5 Tips for Pairing Wine with Chocolate

choc dipped newlabel 5 Tips for Pairing Wine with ChocolateWhat could be more decadent than pairing wine with your chocolate?

Warning! It’s not a slam dunk. Most of the time pairing with and food is really easy because wine’s structure makes it a natural partner. But, serving dry wine with sweet food takes a little thought because the sweetness of the food can make the dry wine seem sour. Think chocolate cake with lemonade – yuk!

But, the pairing is definitely do-able and when it comes together right, it’s really quite wonderful! So, here are some tips:

  1. Chocolate and dry wine: If you want to pair chocolate with dry table wine, like a good Cab, Merlot or Zin your best bet it to go with dark, bitter and bittersweet chocolate with a high cacao content. Bitter nuts, like walnuts and hazelnuts help. So does espresso or coffee. And, berry fillings if they aren’t too sweet. And, in this day of chocolates with unorthodox fillings, I’ll recommend black pepper — maybe it’s out there, and its bitterness is a great bridge builder.
  2. Chocolate and sweet wine: Now, this is MUCH easier! Because chocolate is a strong flavor, red dessert wines like late-harvest Zinfandel, Port and Banyuls wine are a good way to go but you won’t have any sourness problems with other choices like Sauternes, sweet Madeira (Malmsey) or Tokaji. Or, even a sweet Muscat, like the Goosecross Cellars Muscat Canelli.
  3. Nuts are a great thing! Nutty fillings are delicious with nutty, sweet Sherry (Pedro Ximenez), tawny Port and Madeira.
  4. When caramel is in the mix: Keep in mind caramel is very sweet, but it also presents a luscious opportunity: Vin Santo, tawny Port and Madeira have wonderfully caramelized flavors and will be yummy partners!
  5. Have you ever seen a whole bottle of wine, dipped in a 1/2 pound of chocolate??? Talk about decadent! 

Cheers!

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Aging and Storage

Wine aging, what, why and how, is probably the most mysterious and confusing thing about this whole subject of wine. It’s important to start by saying that it’s almost impossible to generalize because the wine itself is somewhat unpredictable and optimum drink-ability is subjective.

Most Wines are Best When They’re Young

Contrary to popular belief, most wines aren’t made for aging, they’re made for drinking. This should be good news, because most of us don’t want to store wine in the first place. We Americans are notorious for aging our wines in the back seat of the car on the way home, and in many cases, that’s the best way to approach it.

Most wines are fresh and simple in style, and are at their best when they’re young. Here in the Napa Valley and in some other highly regarded winegrowing regions of the world, there are wines made with very good aging potential. Most of the time, these are red wines, but there are numerous exceptions.

The best advice for anyone is to ask questions when you’re buying wine. Don’t be shy! When you have questions, it can be worth a few dollars extra to buy your wine at a wine specialty shop, where the staff is knowledgeable.

Again, optimal age is subjective. You can generally assume that if the wine is for sale, you can enjoy it now and the bottle aging is optional. Most wineries won’t release a wine that’s so young it’s undrinkable, or not if they want to stay in business! Beyond that, bottle aging is purely a case of personal preference.

In a subject with so few absolutes, there’s at least one: aging always reduces fruitiness. If the fruit is the thing you enjoy most about the wine, drink it when it’s young.

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Wine may help keep your weight in check

cheese and wine Wine may help keep your weight in check

 

Wine may help you keep your weight in check!

And, on a list of the “most common questions about wine”, which one rises to the top? How many calories in a glass of wine?

So, here goes with the most sought after information: Just click here to learn about how wine may help keep weight in check.

And the calories in a glass of wine? Between 75 and 100 in a 4-oz glass of dry wine, depending upon the alcohol (the higher the alcohol, the more calories).

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Debunking Some Wine Myths

Is it important to smell the cork? Are the “legs” a sign of quality? Is older wine always better? There are persistent truths and myths, when it comes to wine. Let’s take a look at some of the most common ones.

Older Is Better

GC5 24 07 MG 2000 200x300 Debunking Some Wine Myths In surveys, this is one of the most pervasive misconceptions of all. In reality, the vast majority of wine is meant to be consumed within just a few years of the vintage date. Fortunately, if the wine is over the hill it won’t hurt you, but what a disappointment to open a treasured old bottle only to find out that it’s turned brown and smells like bad sherry!

