Wine and Food Pairing

Red Wine with Fish?  You bet!

 

I.               Rules and wine and food pairing

A.    There are none

B.     Guidelines, perhaps

C.     Drink any wine with any food, most combinations are

                                          i.     Perfectly enjoyable

                                         ii.     Some are sensational

                                        iii.     Few have adjustable limitations

                                         iv.     Today:  explore how to adjust those combinations that have limitations

1.     Explore which combinations work

2.     Which have limitations

II.              Foods that can give wine a headache

A.    Artichokes: cynarin

B.     Asparagus: methyl mercaptan

C.     Mackerel: iodine

D.     Egg yokes:  coats palate

III.            Major strategies of pairing

A.    Colour coding

B.     Regional recommendations

C.     Weight

D.     Component interactions

Colour Coding:

·       White wine with…

·       Red wine with…

·       Limitations:  grilled salmon with Pinot Noir?; Oaked Chardonnay with steak?

Regional Recommendations:

·       The enchantment factor

·       In reality, not any better or worse strategy

Weight:

·       Alcohol level: low (7-10.5%); medium (11-12.5%); high (13-17%)

·       Extract

·       Level of sweetness

Component Interactions:

·       What is a component of wine or food? …the essential elements that we can ‘taste’

·       What are the elements of taste?

o       Food:  Acidity-sharpens; bitterness-adds structure; sweetness-rounds; saltiness-lifts

o       Wine:  Acidity-sharpens; bitterness (tannin)- adds structure; sweetness-rounds

·       When we speak of balance…the harmony of acidity, sweetness, bitterness in wine, plus saltiness in food.

·       Other types of interactions (that affect our perception of the harmony between wine and food)

o       Temperature

o       Mouthfeel

o       Heat

o       Location

o       Companions

o       Mood

o       Health

o       Attentiveness

o       Individual differences***

·       When it comes to the sensory perception of wine and food ….there is no such thing as an immaculate perception!

·        Note on individual differences:

o       everyone has different levels at which he or she can feel the intensity of a taste component

o       Certain compounds some people can’t perceive at all! (genetic)

·       Thresholds:

o       50% of the population share similar perceptions (average band of intensity perceptions of acidity, sweetness, etc.)

o       25% overpowered by intensity — like bland foods and wines

o       25% underwhelmed — prefer foods/wines with great intensity

·       Physiology of Taste

o       Taste buds: clusters inside papillae between 50-150 receptor cells

o       Globular: openings called a taste pore

o       Tastants enter the pore, interact with the microvilli, send message along cranial nerve to brain

·       Taste vs Flavour

o       Taste in the narrow sense:  sweet, sour, bitter, salty, umami

·       What is the difference between taste and flavour?  [Jelly belly taste test]

o       Paradox:  We smell flavour and feel taste

·       What is flavour? 

o       A complex composite of several sensations:

§       Taste (taste buds)

§       Aroma (volatile chemicals)

§       Touch (astringency)

§       Irritation: (pungency)

·       Relationship of Taste Components to Wine and Food Pariing:

·       “These key components are perceived on the tongue long before complex flavours work their way up to the olfactory nerve.  These supply the initial impression of any taste and remain as the bass line for the melody of flavours that follow.  The bass line will determine the success of the match.”  Wesson and Rosengarten.  Red Wine with Fish

o       In other words:  When the basic taste components of food and wine interact in positive ways, the match works.

Practice in identifying dominant taste components:

·       potato chips

·       Italian-style salad dressing

·       Spinach

·       Pizza

·       Peanut butter

·       Dry Riesling

·       Icewine

·       Young red

IV:  Experimenting with Interactions of “Taste” components

Note:  Palate ‘listening’

      Avoid the pitfalls:  expectation, suggestion, assumptions.  Trust yourself!

A.     Our strategy for tasting

a.     Identify the dominant taste component in the wine

b.     Identify the dominant taste component I the food

c.     Test the interaction

d.     Test the adjustment, if required

B.     Experiment #1:  Acid/Acid

a.     What happens when you pair a wine high in acidity with a food high in acidity?

b.     Effect:  usually ‘sweetens’ the wine, e.g Dry Riesling with fresh tomato sauce

C.     Experiment #2:  Bitter/Bitter

a.     What happens when you p[air a bitter food with a bitter (tannic) wine?

b.     Effect:  usually coarsens the wine

c.     Adjustment: a little salt

D.      Experiment #3:  Sweet/Sweet

a.     What happens when you pair sweet wine with sweeter food?

