Homemade & Commercial

Wine, Beer, Spirits, Cider & Mead Guides

Alcoholic beverages; most commonly beer and wines made at home. Brews made from brewing kits purchased at shops specialized in spirits. The Beer Pirate features homebrew recipes, equipment requirements, and commercial productions information; and all the best practices needed to make that perfect batch!

There are only two colors in wine-red and white.

Any wine containing the slightest tinge of red is a red wine.

White wines range from the very palest straw-color to deep, dark brown.

There is no wine that is absolutely colorless.

Red wines are generally dry. (Exceptions are Port and Port-type wines, some Italian and one or two Hungarian table wines, and, of course, kosher wines.)

White wines vary in sweetness, from the extreme dryness of a Manzanilla to the rich sweet lusciousness of a Tokay Eszencia.

The word “dry” is used in the wine trade to describe the opposite of sweet. Literally, it means lacking in sugar.

Four Main Classifications of Wines

Light Beverage (Natural still wines) – Red and white Bordeaux, Burgundy, Italian, Rhine, Moselle, Alsatian, Tokay, Hungarian table wines, American, California, etc. Alcoholic content 14% or less.

Sparkling – Champagne, sparkling Burgundy, Asti Spumante, sparkling Moselle, etc. Alcoholic content 14% or less.

Fortified – Sherry, Port, Madeira, Marsala, Malaga, etc. Alcoholic content 16% to 23%.

Aromatized – Vermouth, both Italian and French, quinined wines, etc. Alcoholic content 15% to 20%.

Wines with less than 14% alcohol will improve after bottling. Fortified and aromatized wines will improve very little or not at all, with the exception of Vintage Ports.

One of the leading Champagne shippers illustrated this point when he told me: “When I ship my wine, my name appears on the label. It is I who guarantee the quality. My reputation is more important to me than any pecuniary profit I may derive from the sale. It took my forebears 200 years to establish this reputation for shipping wines of quality, and rest assured that I am going to pass on as good a name to my successors as I received.” It is men of this type who have placed the wine and spirit trade on the high plane which has become traditional.

Based on these traditions, certain firms have established their brands so well that the public asks for their product by the name of the shipper. This has been particularly true in the case of Cognac and whiskies, but since Prohibition made our public “age conscious,” many people have been buying “numbers” rather than brands in whose name we have confidence. This has happened in the case of wines, as well. It is true that certain wines do improve with age-up to a point-but there are other wines which are more pleasant if drunk when young, as is the case with light white wines, whose charm lies in their freshness.

The industry as a whole is today a most important part of our business life, employing, directly or through allied enterprises, millions of men. It is one of the three most important sources of tax revenue for the Federal treasury and the several State treasuries.

Just as Prohibition is bad, so is excess, and in no case is this more true than in the use of alcoholic beverages. There is no better word of advice on this point than that which Lord Chesterfield gave to his son, in the letter dated London, March 27, 1747:

“Were I to begin the world again with the experience I now have of it, I would lead a life of real, not imaginary pleasures. I would enjoy the pleasures of the table, and of wine; but stop short of the pains inseparably annexed to an excess of either.”

Wine gifts for the discriminate wine taster.

Examine your glass of wine. This is not actually tasting, to be sure. But color is extremely important to our appetites, and the color of a wine can have tremendous appeal. A well made wine is a mighty fine sight. To be enjoyed fully it.should be served in fine glasses-simple and clear-so that it may shine to its best advantage. Wine served otherwise is being sold short.

Once the color and sparkle of the wine have been appreciated, it is time to begin the tasting. Our experience of tasting involves four separate factors: bouquet or the nose of the wine; aroma or the peculiar sensation of smelling internally inside the mouth; body or the feel of the alcoholic content of the wine; and finish or those sensations which linger in the mouth when the wine has been swallowed. And so, the business of tasting a wine is nothing more than weighing the pleasure you find in each of these factors-bouquet, aroma, body and finish-and discovering how well your pleasures stack up.

