Kill your darlings

Well, decanting or, for that matter aerating, a wine, you all have heard about it and I guess practiced it once a while. Look, I do not get into this ritual often (read: almost not). And there is one simple equation to explain this.

Decanting = oxygen = ageing

Or, pouring your wine from the bottle into a decanter is giving your wine loads of oxygen. And, well, oxygen to a wine means the same as ageing. So, upon decanting your wine you give it a serious aging shock. Just imagine a mind boggling beautiful girl of 25 that in 10 minutes changes to a wrinkled women of 75. Well something like that also happens and that’s why I do not (often) decant. You see, I do not like to kill my darlings!

But the sediment you will argue. Oh yes, an aged red has a lot of sediment. However, decanting is just not the right solution. Ok, you will get rid of that sediment, well that is if you stop decanting at the right moment. But you will also have added a lot of oxygen, or, in other words, your aged wine will be aged even more. And in the case of an aged wine this means often destruction!

Conclusion, decanting is murder in the first degree when you have a mature red which has just aged beautifully.

So, pretty please with sugar and a cherry on top do refrain from decanting in this case. Potential alternatives are:

1. When you go to your cellar and fetch this precious gem of an aged wine, use a basket. Keep it horizontal, move it as little as possible (that’s why you have to put your labels above in sight) and put it in that way in the basket. The sediment will be in the below part of the bottle and will remain there. Difficult part is the opening of the bottle since it lies down in a basket. Try it a few times with inexpensive bottles and you will get quickly the hang of it.

2. Another option is to get this bottle the night before and put it upright. In this way the bottle has all night and all day (until that fancy dinner) to find its way to the bottom of the bottle. And then, at dinner, instead of decanting you just pour gently the glasses of your hosts while you keep an eye on this sediment. If it starts roaring its ugly head, well then it is time to open a second (third, fourth, …) bottle.

Ok, I guess by now you have asked the question when can I use my precious decanter, please tell me that there is an opportunity to use my decanter. And yes, there is.

I get out my decanter for the young wines that are capable of aging, for instance Barolo, Brunello, certain Bordeauxs, etc. In this case you will also age them. But if I could use again the reference to a woman, you will turn a little bit shy teenager into a gracious women, and then, but only then, is decanting recommended.

On a personal note, I have ordered this great young (watch out my words, thus young) Le Savennières of Nicolas Joly, the pope of biodynamics, and the waiter decanted this wine. Well this is a wine that just needs decanting and gets so much better with it.

So one conclusion, choose your decanting darlings well otherwise you might end up killing them! And you just don’t want to kill your darlings, believe me!

Take a smoke on the bubbly side: cigars and champagne

Well, I'm not such a cigar smoker. Guess that's a confession. Nevertheless let’s attack the interaction between cigars and those fancy bubbles, better known as champagne, on the basis of some food-wine pairings insights (hey, I'm a food eater and a wine drinker, so no objections here).

What is Champagne all about? First of all bubbles, ooh yes, loads of them. Secondly, combine this with the use of the Champagne grapes (in general chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier in combination or on their own, although there are also some other grapes allowed) and all this is translated into a drink with high acidity.

This is a refreshing drink, open ups your taste buds and makes you long for that nice food. So it is primarily an aperitif wine which however (certainly some millesimés or special crus) can be used as a companion to the meal.

Now the hard part, cigars…

Well, you have alread read my confession, but there is more: I am what Spanish tend to call a “BBC fumador” that means that I only smoke a cigar at Bodas, (weddings), Baptismos (baptisms) or Communiones (cummunions) (I can not be held responsible for the Spanish spelling nor the English translation). In practice, on average I smoke 1 a 2 cigars each year. So I went on looking for some tasting notes on cigars and what I found match to a great extent the few smoking experiences I had.

So the following tastes I have found: raisin, dried plum, sweet syrupy fruit, honey, earthy notes, spices, wood, tobacco leaf (off course ;-)), dark chocolate, etc.

Well if I have to do a categorisation I would put this tastes within the “mature” / “ripe” taste (see KLOSSE, P., Het Proefboek). No young fresh fruit here but ripe and dried fruit. Earthy notes, mushrooms, spices such as vanilla fall all within this “mature” category.

Moreover, from the tasting notes I have read it is clear that a cigar is very rich in taste (if a cigar lover wish to contest this assumption that he raises his voice now or otherwise be silent eternally).

About the actual mouth feeling, I did not found much. But what I recall is that a cigar has the inclination to dry out your mouth.

If these three elements are combined, I tend to go for wines that are rather powerful such as a white Burgundy, wines on the basis of the nebbiologrape (Barolo), a Brunello, or southern Rhône wines famous for their spicy (garrigues) character, cabernet sauvignon wines and so on. So not Champagne as such.

However as regards the typical acidity of Champagne, I agree that it will have a nice refreshing impact on the mouth after a heavy cigar. And I also fully agree that if Champagne is used, it should be an aged Champagne and in my opinion preferably a special one, like a special cuvé or millesimé, in order to be able to give some “resistance” to the heavy flavours of a cigar.

