CheapWineFinder’s Beginners Guide To Wine Part 4
January 21, 2010 by dave
Wine Terms and What They Mean
Oak: Wine is aged in oak barrels to help “keep” the wine, it will last longer, by preventing oxidation, it also imparts a specific flavor. In white wine the oak tastes of butter and toasty flavors, in red wine it tastes of vanilla. In the fancy expensive wines, the oak is extremely evident in the taste of the wine while it is young. After it is cellared for a number of years, the effect of the oak is diminished and the fruit flavors mingle with the layers of oak and a rather magical flavor is produced. But, in the wines that are priced under $20, there is no time available to have these flavors inter- mingle. The oak taste, if balanced, is still desirable, so the winemakers do things like age half the wine in second fill oak barrels and the other half in stain-less steel vats. The wine gets a bit of the oak taste of the high end wines, but not much of it’s aging properties. Some under $20 dollar wines are aged completely in stain-less tanks, these wines are very fruity in taste and should be drunk within 4 or 5 years of being produced (the sooner the better), but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Chardonnay’s are constantly going back and forth, this year oaked Chardonnay’s are in and the next year stain-less Chardonnays are the rage. If you can smell the oak in the nose, that is a sign that the wine is not well balanced. If you taste more than the butter or vanilla, if you get that real dry, chemical quality, then the wine is poorly made.
Tannins are a compound in the grape skin that give the wine “structure”, it is hard to describe but it gives the wine backbone. The tannins give the fruit some zip, they stop the wine from getting mushy or flabby. Tannins are only evident in red wine, since they are derived from the grape skins, white wine has no contact with the skins during the wine making process. Tannins don’t have a specific taste, but you can feel a sharp jab in the back of your mouth. The fruit of the wine should blend in and actually over power the tannins, tannins should be sensed, not tasted. Again like oak, tannins are ultra evident in high end wines that need to be aged for a number of years to reach their peak. In under $20 bottles of wine, which are usually made in a drink it now style, the winemakers try to have a touch of tannins, but not too much. It is not easy to accomplish and most value red wines that have problems, have tannin problems.
High end, super expensive wines are made to cellared or aged for 10,15,20 or more years. It is a huge waste of money to drink those wines when they are young. Value priced wines are usually specifically made to be consumed young. To properly store wine for aging you need a dark climate controlled stable area, wine does not react well to swings in temperature and humidity. That wine rack on your kitchen counter is fine to store wine for a month or two, but unless your kitchen is a dark, quite, climate controlled space, it just won’t do for long term cellaring. Most under $20 wines will improve with a couple of years of aging, but exactly how much aging is just right and how much aging is too much is hard to say. For the high end wine ,there are all sorts of experts that will tell you what to expect from your properly stored 18 year old wine, but nobody is paying much attention to the effects of aging on that $12 Spanish wine you bought yesterday. If you are buying under $20 wines you probably don’t have a fancy wine cellar in your home and I doubt that you have a cave to store wine in your backyard, so if you want to cellar wine what do you do? You can buy a wine refrigerator, the large ones are very expensive and it does not make much sense to have a wine cooler that costs more than the value of the wine it stores. The smaller ones are more affordable, but don’t hold enough wine to make cellaring practical. Until you get that house with the wine cellar, I think the solution is to drink all the wine you buy and don’t worry about cellaring.
What temperature is right for drinking red or white wines? Refrigeration is a fairly recent development and for ages wine was stored in caves where the wine was kept in 55 to 60 degree temperature. But, people didn’t run to a cave every time they wanted some wine, so some bottles and casks had to be stored above ground in reasonable proximity to the drinkers. This means that for most of history wine was drunk at room temperature. Today it is common to chill white wine and to drink red wine at room temperature. But there are schools of thought that says this is backwards, white wine tends to have more delicate flavors and the chilling tends to mute those flavors. Red wine has bolder flavors and chilling the wine would mute the bolder flavors and allow the subtler tastes to thrive. So, drink the wine which ever way tastes best to you.
You will hear the word “terrior” used in relation to wine and it has nothing to do with blowing things up. Terrior is a French concept of winemaking, where the bottle of wine is a reflection of the climate, the particular make up of the soil the grapes are grown in and the traditional winemaking techniques used to make the wines. Every year the wind, the rain and the sun interact differently with the grape vines and the juice of the grape reflect these variations, and therefore the wine will be the sum of these conditions. In effect you are tasting the wind, the rain, the sun and the earth in that bottle of wine. But in under $20 bottles of wine the grapes are almost never sourced from one particular part of the vineyard, it’s actually rare that the grapes are sourced from the same vineyard, you can not have a sense of place, or terrior, in a wine that is sourced from many growing areas. What you do experience with terrior in the value priced wine is a more general sense of place, a Pinot Noir grown is France will make a different tasting Pinot than one grown in Oregon, and that Pinot will taste different than that grown in New Zealand and on and on.
to be continued….
Tagged: cheap wine, oak, tannin, terrior, wine cellar, wine refrigerator
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