b.     Effect:  usually flattens the wine

c.     Adjustment:  food less sweet —the wine should be sweeter than the food

E.      Mix and Match:  bitter with acid, sweet, salty, etc.

IV.            Review:  Concerns in wine and food pairing

A.     Tannin in red wine

B.     Sweetness in sweet wine

V.              Wines that go with just about anything:

A.    Whites:  dry or off-dry (Riesling, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Pinot Grigio)

B.     Reds:  low in tannin (Gamay Noir, Pinot Noir, Baco Noir, Valpolicello, Valentina)

C.     Low to moderate alcohol

D.     With good friends, in a comfortable context and a nice meal

VI.            Summary:  Keys to pairing

A.    Identify the dominant component in both the wine and the food

B.     Pair according to their potential interaction

C.     If the match has limitations:

                                          i.     Too bitter, add a bit of salt to the food

                                         ii.     Too acidic, add a bit of lemon to the food

                                        iii.     Make sure the wine is sweeter than the food

D.     Follow theses simple guidelines:

                                          i.     You can drink any wine, with any food

                                          ii.     And I hope you will 

 

Weight and intensity yield the vital outlines and acid, sugar, salt, tannin provide the broad brushstrokes:

Weight

The weight of the dish is the most important consideration.  Depends on:

how the dish is cooked

the ingredients in the dish

Aim for balance the weight of the dish with that of the wine so neither overwhelms the other.  Rich, robust food, with rich, robust wine, medium-weight food with medium-bodied wine, light food with light-weight wine.

Fuller bodied wines are usually higher in alcohol than lighter bodied wines.

Intensity

The intensity of flavour provides the main exception to the matching of weight:  fatty, rich foods can be partnered with light-bodied wines.  The principle being to provide a sharp constrast —crisp, light wine cutting through the food.  But it doesn’t work with just any old light wine.  Has to be intensely flavoured, usually with fruit aromas and flavours coupled with brisk acidity and an element of sweetness.  Riesling with fatty meats such as roast goose, duck and wild boar.  Christmas plum pudding with fresh sweet Asti Spumante.

A dish can be light but overpoweringly flavourfulThai food, Japanese dishes.  The wine needs to be similar in character —assertive in flavour but not heavy.  Young wines made from aromatic grape varieties such as Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling.

Acidity

Acidity in a dish needs to be equalled or echoed by acid in the wine, otherwise the wine will taste flat and dull.  Duck with orange will need a wine with acidity.  Duck with olives not as necessary.  As a squeeze of lemon can heighten flavour in a dish, so can a bonus of acidity in wine.

Acid levels in wines in cool climates are usually higher.  Europe’s more northerly vineyards than southerly.  New World’s New Zealand, Casablanca, Constantia, Tasmania, Yarra Valla Adelaide Hills Long Island, Niagara.  High acid varieties:  Sauvignon Blanc, riesling Silvaner Aligote Muscadet, Gros Plant chenin Blanc, unoaked Chardonnays, northern Italian Chards.

Range of suitable red wines more restricted.  Reds lack acidity, but acid in food is liable to clash with tannin in wine.  Reds that do have some acidity tend ot be young, low in tannin, light-bodied and from cool climates.  Served cool or lightly chilled.  Loire reds (Cab Franc, Pinot Noir or Gamay, Beaujolais, Barbera, Bardolino, Vinho Verde.  Roses too soft for very high-acid food, but Sancerre rose has a notably refreshing bite.

Salt

Salt can have great impact.  It can bring out the best or the worst in the wine.  The classic combination of salt and sweet as in prosciutto with figs or melon, or even steak and chips, blue cheese with sweet wines (Roquefort and Stilton with Sauternes and vintage port.  Gewurztraminer, spicy sweet aroma and smoked salmon. 

Salt has an unhappy effect on tannin.  Tannin is the dry, bitter, fury mouth coating substance that comes from grapeskins, etc.  found in young red wines inteded for aging.  Salt, which can enhance the flavours in food, does the same with tannin.  Anyone who habitually takes a lot of salt with his or her food is likely to favour white wines and low tannin reds, such as Beaujolais.  Sale-sweet affinity and the tannin clash, is not surprsing to find that wines with a generous sweet fruit character are the kind that go with salty foods. 

With typically salty foods served with aperitifs, champagne and sparkling wines go well.

Sweetness

Sweetness in food, like acidity, needs to be matched in the wine.  The wine must be at least as sweet as the food.  If the food is sweeter it will taste tart.

Sweetness in savoury food is more challenging.  While dry wines are nasty with sweet food, there are sweet and medium wines that will go with savoury food.  Delicately flavoured types os shellfish such as scallops and white fish in creamy sauces can be served with German Spatlese, demi sec Vouvray, demi sec champagne, but the quality must be exemplary.  Cheap versions are now worth boterhing with.  Medium sweet German Rieslings can also be set against the richness of goose and duck, pork and boar when theya re served with the  with a sweet fruit sauce or garnish which would desecrate a dry wine.

Sweet sauces, jellies and relishes are, as a whole, best matched by the combination of sweetness and acidity in good estate bottled off dry Rieslings. 