Begin by sniffing the wine. Sniff it. Don’t inhale it in a furious snort. Hold the glass three or four inches below your nose and gingerly take in two or three whiffs of the perfume. Hold those little whiffs in your nose until you feel them ooze into the back of your throat. Exhale completely and swallow, freeing your head of the smell completely. Repeat the entire sniffing process-two or three times if you are enjoying yourself. Now, bring your nose directly over the rim of the glass and very slowly and steadily breathe in the complete bouquet of the wine. What you now fill your head with cannot be described as anything but a bouquet-a combination of all the perfumes in the wine. If it is a good wine, the bouquet has cleanliness and freshness as well as a haunting compound of odors, a firm sweetness binding the whole. If there is the faintest trace of sourness, bitterness, mustiness, sulphur or mould, we know immediately the wine is inferior.

One deep breath of a fine bouquet is hardly enough. Why not enjoy such a pleasure? Breathe again. You may discover a few delightful sensations you missed the first time. And you may just as well know, at this point, very few wines are as wonderful as their smell. When somebody describes a wine as “great” this is what he means: its aroma, body and finish are in the same league with its bouquet.

Next, investigate the aroma. Take a good, bold sip of the wine. Hold it firmly in your mouth. You will notice at once the perfumes you smelled in the bouquet are suddenly present inside your mouth. You seem to be feeling the smell of the wine as though the smell were tangible. You will know whether all the bouquet is there or whether some of it has faltered on the way and been lost. You will decide whether new perfumes are present. And you will decide for yourself whether all the various odors are as delightful in the mouth as they were in the nose. This will be your judgment of the aroma.

Now you slurp the wine around in your mouth as you set about judging the body of the wine. Some Americans look on this operation as being somewhat vulgar, like dunking petits fours in a teacup. Actually that slurping, complete with whatever gurgling sounds it may produce, is an essential part of wine-tasting. After a little practice, you can hold the gurgling down to something less clamorous than faulty plumbing, but it is not until it has come in contact with the entire lining of the mouth that the body of the wine is felt. The body is the alcohol; this is what causes the faintly burning sensation which now fills the mouth. It appears to give the wine a feeling of substance or lack of substance. Quite often we are almost automatically tempted to chew a wine, it feels so substantial. Such a wine we describe as “full-bodied.” Then as the wine is swallowed a warmth wells in the back of the throat, and the fine qualities of the alcohol and the gentleness of the heat blend with the lingering bouquet and aroma.

You swallow; and what is left is the finish. This is quite often the most dazzling part of wine-tasting. Among people who are just learning how to taste, it often is the most vivid part of tasting. This is particularly true if the wine is a fine one, for all of a sudden one is aware of lingering fragrances which have heretofore been undetected: they suddenly permeate the mouth and nose. This finish seems to be a recapitulation of all the charm-from the first whiff of bouquet to the final swallow-and the pleasure is considerably enhanced by the knowledge that it is a transitory pleasure, that like a sunset or a sweet chord of music, it can be treasured only in one’s memory.

This, in effect, is the process of tasting a wine. Developing a wine-tasting technique requires much patience, but it should be a pleasure.

We are first aware of our power to taste food when we are weaned from the maternal breast. From that cruel and difficult period we battle to assert our own gastronomical individuality. The going is often hard. We are continually disturbed by the advances in dietetics, in medicine, the never ending development of hygienic chaff or uncooked cereal, the enriching of flour and the sanitary skimming of milk. We learn unenthusiastically what a carrot tastes like raw, what it is like if it’s boiled, creamed, or candied. We learn to rise in rebellion against the smell of uncooked sea food or cooking cabbage.

By the time we have emerged from adolescence, we have been so conditioned by so many foods that the mere mention of any of them brings their taste to mind almost as sharply as the actual food. Without effort we have developed a vast store of taste memories. We have never had these tastes described to us. No one has told us to moisten our lips with vegetable soup, let its perfumes fill our nasal cavities or let it roll easily against the mucous membrane. The order was spare and firm: “Eat it-or else!” And after that order was repeated a few hundred times, we pretty well knew what vegetable soup tasted like.