Then, which wines to age? Whites are almost always better when they’re young, and it gets more complicated with reds, sparkling wines and dessert wines. There are four important things to remember:

  1. Optimum drink-ability is subjective.
  2. Fruitiness is always a youthful trait, so if you like your wine fruity, drink it young.
  3. With very few exceptions, if the wine has been released it’s considered drinkable and further bottle-aging should be seen as an option, not a necessity.
  4. You shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions when you’re buying wine. This aging business is kind of complicated and it can be worth a few dollars extra to buy your wine at a specialty shop, where the staff is knowledgeable.

The companion myth for this one is that “older is always more valuable”. Don’t you believe it! It may be more valuable, but investing in wine is a very tricky business and unless you really know what you’re doing you could end up with a cellar full of oxidized wine you can’t even give away.

You can listen or read for more detailed information on aging and cellaring.

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What is Library Wine?

IMG 4407 224x300 What is Library Wine?Is a wine library the same as library wine? Not quite.

If you’ve been collecting books by your favorite wine writers, you’re building up a valuable wine library and the answers to your wine-related questions are right at your fingertips. And, if you have a nice collection of old bottles, you might also refer to it as your wine library.

But, what about library wine? These are the actual bottles in your cellar – the ones you’ve been carefully aging for later enjoyment. When you pop one of those open for your friends, you’re treating them to a library wine.

Why bother building a collection? Because well-aged wine is a rare commodity. If you go looking for the 1987 vintage of your favorite Napa Valley Cabernet, today, your only option is to shop online. And, once you track it down it will, likely, put a good dent in your credit card. If you like to drink old wine, the most practical and economical thing to do is to buy young wine and age it yourself.

Of course, you need to store the wine properly or it will spoil. What a shame to age the wine for years and years only to find that it tastes like bad sherry or has gone sour.

If you buy an older vintage from another collector or at public auction, some offer guarantees regarding the cellaring history, some don’t.

So, what are you to do if you love the character of well-aged wine, but don’t have any on hand?

Some wineries put a little wine aside, to age, as library wine. If you call with a specific request, they may shake a bottle or two loose for you. They may even offer these older wines for sale from time to time. These, too, may be expensive but at least the winery can guarantee that the wine has been stored properly.

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Wine Tasting Basics

winetasting 207x300 Wine Tasting BasicsThere’s a common misconception that good tasters are a rarefied group with special abilities. Nonsense. The reason most of us aren’t good tasters is that we haven’t tried. Most of the time when you have wine you’re conversing and there’s food, music and all kinds of distractions. It’s hard for anyone to evaluate anything under those circumstances. This is not to say that the scenario is wrong – wine is made to be enjoyed with friends and food, but if you really want to learn something about the wine, you’ll need to take a quiet moment and tune in to it. The following suggestions are meant to help you get the most out of your wine by putting your senses to work.

Fill the glass a generous 1/3 full and hold it by the stem or the base, whichever is most comfortable for you. This isn’t just tradition or etiquette, although they play a role. If you hold the glass by the bowl, you can’t see the wine and you’ll smudge it with your fingerprints. A clean, clear bowl will help you evaluate the color and clarity of the wine, and you’ll also avoid warming the wine with your hand.

CLARITY AND COLOR OR HUE

Hold the wine up to the light or against a white background. The wine should be brilliantly clear, and free of UFOs (unidentified floating objects – a little cork won’t hurt you!). The wine should please all of the senses, including the eye. If the wine is cloudy, it may be an indicator that the wine is past its prime or is spoiled, but never let this put you off of tasting the wine to make sure. If it tastes okay, it is okay. However, good clarity is the ideal.

The color of the wine gives you some hints about what to expect from it. It’s best to use a white background and tilt the glass at a 45° forward angle against it. There is a range of color into which white and red wines fall, and the hue can send a message about the stage of development and condition of the wine. Here is a sample list of colors for white and red wines, and the color progression that occurs with age, from young to old:

White Wine Red Wine
Light Green-Yellow Purple
Pale Yellow Ruby
Yellow-Gold Burgundy
Gold-Brown Tawny
Brown Brown

You can see that white wines go from pale with youth, to gold and brown with age, while reds start out with blue and purple tones and gradually turn to brown.

Some whites are so pale, they’re almost clear. Most often these are whites that were not barrel aged and shouldn’t be bottle aged. They are light and fresh in style. When young whites are yellow it tells you that they have probably been barrel aged. Barrel aging before bottling speeds up the aging and turns the pale wine light yellow.

While whites deepen in color as they age, the reds lighten in color over time. In both cases, slow oxidation is the cause. For reds, in addition to browning, the pigment enlarges with oxidation and falls out of solution. This is why you see sediment in older red wines. Brown color is a sign that the wine is old, perhaps too old.
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Do Sulfites Give Me Headaches?