With reds, choose a wine that has sweet fruit flavours derived from very ripe grapes.  Zinfandel, Shiraz and by new world reds in general.  In old world, aim for warmly fruity Mediterranean wines often blends of Frenache, Syrah or Tempranillo.  If you stray in to the classic coler areas, try to choose wines from the better warmer, riper vintages and make sure you avoid tannic wines.

With white wiens, other than German, ripe fruit is crucial, but marked acidity is just as essential as ripeness, if the sauce is both sharp and sweet. 

Easiest way to ensure at least a modicum of fresh tasting acidity is to choose young wine and to steer clear of the botto rung, especially in blended whites and particularly new world.  Steer clear of heavily oaked wihes with a rich buttery flavour.  Neither oak nor buttery flavours suit sweeet, sharp fruit sauces and relishes. 

Tannin

The villain — it turns nasty with fish and bitter with salt and equally nasty with eggs and with many cheeses.  But, like acidity in white wines, tannin is essential to red wines.  There are some grapes inherently more tannic than others —syrah, cabernet nebbiolo, brunello tannat among them.  Some like gamay and dolcetto are naturlaly low in tannin.

It can’t really be saud that any foods positively need very tannic wines, but meat is tannin’s major ally.  Rare steak, other red meats with substantial chewy texture partner well because they moderate our perception of tannin. 

Tricky Ingredients:

Should be alert to when planning a menu and ways to mute  offending flavours or textures. 

Vegetables

•                 Artichokes (globe) make most wines taste metallic/bitter or strangely sweet.  Remedial:  squeeze lemon .  Young moderately assertive white wines with highish acidity go well for example Sauvignon Blancs , crisp Chardonnay.

•                 Asparagus battles with many wiens but goes well with a few.  Including those in which  its distinctive flavour finds a companionable echo —suavignon blanc, cool climate cabernet Francs, rounded young chardonnays is served with melted butter.

•                 Fennel better with white wines with sauvignon its best ally.

•                 Spinach can taste bitter or metallic in wine, particualrly in reds.  Pinot Noir cope well but the best poilcy with spinach is often to stir in cream, butter or parmesan to soften its flavour, or ifyou are serving white wine, squeeze lemon juice over it and then choose a fresh, young, not too aggresssive white.

Sweet

•                 Chocolate.  Death by chocolate is a common form of wine extermination.  Chocolate is one of the instances where an echoing flavour in a wine does not make an automatic marriage.  Difficulty:  extreme sweetness and heavy, tastebud smothering texture.  Accompanying wines must be at elast as sweet and they usuallyneed to be full bodied and high in alcohol.  Key with chocolate is a muscate based wine.  Sauterns, tawny port

•                 Icecream’s numbing effect is sufficient ot wipe out the flavors of most sweet wines, but nothing wipes out australian liqueur muscat.  It is best with chocolate, coffee, vanilla, rum and raisn, nut praline, prune and giner incecreams and less good with fresh fruit based ones. 

•                 Rum mixes best with muscat wines.

Dairy and eggs

•                 Cheese is fraught with confrontations, but there are many harmonious partnerships. (p. 21)

•                 Eggs coat the mouth.  What is needed is some kind of contrasting sauce or other main ingredient which the accompanyign wine can latch on to as in the classinc burgundian dis of poached etgs in red wine sauce.  Most other, white wines go better.  Sauvignon Blanc, chardonnay best.

•                 Yoghurt, not a friend to wine.  Avoid sipping directly after a mouthful of the yoghurt dip or salad.

Fish

•                 Oily fish— make the best of a bad job.  The wine has to be white, high in acids to cut through the oil and moe n nuetral than fruity or flavoursome because the fishy tste distorts the wine flavours.  It is safe to consider new world wines. 

•                 Smoked fish.  Impact varies enormoulsy.  Smoked salmon with champagne is very good as is Chablis or other white burgundies, dry aromatics from Alsace, or sauvignon blanc.

Vinegars, Pickles and Sauces

•                 Salsas are best with Sauvignon Blanc but match to the main ingredient.

•                 Chutny is sweet, sharp and vicious.  If you can’t resist it make usre you have a palate claring bread, rice or cheese, pate or plenty of water to insert between wine and chuney then chhose wine according to main items not the chutny.

•                 Cranberry sauce german rielsing or fruity of full bodied Australian Shiraz or Mourvedre or Zinfandel.

•                 Vinegar is a real danger zone for wine, even young white wine and pickled anything is a problem.  Acidity has to be mathed to acidity and some sweetness is a help:  Riesling is usually more successfu than bone dry Sauvignon Blanc, but be warned, success is a relatvie word with pciled vegetables and fish.  Vinagarette dressing, use more oil or wine.

Herbs, spices and seasonings

•                 Chilli doesn’t alter the taste of wine but it numbs the tastebuds and even burns them depriving you of some of your tasting capability.  Terefore daft to waste fine or venerable old wine on a chilli laden dish.  Chilled young white wines, no heavily tannic red wines for more assault on taste buds.