No one ever bawled out to us: “Drink that Mouton-Rothschild ‘72-or else!” or “That’s perfectly good Chateau d’Yquem ‘20.” The fact is that less than 10 per cent of our adult population tasted wine before it was eighteen years old, and that 10 per cent includes those of us whose introduction to wine was a serving of a purple-black liquid in a coffee cup in the place Joe had sent us to. The taste was hardly something to put into one’s memory book of pleasant sensations. So now it is just because we have such a generous store of food tastes in our memories and practically no memory of wine tastes that we are quite self-conscious about the mechanics of memorizing wine tastes. Like piano lessons, roller skating, or blowing chewing-gum bubbles, learning to memorize tastes seems to belong to childhood.

This, of course, is absurd. For even if we were fed wine on mama’s knee and were reared in a house where the wine carafe was as much a part of the table setting as knife or fork, the chances are quite slight we would be able to identify as many as half a dozen wines and those only as “Uncle Mayer’s wine,” or “Aunt Giovanna’s wine,” or “Cousin Mignon’s” or “the wine from the little cask.” That such wines were Burgundies, clarets, Rieslings, or Chiantis, or that they were of a certain vintage, or were worthy of adjectives other than “good” or “sour,” we would not have dreamed. They went down our throats with the rest of the food, and were no more contemplated than the potato pancakes, spaghetti,or sour-dough bread which accompanied them as the rush was made to be up from the table and away.

No. Wine-tasting is an adult business which comes only with a developing love of food. It did not belong to childhood or adolescence, when food bulk was infinitely more important to us than food quality. The first thing we must do in order to taste a wine, therefore, is to shed any self-consciousness we may have about learning how to taste-now that we are past childhood.

At first the act of drinking a glass of wine appears to be a pretty self-conscious ceremony in its own right. To those of us who are used to thinking in terms of aiming a whisky or gin for one’s stomach and getting it there in the shortest time by the straightest route, the act of drinking wine seems to be a rather stuffy rite. We take the glass in hand and imitate the wine-drinkers around us-we hold the glass to the light, twirl the stuff in the glass, sniff it, sip it, or gulp it, pump it around inside our mouths, swallow it, and haven’t the vaguest idea of whether or not it is good; in fact, we are so involved in the ritual of drinking that we don’t even know if we like the wine.

If the ceremonial of wine-drinkers leaves us stunned, their vocabulary may well defeat us completely. More people have been scared away from the enjoyment of wine by the florid language of the cognoscenti than by the high prices of the bottles. By the time one has heard a glass of wine apotheosized as “rather like the less sweet wallflower,” or patronized as “uncompromisingly Gallic in its patriotism,” or dramatized as “the Peter Pan vintage,” it is far more comforting to head for the nearest beer parlor and be at home with man.

Yet not all the language describing wine is balderdash. To learn how to taste wine, we must know beforehand what qualities to expect. Then we must find out how to discover those qualities. Finally, we will judge the wine on the basis of our findings, for not until then is our tasting completed.

Wine to the poet Keats may have been “a beaker full of the warm South,” to the cleric John Wesley, “one of the noblest cordials in Nature,” but actually wine is a concoction men have been bright enough to create from their knowledge of botany, geology, meteorology, physics and chemistry over a period of more than four thousand years. Wine of some sort has been made in every civilized country on earth. Grapes have been grown under all manner of climatic and soil conditions, in spite of or with the help of various yeasts, moulds and bacteria. They have been crushed by wooden paddles, by stones, by metal rollers, by naked and booted feet, and have been fermented and ripened in vessels of stone, oak, redwood and innumerable other materials. The wine produced has been drunk two weeks after the pressing in some cases and a hundred years later in others, and it has been stored in containers made of clay, stone, leather, brass, wood or glass before it was consumed. The chemical substances of the grape derived from the soil and the processes of fermentation along with the conditions of aging and storing, combine to produce the extremely complex solution which is wine. Water, sugar, acids, minerals, alcohols, saccharomyces, oils, esters and aldehydes combine to make the substance of wine, and naturally enough determine its flavor. Consequently, the taste of wine is as complex as its chemistry. So, if we. are seeking the “perfect wine,” we will be looking for a wine in which all the component tastes would be present individually and at the same time blended into a perfect whole-very much like our criteria for a work of art.

Wine is (1) naturally fermented; or (2) the fermentation is controlled by the addition of brandy or spirits; or (3) it is sparkling. Dry or sweet, red or white, for better or worse, it falls under one of these three headings. If we are to learn to judge wines, it is quite important for us to understand the three processes of production that determine the various categories.

