class, Drinking Economy: Is This Cloud Nine #Wine?
Continued from Part 2 of Airline Wine … The now defunct Canadian Airlines’ wine program used to take take the opposite approach, serving wines that passengers couldn’t buy on the ground — wineries had agree not to sell the airline’s selections in Canada. (That’s probably not the primary reason the company went under, but you never know which is the last drop that makes your cup overflowth.) Many airlines use an outside tasting panel to make the final choices. The oenological literati advises British Airways: Hugh Johnson, Michael Broadbent and Jancis Robinson who says in her memoir that after gushing […]
Airline #Wine is Taking Off
Natalie MacLean is an accredited sommelier, wine journalist and author of Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass. I understand you travelled extensively to research your book. Yes, I spent three years sipping and spitting my way through various vineyards around Europe and around North America – Burgundy, Champagne and California, among others. How do you research your stories? You can only say so much about wine by just opening the bottle: it’s wet, it’s fruity, it tastes good or it doesn’t. The story of wine is the story about the place, where it’s […]