•                 Garlic when incorporated in cooked dishes is no problem, but a lot f raw garlic in a dish, rather ubllies the tastebuds.  Not major but something to remember.

•                 Ginger needs a aromatic wines  Riesling, pinot grigio, musat viognier.

•                 Herbs enhance foods.  On their own they are more at home with white wines except resemary and thyme but you should rearly let the herbs alone influence the choice of wine.

•                 Horseradish is hard on wine sapping it of fruit and flavour.  Wines that stand up to it are viognier or a gamy or chablis

•                 Mint sauce is very happy with wine, inclduing the cabernets in which there is a minty echo. But mint suace and mint jelly ruin wine especially red wine and is hard to temer them in  any way.

•                 Mustard. Hot treat with caution, but Dijon goes well with both wite and red and copes admirably with tannin.  Spare fragile or old wines.

•                 Soysauce—saltiness demands white wine with marked acidity and some sweetness.  Fortunately, that is also the profile for wines that suit the broad range of chinese nd japanese dishes.  Where something sucha s steak is dressed with soy remember the possiblitiy of a tannin salt clash and choose a full bodied fruity red wine.

•                 Grapefruit— try the tartest white wine you can find or abandon the grapefruit.

•                 Lemon/lime — Riesling, botrytised new world rieslings, semillons sauternes.

•                 Olives.  The saltiness of olives is best met by fino and manzanilla sherris.  In cooked dishes simply go with the main or if pronounced choose a full bodied fruity preferably herby red.

•                 Orange, like no other fruit, needs its acidity matched whether the dish is savoury or sweet.  Sweet wines suit organge uddings and cakes— best to choose the complementary flavour of an aptly named sweet orang muscat or muscat wines.  Match the weight of the  wine to that of the food, drink sparkling Asti with an orange gel or fruit salad and a liqueur muscat with a very rich dark orange flavoured chocolate mousse. 

•                 Tomatoes.  Beware the acidity of tomato.  Sauvignon Blanc is by far the best all-rounder and there is a usefully large field to choose from.  If you want a red wine, try a Barbera or other young italian red because of their tendency

Cheese

The idea that wine and cheese are perfect companions is one of the great myths .  Generally spekaing cheese is one of the trickiest foods to match.  Is it any wonder.  Cheese is frequently strong and pungently flavoured, often high in fat and may be high in acid and very ovten salty and can have a gluey mouth coating texture.  Somecheesees even manage to combine  all the wine and tastebud challenging features and the whole subject is made more complicate dyb the fact that cheeses vary as much from producer to producer and acording to maturity as do wines.

Dry red wines tend to suffer more from cheese than dry whites.  Sweet wines are more successful.  Almost without exception they need to be very sweet and at least moderatly full bodied.  Riesling.  The power of sweet fortified wines, especially port, and Recioto della Valpolicella, both dry and sweet often come into their own with strong and blue cheeses.  AS wella s port, both vintage or vintage type and aged tawny bear in mind madeira and banyuls. 

Guidelines:

•                 As it is the tannin in red wine that clashes spoiling the taste of the wine more than the cheese, reasonably mature red wines are often more successful than very young ones.

•                 The complex flavours of reds with some maturity are more harmonious with the complex flavours of many cheeses than are the vivid, pure fruit flavours of young wines.

•                 Be wary of subjecting very mature fine wine to cheese if you do want to serve such a wine with cheese, choose a mature Gouda — something that won’t overwhelm the wine.

•                 Red wines with some tannin meet their best match in hard cheeses, provided they are not too strong or salty (salt emphasizes tannin’s bitterness).  Hard cheeses are most accommodating to wines across the board.

•                 Soft French cheeses Camembert types when they are mature, as some of the hardest on wine.  For the sake of any wine, try to catch them before they become too runny and pungent.

•                 Soft, creamy high-fat cheeses generlly need wine with acidity, making white wines the easier choice.

•                 The more acid the cheese the more acid the wine needs to be — goat cheese with Saufignon Blanc for example.

•                 Don’t be lulled into a false sense of secutiry by mild cheeses.  Emmental, Jarlsberg, Edam, are not as easy as you might expect and goat’s cheese is persnickity even when mild.

•                 Tyring to choose one wine to go with the sort of cheese board that has a piece of blue, a repe camembert, goat, and a hard cheese is unlikely to meet with resoundling success.  Having one spledid cheese, instead, is as near to ensuring success as you can get.

•                 Choose where possible, a wine from the same region — munster with Alsace Swurztrminer, Vacherin with mature Pinot Noir.

•                 Cheese in cooked dishes doesn’t usually pose a problem Cheese soufles are a rathe good way of showing off fine red wines and whites.

Hard Cheeses:

The cheeses that go with the widest range of wines, inclluding dry red wines from medium to very hard, provided they are not too old and strong.  Parmesan, Grana Padano, Gruyere, Cheddar, Red Leicester, double bloucester.

