Temperature and Wine part I:
The right temperature can make or break a bottle of wine. Serve a bottle too warm or too cold and the flavor and freshness disappear. Store a bottle at too high a temperature and your nice bottle tastes not all that different than a three dollar bottle of porpoise hork. That said, knowing the right temperature to store and serve is the easy part, its well researched and documented. If you need a great resource on how wine “should” be then check out bettertastingwine.com, their temperature guide is very useful. I realize that you can look up a table on what temperature to serve wine, so I’m going to discuss how to get the wine to that temperature.
Wine should be stored at “cellar temperature” which means somewhere between 52 and 65 degrees F (10 to 18 C). For most people (especially us apartment dwellers) this is nearly impossible outside of purchasing a wine storage unit.
As a rule of thumb, if you that nowhere in your home is the right temperature for wine storage, colder and darker is better. This means that you are going to find the coldest darkest place in your home. Dark is a fairly obvious thing, if you need help with dark then you have other problems. Cold can be tricky. Enter the meat thermometer...
A cheap $10 digital meat thermometer is your best friend for figuring out where that cold dark place where the vinorific magic happens really is. Simply turn the little fella on, sit him down where you are thinking about storing your wine and wait for 10 seconds. Repeat this process a few times until you have found yours spot. It may not be perfect, but its your wine’s home.
In my next installment I'm going to talk about getting your wine to the right temperature for serving.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Winehacking part I
This is the first in our recurring series on winehacking. Winehacking is the process of making a bottle of wine, changing it, and making it taste better. If you think that the bottle that you just opened tastes like miserable swill then don't drink it. At least don't drink it without doing something about it. Hacking a bottle of wine is never going to take a bottle of "two buck chuck" and transform it into anything resembling what Wine Spectator would put in their top 100, but hacking a "two buck chuck" can make it taste like "ten buck chuck."
Aeration is the process of adding air to your wine to soften it up a bit, taking off some of the bite. Everyone has seen a wine drinker swirl their wine around their glass, this is done to expose the wine to more air than it would if left stagnant in the glass. Aeration also will bring out some of the aromas latent in the wine while it rests in the bottle. There are several products on the market market that will do a pretty good job of aerating a bottle.
Decanters were first invented by the Romans to take sediment out of wine. The aeration from an old style decanter comes from the increased surface area exposed to air in the wide base of the vessel. The process of decanting is simple, pour your bottle of wine in then wait about three hours. Voila! aerated wine with the added bonus of less sediment in your glass.
Almost all at table devices work by siphoning surrounding air into the stream of the wine while you are pouring into your glass. These do a good job aerating a bottle that needs just a little bit of help. It works well for if the bottle is just a bit too young, or a little more "taniny" than you would prefer. These are also great for single serving. As opposed to a glass decanter, where you have to pour an entire bottle, you can pour one glass at a time.
The Rabbit Wine Aerating Pourer
The Vinturi
Hyperaeration, sometimes referred to as Hyperaeration, is the process by which a very large volume of air is infused into the wine in a very short amount of time. Hyperaeration can make a cheap bottle of wine taste far less cheap, and nothing at all like the porpoise hork it started as. My preferred method for hyperaeration is a stick blender in a rocks glass for single servings and in a glass bowl for larger servings. For extra points, I will pour the aerated wine into a decanter or carafe for table serving.
Aeration
Aeration is the process of adding air to your wine to soften it up a bit, taking off some of the bite. Everyone has seen a wine drinker swirl their wine around their glass, this is done to expose the wine to more air than it would if left stagnant in the glass. Aeration also will bring out some of the aromas latent in the wine while it rests in the bottle. There are several products on the market market that will do a pretty good job of aerating a bottle.
Decanters
Decanters were first invented by the Romans to take sediment out of wine. The aeration from an old style decanter comes from the increased surface area exposed to air in the wide base of the vessel. The process of decanting is simple, pour your bottle of wine in then wait about three hours. Voila! aerated wine with the added bonus of less sediment in your glass.
At table pouring devices
Almost all at table devices work by siphoning surrounding air into the stream of the wine while you are pouring into your glass. These do a good job aerating a bottle that needs just a little bit of help. It works well for if the bottle is just a bit too young, or a little more "taniny" than you would prefer. These are also great for single serving. As opposed to a glass decanter, where you have to pour an entire bottle, you can pour one glass at a time.
The Rabbit Wine Aerating Pourer
The Vinturi
Hyperaeration
Hyperaeration, sometimes referred to as Hyperaeration, is the process by which a very large volume of air is infused into the wine in a very short amount of time. Hyperaeration can make a cheap bottle of wine taste far less cheap, and nothing at all like the porpoise hork it started as. My preferred method for hyperaeration is a stick blender in a rocks glass for single servings and in a glass bowl for larger servings. For extra points, I will pour the aerated wine into a decanter or carafe for table serving.
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