Wine fermented naturally is generally called table wine or natural wine. It contains less than 14 per cent alcohol by volume and will turn to vinegar if exposed to air for long. When we say “naturally fermented,” we do not mean the grape is merely pressed and left to fend for itself. It well might be were it not for many enemy bacteria, which, fortunately, man can control.

It has taken hundreds of years of our burgeoning chemical intelligence to perfect the palatable wines we have today, and it has required an enormous degree and amount of technical skill and patience to produce sufficient wine to satisfy the appetite of an ever-increasing population. So, in our time, we need not bewail a shortage as did once the Prophet Isaiah:

“There is a crying for wine in the streets; all joy is darkened, the mirth of the land is gone.”

Through advances in chemistry and technology, the naturally fermented wine industry has developed to a point where its supply is substantial enough to make it an important commodity in our national and international economy. But its “natural” development has not suffered from technological advances. We have produced no synthetic to take its place. We protect naturally fermented wine from its microbe enemies, we provide it with perfect temperature and weather conditions, we house it in just the vats and casks it needs, we bottle it hygienically and store it painstakingly, but in no way do we alter the natural processes of fermentation and ripening.

The harvest is naturally an important part of the winemaking process. The cutting of the bunches of grapes must be done with great care in order not to harm the vines, and the grapes must be moved quickly to the press lest they ferment prematurely. But the most important factors of the harvest are weather and time.

The grapes are harvested at exactly the moment when they contain the greatest amount of sugar and when their skins are most densely covered with saccharomyces, the tiny yeast organisms which form the pale fuzz on the berries. This yeast is the fermenting agent or catalyst which converts the sugar into ethyl alcohol. It does not appear until the grape is ripe, and where it comes from is a mystery; but without it fermentation cannot take place. A heavy rain will wash it away; a frost will kill it. Because the sugar content of the fruit is increased by each day of warm sunlight and the vitality of the yeast organisms is developed in the fresh air, it requires consummate skill for the winegrower to be able to time his harvest to the last possible moment before rain or frost.’

Each year growers in the variable weather areas of the temperate zone gamble their entire crop against the whim of the weather. One more day of sunshine-will it bring perfection or disaster? Year after year, the production of an entire season is lost in the violent five minutes of a shower or a hailstorm. This is the story you hear each year throughout Bordeaux, in Burgundy, in the Champagne country and along the Rhine, Mosel, and Saar rivers in Germany, where the finest grapes grow, where fine wine means so much.

Once the grapes have been safely picked, they are taken to the press. A bunch of grapes includes the stalk, the skin, the pulp, and the seeds or pips. A certain amount of stalk is pressed with the berries, for the stalk contains a small percentage of tannin and other acids which contribute considerably to the life of the wine. The stalks have a bitter astringent taste, so that in pressing the fruit the grower must take care to see that enough of the stalks are crushed to increase the lasting qualities of the wine but not enough to make it bitter. Since the tannin present in the stalks is also in the grapeskins, many vintners remove the stalks entirely and draw the necessary tannin from the skins.

On every step in winegrowing and winemaking there are two schools of thought. Quite naturally the grower or vintner who follows one method thinks his wine is considerably superior to his competitors’. But whatever the manufacturing technique, the quality of the grape is what determines the intrinsic worth of the wine. All the techniques in the world will not make first-class wine from third-class grapes. It is possible-if not probable-to produce a good wine from fine grapes even when the methods of production are slipshod. The finest grapes require the most care in cultivation, are most susceptible to plant diseases, bear the smallest quantities of fruit, and yield the least wine.

Rain, sun, and soil are the food of the grape. The health of the wine is determined by the ability of the beneficial microbes in it to fight off enemy bacteria. The character of the yeast ferments gives corresponding character to the wine. Thus, the yeasts which convert the juice of the Riesling grape into Rhine wine are not the same yeasts which make the Pinot Noir grape into Burgundy.

Personalized champagne flutes by The Tipsy Grape

As a host, you want to appear generous. But avoid the temptation to fill a wine glass too full. Pour to a maximum of two-thirds of the capacity of the glass. This will allow your guests to swirl the wine (to get more of its bouquet) and they won’t give their noses a bath when they go to drink. Four to six ounces is an adequate measure.