Soft Cheeses:

Bloomy rind (Brie, Camembert) or washed rind, soft cheeses are among the trickiest to match, especially when they are unpasteurized and as they mature.  Try Chardonnay with a creamy Brie  or a red burgundy or Chianti Classsico Riserva.

Blue Cheese:

Runs the gamut from great partnerships (Roquefort with Sauternes, Stilton with tawny or vintage port.  Danish Blue is to be avoided with wine at all costs as are other very piquant lues sucha s the storngest Gorgonzola and caustic salty French varieties.  With milder Gorgonzola try Recioto di Soave.  If you are not sure of your cheese, settle for an aged tawny port or Bual Maderia.  With mild, cramy blue cheeses Toaky Aszu often works well or a mature Rioja or Ribera del Duero. 

Goat’s Cheese

Affinity with Sauvigon Blanc, or chardonnays with good concentration and acid, Pinot Blanc are good.  Red wines, Cabernet Francs are reliable choiceSyrah is complementary if rather powerful, and sparkling red Shiraz is the off beat option with a medium mature cheese.

Smoked Cheese

Very difficult.  Try Alsace Gewurztraminer or Australian Shiraz or a sweet wine.

The Effect of Cooking

Very little attention is paid to cooking methods, Yet the way food is cooked can have a profound iinfluence on its flavour.  A steamed salmon steak is more delicate in flavour than one that is char-grilled.  All this has a bearing on the wine you choose.

Poaching and Steaming:

Most gentle cooking method and used mainly for delicate foods, foods where freshness and fragile textures or those where moisture and natural juices need to be saved.

need an accompanying wine that is light-bodied or no more than medium weight which means there is far greater choice in whites than reds.  Tannin is an enemy of this kindo f food, wheras the acid freshness of crsip, light dry whites or reses can enhance delicate flavours. 

Frying:

fried foods have a certain weight that the wine has to stand up to

Braising and Stewing:

the richer more complex the flavours in the dish, the more substantial the wine needs to be and more often than not it will be red wine. 

Roasting:

forego your favoured mature classic wine the subtleties and nuance sof which will be lsot under a welter of vivid flavours, in favour of a bolder, brighter, new world wine or you can let the wine take priority and sacrifice those accompaniements which are going to bring the msot grief to a subtle complex wine, could you eat lamb without mint sauce or settle for dijon mustard instead of horseradish with beef. 

Cold meats go better with gamay because the tannin doesn’t go well with solid cold fat. Beef is also happy with red burgundy, chardonnay goes well with poultry and pork

Sauces:

*  to what extent is the sauce integral part of the dish.

 

A benchmark is the model orl inspiration towards which we aspire.  However, our aspirations can often be expressed in different ways.  For instance, if we think about a benchmark in winemaking, it might mean that towards which we strive in making wine, in cooperating as an industry to advance our mutual goals, or  marketing and exporting expertise or simply marketplace acceptance.

The  following have been selected as exemplars of best practices in each of these categories.  Against which of the following  do  you think Niagara might most productively benchmark itself?  Select up to three (3) possibilities —- or define your own benchmark.

France:

• Bordeaux

• Rhone Valley

• Burgundy

• Champagne

• Loire Valley

• Languedoc

• Alsace 

Italy:

• Piedmont

• Alto-Adige/Trentino

• Veneto-Fruilo

• Tuscany

Spain:

• Rioja

• Ribera del Duero

• Penedes

• Priot

• Rias Baixas

Germany:

• Mosel

• Pfalz

• Rheingau

Austria:

• Wachau

• Kremstal

• Kemptal

USA:

• California

• Napa

• Sonoma

• MendocinoMonterey

• Santa Barbara

• Carneros

• Amador-Sierra Foothills

• Pacific North West

• Oregon

• Washington State

• New York

• Finger Lakes

• Long Island

Chile:

Aconcagua

Casablanca

Mai[p

Rapel

Curico

Maule

Australia:

Yarra Valley

Mornington Peninsula

Tasmaina

Clare Valley

McLaren Vale

Eden Valley

Coonawarra

South Africa:

Stellenbosch/Paarl

Walker Bay

New Zealand:

Otago

Canterbury

Marlborough

Hawkes Bay

Other

 

This is a diary of the wines you’ve tasted and loved.  It’s a record of the memory you made on the occasion you enjoyed it.  It can also be used as a cellar book, helping to keep track of the wines you have purchased and the manner in which they are evolving.

Wines can evoke the flavours of the earth — from red berry fruits such as cherries and strawberries, to mushrooms, leather, herbs and spice.  These flavours can serve as a tripwire that ignites the moments of our lives that moved us.  The Wine Companion is a way to preserve that moment when you lived life well.

The Pleasures of Wine

Wine, in moderation, is a healthy component to the art of living well.  It plays a civilizing role in celebration, good eating and lively conversation.  More than spirits or beers, wine has been accorded a status frequently out of proportion to its purpose.  Unless you are a merchant buying wine for resale, a sommelier buying wine for a hotel or restaurant, or a collector buying wine for your cellar, the knowledge you need in order to enjoy wine is  not as rigorous as the wine press would lead you to believe.