Do sulfites give me headaches? No, but they sure make me cranky.

winetasting Do Sulfites Give Me Headaches?It happened again. I popped into the tasting room to get a bottle of water and overheard some people telling Jose, the Tasting Room Manager, that they “usually only drink French wine because it doesn’t have any sulfites so they don’t get headaches from it”. Jose and I exchanged glances and smiled wearily. We both knew he had a good 10 minutes ahead of him to tactfully try to set them straight, and that they probably still wouldn’t believe him. He’d much rather talk about the vineyard source that gives the wine that nice anise aroma or help them decide where to have lunch. I had to fight my knee-jerk irritation. What I really wanted to do was scream “Who keeps perpetuating these myths???!!!” It was better for me to take my water and leave. icon wink Do Sulfites Give Me Headaches?

Two things wrong with their statement:

  1. All wines have sulfites regardless of country of origin.
  2. Sulfites don’t give you headaches.

Now, let me back up my statements with facts from a much better source than my own humble self.

Regarding point 1, Andrew Waterhouse of the University of California at Davis, one of the best wine schools in the world, stated that European and American wines both tend to average about 80 parts per million (ppm) total sulfur, some more, some less.

Regarding item 2, the same Andrew Waterhouse stated unequivocally that there’s absolutely no indication that sulfites cause headaches. He suggests you eat some colorful dried fruit to put this to the test. The bright color testifies that the fruit has been treated with a hefty dose of sulfur, far, far above 80 ppm. If you don’t react to that, you don’t have a problem with sulfur. He even invited people to write to him if they believe they have compelling evidence that their headaches are caused by sulfur.

Can you buy wine with no added sulfites? Yes, you can, from any country including the US and its absence will usually be screaming at you from the label. But that doesn’t mean that the wine doesn’t contain sulfites. Sulfur is a by-product of the fermentation, albeit a small one, but all wines contain at least a few parts per million.

Wines with no added sulfites are difficult to come by because the vast majority of winemakers, including those who farm organically, find that their wine isn’t very good if they don’t add small amounts. Of course, we’d all like to make wine without adding the sulfur but so far we’re just not technically sophisticated enough to pull it off. The wine tends to have a short shelf life without it. Of course, there are those who disagree. Best way to hunt down some of these no-added-sulfite wines is online. Give ‘em a try!

Do all countries add sulfur? Absolutely, and the Europeans were the first to figure out that it’s a smart thing to do. Sulfur and wine have been partners in winemaking since at least Roman times – first as part of the seal, then as a barrel purifying agent and later as an outright additive.

Sulfur levels are generally lower now than they were a few decades ago because, with modern sanitation methods and winemaking techniques, we can get away with less. Typically, a bottle of Goosecross wine contains about 30 ppm at bottling time. The legal limit in the US is 350. Dried fruit may contain over 1000 parts ppm.

To be fair to this couple who were talking to Jose, it’s reasonable to assume that they think American wine is alone in adding sulfur because, up to very recently, America had a labeling requirement that European wines didn’t: if the wine contains 10 ppm or more, a warning must appear on the label regardless of where it was made. I’m happy to say that any wines made or sold in the EU, bottled after 11/25/2005, will have the same warning. The regulation is the same as that of the US. So, it means that when you go shopping for wine anywhere in the EU, you should see the warning on most whites and young reds by now. Austalia has a similar requirement. When you buy wine in Melbourne, you’ll see a reference to “preservative 220.”

I don’t like being fair when I feel so cranky. Buzzing around the internet to see what is said on the subject, there’s lots of good information, but misinformation also abounds. Especially about the headache thing. So, we can’t be cranky. We have to be fair and patient and explain. By the time we’ve explained it to every wine drinker on the planet you know what? They’ll figure out how to make good wine without adding sulfites!

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Barrel Aging: It’s Not Just for Oak Flavor!

In fact, it wasn’t until around the 1960s that oak flavor became important! Some time after that we began to see the first references to “new French oak”. And, of course, now there’s so much focus on oak flavor these days that it’s easy to forget the main reason we still use barrels: Aging! The color, aroma and flavor of the wine changes due to very slow aeration inside the barrel. New Cabernet looks a lot like Welches Grape Juice and smells pretty grapey too. With time in the barrel the primary fruit aromas evolve into something a bit more subtle and complex. An initially clumsy mouth feel gains finesse.

In California, we aged and stored most of the wine in redwood or concrete tanks until stainless steel and small cooperage came into the picture. Hanzell Vineyards in Sonoma is credited as the first California winery to use French oak to age their wine in the 1950s. They were followed by Heitz Cellars in the 60s and, as they say, the rest is history!

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