I’ll be chatting with the hosts of the CBC radio drive-home shows from coast to coast this Thursday and Friday about wines for Valentine’s Day. But we’re going to depart from the usual natter about which wines are most seductive or how to pair them with chocolate. We’ll go straight to the heart of the matter: how do you liquor up your lover on February 14? More specifically, we’ll talk about why wines are getting more alcoholic these days and how does that affect their taste and ours? Is this just a cultural trend of winemakers responding to the market? Is […]
Alcohol in Wine
What You Don’t Know About Wine & Health, But Should
Are you confused about the various heath studies when it comes to wine and breast cancer, heart disease or brain function? Would you like to know exactly what moderation means when it comes to drinking wine? That’s exactly what we’re going to discover tonight with our guest this evening who is a gynecologist and obstetrician. He is also part of an international research community that investigates the role of wine in health. He holds an advanced-level sommelier certificate from the International Wine & Spirits Guild, and he joins me now live from his home office in Arizona. You won’t want […]
A Fuzzy Vine-acular: 3,000 Descriptors for Drunkenness Makes My Head Spin
By Natalie MacLean Last night’s startling discovery: there are more adjectives for drunkenness than there are Inuit words for snow. And I’m not just talking about being intoxicated or inebriated, or even blotto, blasted or bombed. There are well over 3,000 descriptors—just looking at the list makes me feel tipsy. What’s more interesting is the difference between the words used for men and women, young and old, bodily and behavioural effects—and how expressions vary across cultures and languages to reveal both positive and negative views. I had lots of help researching this subject from friends who came up with a bandwagon […]
Facebook Live Video Posts October 23, 2016
In this Facebook Live Video chat, we discuss the rising levels of alcohol in wines. You can click on the arrow above to play the video. If you’d like to read the comments, or make a comment yourself, visit: https://www.facebook.com/natdecants/videos/10154411500734845/ You’ll find the most recent live video wine tasting at the top of the timeline here: www.facebook.com/natdecants We taste every Sunday evening at 6 pm eastern so add us to your calendar and grab a glass of wine. Click on Follow, Like and Signup on the page above to get notified when we go live. […]
Drinking My Words: Are All Writers Wine Writers?
By Natalie MacLean Candy-coloured bottles of spirits glow against the mirrors behind the bar of the Algonquin Hotel. I’ve come to this New York City landmark on a brisk April evening to think about my journey over the past few years, and the connection between writing and drinking as a way of understanding a place and its people. I often read the work of one of the country’s beloved writers while I’m traveling in a region to sharpen my observations, whether it’s The Leopard by Sicily’s Giuseppe di Lampedusa, the short stories of Argentina’s Jorge Luis Borges or Peter Mayle’s […]
Canada’s Best Sommelier Competition: Bruce Wallner Video
In this video chat, Bruce Wallner, recently named Ontario’s Best Sommelier, talks about participating in the Best Canadian Sommelier Competition this month in Halifax. He’s already a certified Master Sommelier and has worked in restaurants around the world, including Australia, Spain and the UK. We also talked about what made him want to become a sommelier originally (some interesting comparisons with the world’s oldest profession), the role of a sommelier and what he enjoys most about the job. Tell us about the competition: who enters and what do you have to do to compete? This event is […]
How Sweet is My Wine? What do Sugar Codes Mean for Wine?
How sweet is your wine? Have you ever wondered what those sugar codes mean on the liquor store shelf? There are several different sweetness charts and coding systems on the market, but they’re not that far apart from each other in describing the residual sugar level in wine. I believe that it’s critical to list the sweetness level of a wine with every review that I write to give more information about each wine to my readers, some of whom look for a bone-dry wine while others have a sweet tooth. Posting the sugar codes are also vital for health […]
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 […]