What motivates the connoisseurs is the desire to develop sufficient knowledge about wine in order to by-pass the charlatan, to recognize the fraudulent and to find assurance in the knowledge that his or her purchase was a wise one.  The finer points of wine enjoyment, however, are not contingent on that same kind of knowledge, yet consumers seem to feel intimidated if they cant’ swirl, describe and evaluate wine as a connoisseur might.

The skills of a connoisseur are nice to know, since as consumers we want to be assured that we aren’t being taken in by wines that are overpriced or poorly made.  However, the desire for connoisseurship has tended to obscure enjoyment.  Wine, after all, is a means to an end, not an end in itself.  It’s the means, the journey, the moments in which wine has been our companion that are worth cherishing.

This diary is about enjoyment and, like a scrapbook, it’s a way to help you recall your fond moments with wine.  No one’s judgement counts but your own.

Date Tested:______________________________

Name of Wine:____________________________

Vintage:___________________________________

Occasion or place tested:_________________

 

Is it true that red wine can contribute to a healthy life and lifestyle?

Yes! 

Wine contains antioxidants that are more potent in their disease-fighting capacity than equivalent daily requirements of vitamins C and E.  Current findings confirm that moderate wine drinkers live longer than either abstainers or consumers of beer or spirits — and have the least incidence of the most significant diseases that plague our generation. 

For a few years abstainers thought that they could get the same benefits from fresh grapes or grape juice.  Although grapes contain pterostilben, an important antioxidant not found in wine that has an anti-diabetic and cancer-preventing property, fresh grapes lack the levels of antioxidants contained in finished wine.  It seems that when grapes are converted into wine during the fermentation process the amounts of their inherent beneficial antioxidants are enhanced several times.  Another difference is the fact that alcohol  further enhances our ability to absorb the antioxidants into our systems.

As we all know, after a certain point, more wine is not better.  Nor is it good to save it all up for the week-end and drink ourselves silly to make up for lost time.  Too much alcohol consumed at one time, (besides making us unwillingly intimate with a cold, porcelain bowl) can cause depression, disturbed sleep and sexual dysfunction.  Too much consumed for too long a period of time does even more miserable things to our bodies such as lead to high blood pressure, gout, eczema,  pancreatitis, confusion, hallucinations and fits, numbness in hands and feet, shrinkage of testes and enlarged breasts in men, mental retardation and stunted growth in unborn children, chronic liver damage and even death.  So how do we obtain the benefits and avoid alcohol’s debilitating downside?  What are the safe limits?

There are many things to take into consideration when deciding how much is good for your health and how much is not: 

• Size.  The larger you are the easier it is for you to  metabolize alcohol

• Experience.  The healthful tolerance of alcohol occurs over time.  A new drinker will feel the effects much sooner than a regular drinker.

• Medications. Alcohol’s debilitating effects can be exacerbated when taken with medicines.  You’ll feel it much sooner if you take even a cold tablet, let alone an antibiotic.

• Accompanied with food:  Drink on an empty stomach and, again, you will feel the effects with less wine and it will stay in your system longer than if you have a nibble here and there as you sip.

With these qualifiers in mind, the safe and beneficial limit for a healthy man is up to 40 grams or 14 ounces of wine per day.  That amounts to between two to three glasses daily.  Women cannot!  Sorry.  Women are more sensitive to alcohol than are men.  Even if you’re the same size and weight as the guy next to you, your limit is about half that of his.  The reason is women have, by nature, less of the metabolizing enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase.    It is dehydrogenase that helps rid the body of alcohol.  Consequently safe limits for women are between one to two glasses a day.  That’s it.  Anything more and the benefits start to reverse.  The upside is that wine’s benefits against heart disease may be more protective for women than it is for men, so less is more in a woman’s case.

The jury is still out regarding the relationship between wine and breast cancer.  “One can find support for almost any view,” states Harvey E. Finkel, M.D. and clinical professor of medicine at Boston University Medical Center. Some studies indicate that more than two glasses a day could increase the risk slightly but that risk can be reduced by drinking less and taking folate, a vitamin B compound.  (Some scientists suggest that this very slight risk may be restricted to only those women with a family history of breast cancer.)  Each woman must judge for herself whether the benefits for her outweigh the risks.

Red grapes when grown under conditions of stress have been shown to contain the largest amount of the potent wonder compound, resveratrol, thought responsible for lowering bad cholesterol in its fight against heart disease.  This is why red wines from marginal climates seem to contain higher amounts of resveratrol than warm-climate reds. Good news for lovers of Canadian red wines. Niagara-grown Pinot Noir, for instance, has been shown to contain the highest amount of resveratrol than Pinot grown from all other major growing districts of the world!  