Pouring Champagne

All sparkling wines should be poured one-third of a glass at a time to allow the initial bubbles to settle. Otherwise, the wine will overflow.

No Dripping

To avoid that last drop falling on the tablecloth, give the bottle a half turn with your wrist just as you finish pouring a glass. This will ensure that the drop falls back into the bottle.

Washing Up No-smell Glasses

Dishwashers can leave a soapy film on glasses which can adversely affect the taste of wine and can render sparkling wines flat. It is best to hand-wash wine glasses in hot soapy water. Rinse well and if possible leave hanging to air-dry. If not, use a clean, lint-free cloth or paper toweling.

Wine Glass Storage

• Don’t store your glasses in the cardboard cases you bought them in. They will take on the “taste” of the carboard and you will have to rewash them every time before using them.
• Don’t store them in your cabinet, bowl down. The entrapped air will permeate the glass with the smells of the cabinet.
• Wipe the glasses with a paper towel before use to remove any dust that may have settled on them.

Wine accessories for your bar by The Tipsy Grape.

Most wines these days have capsules that are made of plastic or tin foil. They are also engineered so that you can remove them with your fingers. But older wines will have lead capsules which have to be removed so that the wine does not come in contact with them.

Step 1:

Cut the capsule in a circular motion below the lip of the bottle and remove.

Step 2:

Wipe the neck of the bottle with a cloth. There may be some debris or harmless mold under the capsule.

Step 3:

Insert the point of the helix into the centre of the cork and slowly work it down with a circular motion of the wrist. Ensure that the helix is going in straight. Continue turning until you see only one circle of the helix left. Avoid letting the point break through the bottom of the cork as this will create debris on the surface of the wine.

Step 4:

Clamp the lever against the lip of the bottle and hold it in place. Slowly lever the handle upwards. As the cork begins to rise (and with it your elbow), change the position of your hand so that you are gripping the corkscrew with your thumb pointing upward. This will make you more comfortable for the final removal of the cork. Continue the gentle upward pressure. Once removed, use the cork to wipe off any debris around the mouth of the bottle.

Find personalized wine glasses at The Tipsy Grape.

What do you really need to serve wine at the table with style? There are on the market any number of devices, gadgets, glasses, decanters, thermometers, filters and other wine-related paraphernalia which are fun to own. But to enjoy wine, all you really need are some good glasses, a serviceable corkscrew and a decent decanter.

Glasses

Keep in mind that the wine is more important than the glass and you won’t go wrong when it comes to choosing what you are going to drink out of. There are many beautiful glasses on the market – etched crystal, ornate stemmed, gilded and tinted in fanciful colors. Avoid them. They may look good on the table or in your glass cabinet, but they will ultimately detract from your enjoyment of the wine.

The watchword in selecting wine glasses is simplicity.

What you need is a plain, well-shaped glass with a long enough stem so that your hand doesn’t have to touch the bowl (and warm up the wine) and a curved shape that captures and intensifies the wine’s bouquet.

Elegant glasses have been designed that will show the faults in wines as well as those that flatter the wines. It all hinges on where the wine actually comes in contact with your tongue which registers various tastes in different parts. An Austrian company named Riedl has designed 24 glasses, each with a specific wine type in mind.

A well-equipped household needs only three shapes. For the starting wine drinker you can even make do with a single glass.

• White wine: Clear, slim, elongated tulip shape with a longish stem, not too thick around the rim.
• Red wine: Clean, rounded bowl whose aperture is smaller than the circumference of the belly.
• Sparkling wine: Tall, slender, flute shape narrowing at the aperture. Long stem, thin glass.
• Single all-purpose glass: The standard tasting glass tulip shape, elegant bowl that narrows towards the aperture.

Corkscrews

There are many corkscrews on the market; many are inadequate

• Avoid:
• Devices with needles that involve injecting or pumping air into the wine to force out the cork. Any flaw in the bottle neck could cause it to break under the added pressure.
• Butterfly ratchet-style openers. They break down easily.
• Plastic corkscrews usually found in hotel bedrooms.
• Simple ‘l-shaped corkscrews. Too difficult to use.
• The Ah-So. A two-bladed device with a metal grip that slides down between the cork and the bottle neck. Most people end up pushing the cork into the bottle rather than extracting it.

