The middle class guide to drinking wine

[threebikesmcginty]

I don't drink wine very often but my favourite flavour is screw top.

 

[Dayvo]

Currently sitting in my leather sofa, watching the golf on telly, drinking chilled red wine, from a plastic glass.

Classy, moi? Yeah, sure!

 

[Crackle]

I like a good bottle of wine but I don't know enough, despite trying, to pick one, so I rarely do but last weekend I was away with a friend who does know his wines and in a place that stocked some reasonable ones, not great but good enough. We handed him the wine menu and he picked us two lovely wines which were a joy to drink.

 

[Dayvo]

[QUOTE 4483418, member: 259"]I've been banned from drinking wine out of a whisky tumbler when we've got company. The problem with proper glasses is I'm forever knocking them over an breaking them. IKEA must love me, as we have to get a twelve pack of Forsiktig every time we go.[/QUOTE]

Ha ha. That's ironic as forsiktig means 'careful!

 

[Crackle]

Can I recommend Hedonist Wines? Not too much choice - but I've not had a bad wine from them. They're based about 5 miles from us.

Bookmarked

 

[Tin Pot]

Does red wine really need to 'breathe' for a while before drinking?
Does white wine really need to be chilled?

Last night's bottle of Pinot Grigio definitely got more quaffable as it crept up to room temp.

It depends, and some times.

 

[Profpointy]

Yebbut white wine simply isn't very nice is it?

Apart from Cava or Champagne which are perfectly Ok

EDIT
And anyhow beer is best.
..... apart from in Australia, where their perfectly acceptable red wine or "champage" are superior substitutes to what they preposterously refer to as "beer". Bizarrely they manage to market Foster's in the UK when it is the very worst of the Australian beers, which is a considerably acheivement.

 

[jefmcg]

It's not pretentious bollox, it's chemistry...

We posed this question to Marjorie King, Sensory Research Technician with Agriculture Canada...

First of all, red and white wines have different chemical compositions that influence their sensory perception and their sensory traits. The aromatic white wines and these are things like Chenin Blanc, Gewurztraminer, some of the Rieslings, you serve them the coolest so it would be about 8°C. They have a relatively higher proportion of aldehydes and esters and terpenes that fill up the head space of the glass and at the lower temperature. So they will project their fruitiness which is a big part of the appreciation of those wines at a much lower temperature. The cooler temperature accentuates a bit of the acid and so, it creates a crispier, fresher kind of impression of the wine. If you do a Chardonnay-type wine or a wine in that style that is oaked, it can be served at a slightly higher temperature, so maybe 10°C, maybe 11°C. And the red wines, we have the phenolic compounds in the red wines, but with the polyphenols and the tannins, contribute to the structure in the mouth feel and that’s very much linked to the appreciation in a good quality of red wine. These components are better tasted at a slightly higher temperature. So if you chill the red wine, it’s not just that the flavour components don’t come out into the head space as well, but the tannins and the polyphenols feel much more astringent and harsher in the mouth and the acid is accentuated as well. If you serve a red wine that’s really warm, what you get then is the alcohol starts to dominate the head space in the glass and you get the perception of an alcoholic wine, and you don’t appreciate all the fruity components that are in the wine. So if we serve those at about 19°C, you get a much more pleasant overall balanced wine.

And yes while anybody is free to enjoy any beverage how ever they like, for god's sake they drink ice tea over here (devils urine), there are actual reasons why things taste better if served 'correctly'.

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamous_study_on_wine_tasting.html

In a sneaky study, Brochet dyed a white wine red and gave it to 54 oenology (wine science) students. The supposedly expert panel overwhelmingly described the beverage like they would a red wine. They were completely fooled

 

[srw]

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamous_study_on_wine_tasting.html

In a sneaky study, Brochet dyed a white wine red and gave it to 54 oenology (wine science) students. The supposedly expert panel overwhelmingly described the beverage like they would a red wine. They were completely fooled

Which demonstrates that the language we have to describe flavours isn't up to the job. I bet that if he'd asked "what is this wine?" (factual, not descriptive) he'd have had a different response. The fact that the chap himself now makes wine shows that even he doesn't believe that attempting to refine flavours is nonsense.

 

[srw]

Yebbut white wine simply isn't very nice is it?

That's like saying that vegetables aren't very nice. "White wine" covers everything from blue nun to oaked Aussie Chardonnay via Sauternes, white Bordeaux and pinot grigio. Cheap white wine is, in my experience, less likely to be pleasant than cheap red, but once you get into the £7 a bottle and beyond sweet spot there are some delicious things.

 

[T4tomo]

But only good quality expensive "Craft Ale"

(Craft Ale is the beer equivalent of Proseco.....)

craft Ale - like real Ale, only in a smaller bottle with a bigger price!

 

[PK99]

Can I recommend Hedonist Wines? Not too much choice - but I've not had a bad wine from them. They're based about 5 miles from us.

Almost any independent wine merchant will be better value than the big supermarkets. Their business relies on repeat business not profit margin imposed by bean counters.

There is an article in the Times today about Lidl introducing a range of French wines 'from the vineyard next to the big name' - many independents specialise in just that! Two that I respect: Totness wine and Wined Up Here in Surbiton (who sell a basic Cote de Rhone at an alarmingly high price, until you learn that the vineyard is literally across the road from one of the best Chateau Neuf du Pape producers and the road is the boundary of the Chateau Neuf AC area and the price is a real bargain.

 

[I like Skol]

I say bullshit - "taste better" is completely subjective. Ask anyone who doesn't like hoppy hipster beers .

I don't like hoppy hipster beers, but I do occasionally like a chilled bottle of Lambrusco on a hot day.....

 

[swee'pea99]

It is the lower middle classes that drink Prosecco, the real middle class only drink French sparkling wine, or an English if Freddie's cousin owns the vinyard.

Posting from Crouch End North London - AKA Bourgeois Central - I can assure you that Prosecco is very much the preferred tipple of the locals, with Cava a perfectly acceptable substitute. VFM is a key criterion. We are 'squeezed', remember. (It would be vulgar to pretend that one is not.)

On a related note, just last week at a Trattoria in southern Italy, the waiter brought our carafe of local red and asked us something, at some length, in that delightful and incomprehensible language of theirs, so being English we smiled a lot and said 'si'. He returned with an ice bucket, into which he nestled the carafe. And he was right. The chilling removed the roughness and made the wine a far more enjoyable beverage. I highly recommend it for any red that's cheap and cheerful and on the 'thinner' (ie, not Rioja/oaked type of thing) end of the scale.

 

[User169]

Need? No.

But oxygenation and changing the temperature of wine certainly changes its flavour. In general (as someone's said), tannic wines benefit from oxygenation because oxygenated tannin is less bitter - but the best way to do that is by decanting or by swirling in the glass. White wines tend to be made specifically to drink chilled, so if you want to get the flavour the maker intended it's better to chill it.

Unless you want to leave your wine for 24 hours or more before drinking it, there is going to be virtually no effect of oxygen on the tannins. You might get some oxygenation of thiols and other nasties will simply evaporate. Together those effects may give the perception of a softening of tannic flavour.