But you love white wine too? Take heart.  Recent studies are indicating that it really doesn’t matter if the wine is red or white, as long as it is consumed in moderation.  It’s true that red wine contains more antioxidants than white, but a new finding could resurrect flagging white wine sales. It appears that the antioxidant molecules that are present in white wine, even though they are less than in red, may be more easily absorbed in the body. 

Red wine, for all its glorious complexity, has been charged as the culprit for the notorious red wine headache.   People who are susceptible can get migraine-like pain with as little as two ounces of wine.  Myths persist about the cause, but no one really knows why certain people get them while others do not.  What we do know, however, is that they are probably not caused by sulfites.  Only asthmatics need to be cautious about sulfites in wine since high concentrations can trigger an asthma attack. Less than one-quarter of one percent of those who suffer from asthma are affected.  If you were allergic to sulfites you would be sensitive to crackers, pizza crust, canned tuna, pickles, olives, shrimp and dried fruit.  White wines often contain more sulfites than red.  Organic wines contain the least amount of sulfites, but even they contain some. 

Some scientists believe that the real culprits are biogenic amines found naturally in fermented foods and beverages such as cheese, sauerkraut, salami, flour tortillas, sourdough breads, horseradish and maraschino cherries.  When ingested, they can cause blood vessels to expand or contract causing pressure in the head.  Red wines contain more amines than white but their development varies according to where the grapes are grown, the type of yeast used, and the type of bacteria introduced to induce the acid-softening process called malolactic fermentation.  Proponents of this theory suggest sufferers take an anti-histamine before drinking red wine.  (On the other hand the pill could amplify the effect of the alcohol.)

And yet another theory suggests that, depending on how sensitive you are, the headache could be caused by the alcohol in the wine.  Alcohol dilates blood vessels causing them to swell in the nose and sinus causing pressure.  Since red wine frequently has higher alcohol levels than white it is perhaps more apparent with red wine. 

Other explanations blame it on prostaglandins which certain people lack that could contribute to pain and swelling. I’ve noticed if I have a glass of wine in the early afternoon it can have a thundering effect.  I don’t know of any study yet that has examined time of day and consumption.  We do know that, although having a nip before bed time feels like a sedative, it can actually behave as a stimulant and awaken you about two hours into a good night’s sleep.  Been there, too.

Research is published daily confirming the healthful benefits of the moderate daily consumption of wine.  Some critics claim this is true because wine drinkers are healthier to begin with.  Wine drinkers, they argue, choose healthier ways of living and add wine is only one among many other health choices they make.  We know that moderate drinkers smoke less, if at all, exercise more, eat nutritiously and report fewer health problems.  They also tend to be better educated and are less likely to be overweight.   

It could be that the enhancement that wine brings to a more pleasurable life may be its greatest benefit of all.   Wine draws us together with friends, makes us feel more relaxed in conversation, connects us with a rich, cultural past and expands our community of co-enthusiasts to world wide networks.  Wine encourages us to slow down and pay attention to the ways in which the miraculous gift of our senses can reveal and illuminate wine’s infinite pleasures.  

Websites for information related to wine and health include:

Alcohol in Moderation at: www.aim-digest.com

Australian Drug Foundation at: www.adf.org.au

National Drug Research Institute at:          www.med.unsw.edu.au

Office International de la Vigne et du Vin at:          www.oiv.org

The US Wine Institute at: www.wineinstitute.org

 

 

By being:

• open to the limitless variety of wines

• attuned to how our senses guide us

• aware of the forces that compete against a sound assessment of wine

e.g. pseudo precise statements

“Despite the fact that we have so many wines from which to choose we do not need ever more pseudo precise judgements about individual wines.  We need an understanding of what makes wine good.  Only then can each of us sort through the array with any sense of security C or evaluate those who do so for us with such seeming exactitude.”

 Matt Kramer

Other forces that compete against a sound assessment of wine:

• charlatans   (overcharging)

• wine snobs   (unwarranted generalizations)

• simple relativism (no objectivity)

• sense of futility (so much; no time)

• false assumptions (expensive/beer)

“Wine appreciation attenuates these forces by building confidence in yourself to trust your own palate.”

Luke Skywalker

To appreciate is to:

• recognize something of value

• bring a sensitive understanding to bear when judging its quality or Agoodness

What makes wine good?

Factors That Measure “Goodness” in Wine

• Good Health: healthy and free from faults

• musty basement (corked)

• vinegar (volatile acidity)

• burnt match (sulphur dioxide)

• rotten eggs (hydrogen sulfide)

• nail polish remover (ethyl acetate)

• garlic (mercaptans)

• Good Harmony: balanced basic components

o sugar

o acid

o tannin

o alcohol

• Depth: concentration of flavours

o intensity

o character

• Long Length and Pleasing Texture

• Complexity: the wine must continually surprise, please and satisfy with a multiplicity of aromas, and flavours that unfold from start to finish

The human palate is the best arbiter of a wine=s goodness (quality).  It follows that central to the pursuit of wine appreciation of the sharpening of our palates through wine tasting.