When selecting a corkscrew, make sure that the helix (the metal spiral) is long enough (at least two inches) to pierce far enough into a Bordeaux cork to withdraw it without breakage. And if possible, it should be teflon-coated for ease of insertion. The helix should be thin, shaped in a circular spiral and not be sharp-edged. A thick helix with a cutting edge will force the cork apart and may cause it to break up.
Make sure that the point of the helix is sharp and that the blade is kept sharp at all times.

Find engraved wine glasses for your special occasion.

Learning to match food and wine is not as intimidating as it might seem at first blush. It is not a jigsaw puzzle; there is no one perfect wine for a given dish which would exclude all others. And there are no hard and fast rules because everyone’s palate is different and some people might prefer taste sensations that others find less agreeable.

There is also the question of the changing equation. A cut of red meat, or chicken or fish, is not to be matched to just one style of wine. The selection of wine depends upon how the meat is prepared – whether rare or well done – what herbs and spices are used, and whether the meat has been marinated or is to be served with a sauce.

Take steak, for example. To say you must have a red Burgundy with steak begs the question. How was the steak prepared? Was it marinated in olive oil and soya sauce? Was it grilled with pepper and flared with brandy? Is it to be served with a bernaise sauce or in a pastry shell? All of these different methods of cooking would call for a different style of red wine, if you want to be politically correct about it.

But wine and food are pleasurable experiences, so you shouldn’t get anxious about what wines should go with what foods, to the exclusion of choice. The only rule is, You shouldn’t have to interrupt your conversation to stare at the wine glass and wonder what on earth possessed the host to pair the wine of his birth year with frankfurters and beans.

There are some principles that will help you to choose wines for food, whether at home or in a restaurant. Basically, once you have asked yourself two questions, the rest is just fine tuning.

Are the food and the wine the same weight?

Match the weight of the food to the weight of the wine. A light dish demands a light wine. A hearty plate requires a full-bodied wine with lots of flavor.

How acidic is the wine?

Acid cleanses the palate of various tastes, including salt (shellfish, pickles, etc.), smokiness (smoked fish or meat) and greasiness (animal fat, butter, oil).
On the other hand, the fruit in the wine (its sweetness) reinforces the sweetness in the dish and works against saltiness, smokiness or greasiness.

Once you have determined if the dish you want to serve is light weight, medium weight or heavy weight, choose a wine style that corresponds. How do you determine the weight of a wine? Look on the label for the alcohol content.

• Light-bodied wines: 8% to 10% alcohol
• Medium-bodied wines: 10.5% to 12% alcohol
• Full-bodied wines: 12.5 % to 16 % alcohol

Now ask yourself how salty, smoky or oily is the dish?

Consider the plate as a whole, not just the meat or fish. Vegetables can be highly acidic or, if glazed with brown sugar or honey, can be sweet-tasting.

Perhaps the saltiest, smokiest, oiliest dish there is is smoked salmon. It is very rich and concentrated in flavor which puts it in the heavyweight class of food. Imagine having a soft, delicate, sweet wine with smoked salmon – it’s enough to make you gag.

But match it with a full-bodied, dry white wine with lots of acidity and you have a marriage made in heaven. A dry Alsatian Gewurztraminer makes a wonderful partner. (Try it also with a dry sparkling wine, preferably champagne. Bubbles have a wonderfully cleansing effect on the palate.)

Where do you find acidic wines?

High-acid wines come from cool growing regions.

• France: Loire, Alsace, Champagne, Savoie, Jura Germany: Mosel, Rheingau, Ahr, Franken
• Italy: Trentino Alto Adlge, Friull-Venezia Giulia, Veneto
• Austria: Krems, Wachau
• Ontario, Canada: Niagara Peninsula, Lake Erie North Shore, Pelee Island
• British Columbia, Canada: Okanagan, Fraser Valley, Vancouver Island
• New York, USA: /strong> Finger Lakes, Long Island, Hudson River
• New Zealand: South Island