“Wine tasting is an exercise in moderation and common sense…It teaches us a thorough acquaintance with one’s senses and how to use them, it promotes the close examination of one’s reactions and feelings, and finally, it encourages sobriety…It presupposes a state of mind that is constantly receptive to sensation.”

Emile Peynaud

The Taste of Wine

Course Objectives

General:

To build a state of mind that is constantly receptive to sensation.

Specific:

• To enable you to build a mindful basis for the enjoyment of wine

• To encourage you to explore the endless variety of wine

• To provide opportunities for you to tell the difference between a well made wine and a mediocre one

• To provide opportunities for you to sharpen your senses

Setting the Context for the Course

Premise: there is no one  way to organize knowledge in a discipline or area of study

Ways in which wines can be taught corresponds to the way wines are named on the label

• by region

• by proprietary trademark

• by grape variety

[This article first appeared in Wine Tidings, 1997]

“Drink with impunity — Or anyone else who invites you.” 

Artemus Ward

After weathering dire forecasts of a very small harvest, records now show that although yields were low, tonnage of premium vinifera grapes surpassed 1996 representing an additional three million bottles of wine within a single year.

My neighbours, who are growers, are  happy.  It was also a payday of record — $35 million in sales for processing, finally surpassing the pre-labrusca pull-out 1984 record of $30.6 million.

The Ontario Grape Growers’ Marketing Board is calling it a “Vintage of Records” because it broke so many in volume, premium grapes harvested and quality measures of ripeness.   It’s also a vintage of paradox with low yields and increased tonnage— a vintner’s dream team explained by a production bonus of an additional one million maturing vines.  The forecasts were partially true.  The harvest per acre was modest, but there were more, mature vines from which to pick.  Since 1994,  3,000 acres of premium varieties have been planted at a cost of $14,000 an acre, 80 percent of which was financed by independent growers.  That’s an addition of three million vines in four years with one million maturing every year and new plantings equaling that pace..

You’d think our growers would be celebrating with impunity, but they understand all too well nature’s caprice.  Often humbled by her, they won’t exhale until the Icewine harvest is in.  It’s been a very tough harvest.  The first time they were actually able to pick was New Year’s Eve.  There was a virtual light show to help them bring in the New Year, however.  Klaus Reif, from Reif Estate Winery, said there was so much activity in the fields that night that “you could see the headlights from dozens of farmers’ tractors lighting up their vineyards and you could hear their motors’ steady hum…”  The tonnage they picked  was high, and the concentrations of fruit flavour superb.

By dawn, however, the temperatures warmed and harvesting ceased.  VQA regulations dictate that no Icewine can be picked at temperatures greater than -8° C.  Throughout the month temperatures teased the zero mark but seldom went much lower. Heavy winds and unseasonable rain created the conditions for potential crop loss.  By the beginning of February only 40 percent of the crop was in, but the grapes were still hanging. The berries, however, began drying out. In a conversation with grower George Lepp I described the grapes as “desiccating.” He cringed as if stabbed in the heart.  “Not desiccating,” he said trying to ease a worse case scenario. “Dehydrating. That doesn’t sound so bad.”  Rather than risk further drying, some growers have harvested for Select Late Harvest wines rather than take a chance on waiting any longer.  But many of the thirty-five growers who have invested thousands of dollars this year in pressing machines to attenuate the logistical nightmare  of getting a crop to a winery for pressing,  have a vested interest in waiting.  This story is still unfolding as I write. 

Despite this harvest uncertainty, it could still be the largest Icewine harvest on record.  It’s this promise and the realization that there is money in them thar fields, that has prompted several expansions, reallocations and new ventures in the Ontario wine industry.

The Liquor Licensing Board of Ontario reports that they are reviewing 17 new requests for manufacturing licenses.  If approved,  Ontario’s wineries could  reach the 50 mark by the turn of the century.  Wasn’t Napa about the same size in the mid sixties?

Stoney Ridge Cellars is moving its operation by spring from Winona, on the periphery of Niagara, to Niagara’s heartland in Vineland — smack dab in the middle of prime growing lands of the Bench below the Niagara Escarpment.  The peripatetic winemaker and President Jim Warren will be moving headquarters for the third time in 13 years.  This move will probably be the final step in the evolution of a dream that will unfold on a 73-acre vineyard.  With new partners under the direction of John Belanger, CEO of Cuesta Estates and Stoney Ridge Winery,  they plan to incorporate a winery-restaurant complex and an art gallery.  By the way, Stoney Ridge Cellars’ Chardonnay will be featured in the member’s dining lounge at Queen’s Park and served at receptions.  At last our politicians are serving Ontario wines.  Now if we could just convince the airlines. 

More news.  Andrés Wines, the second largest winery in Canada, recently announced its plans to add a new winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake on a 20-acre site that w