Conclusive, it can be stated that as with fine food for a fine cigar you need to taste and look for the right drink pairing. Above are just some general rules and I always say that the proof of the eating is in the pudding. So if anyone would volunteer to put the theory up to a test and have a champagne-wine-cigar evening, always welcome. I would gladly join...

Screw that cap/cork...

Although I do like the tradition surrounded to unCORKing a bottle (mmm, the noice when the sommelier gently slides into the cork, the swift pull and the plop that just can be the promise to a so pleasant evening...), let's be honest, it is nothing more than tradition.

What I actually want to say is:

Every
CORKTAINTED
bottle
is
one
too
many!

Oooooh, hold your horses, don't just shoot on me yet...because let's be honest, a cork is so much more than tradition.

Here comes in some discussions, talks I had with winemakers. And you can be sure, they neither do like corked bottles. Well, there is one winemaker, Manuel Marchetti just to name him, who did very recently an experiment with his wine. He has put on several of his bottles a synthetic cork (no, not a screwcap) and on other of his bottles a natural cork. As a lot of his fellow winemakers, he also was looking for a solution for corked bottles. What were his findings? Well, after one year of ageing he opened some of his bottles (in this specific experiment it was all about dolcetto wines), both the ones with synthetic corks as the ones with natural corks. And guess what, the one with natural corks where far more drinkable. They had undergone some evolution, while the synthecic ones were still closed, less evoluted. Second year same thing. It was only as of the third year that the ones with synthetic corks started to open.

So what was his conclusion: "I'll take natural corks". Plain and simple reason: (most of the) people do not stack their wines for three or more years away. They want instant pleasure, a wine should be (in most cases) drinkable at the moment you buy it. So he has chosen drinkability.

Conclusion: I just hate corktainted bottles, but I love drinkability (and, ok, I admit some traditionality). As this being said, I'm at least for one category sure: young wines (be it white, red, rosé, vin gris, blush, etc.) who are just not for keeping and who are drinkable as of day 1. In this case pretty please winemaker put on some synthetic closure! Hey in this case I avoid that unpleasant smell of cork (just so yukky, think of wet cardbord that is lying in your cellar for some time), and numbers range from 1% to 10% of the bottles.

Because what is it with screwcaps? They just got themselves that ugly image of cheap chateau migraine plonk, they are the hunchback of Notre Dame, the Beast...but they can turn into a beauty...and are on their way to conquering the wineworld.

And on this bombshell, I'm going to open me a nice bottle of wine with a glass cork (yeees).

Have a nice wine today (with cork, screwcap, synthetic cork, glass cork, whatever)!

Netwerken

Momenteel een beetje gebeten door de online netwerk-microbe.

Een netwerkwebsite waar ik mijn eerste stapjes heb gewaagd is LinkedIn (zie ook hier rechts):

Daarnaast heb ik ook Ecademy ontdekt (via blog van Jan Vermeiren) en ook daar ben ik te vinden.

Sjekitout...

Die kleine zoete...

Eigenlijk is het eerder verwonderlijk dat Dan Brown in het Bernini-mysterie een wijn op basis van de dolcettodruif aanhaalt. Piemonte, het noordwesten van Italië, is de plaats waar deze druif zijn thuismatchen speelt. En dat die thuismatchen niet altijd even veel volk trekken, is niet moeilijk te verstaan als je in de eerste divisie speelt met als gebuur een Barolo en Barbaresco (de topexpressies van de nebbiolodruif) en dan ook nog eens de barberadruif te duchten hebt.
Toch speelt de dolcettodruif de competitie op een stevige wijze. Zelfs op een dusdanige manier dat er een paar DOC's (Denominazione di Origine) specifiek voor haar zijn weggelegd. Denk maar aan de DOC Dolcetto di Dogliani. Hier heeft deze druif de logeplaatsen ingepalmd. In Barologebied zelf valt op dat de meeste wijnmakers zich ook wagen aan een dolcettowijn. Van oudsher was dit eigenlijk de dagdagelijkse drinkwijn in Piemonte en waarschijnlijk daarom wel eens (ronduit verkeerdelijk volgens mij) de Beaujolais van Piemonte genoemd. Probeer maar eens de Dolcetto Boschi di Berri van Marcarini en je zult merken dat dit niets met Beaujolais uitstaans heeft! De Boschi di Berri is trouwens een wijn uniek in zijn soort, nog afkomstig van ongeënte stokken.

Maar we dwalen af. De geschiedenis van de dolcettodruif gaat nog wat verder terug. Immers de vertaling van dolcetto betekent "de kleine zoete". Als je dit vertelt, trekken veel wijndrinkers de wenkbrauwen in één of andere vragende vorm. Maar geen nood, de dolcetto in je glas is alles behalve zoet, maar een perfect droge wijn met stevig wat materie. De naam komt eigenlijk van de tijd toen deze druif nog enkel op de tafel belandde. Inderdaad, de graven uit de Roero verorberden met graagte deze tafeldruif omdat deze zo'n lekkere zoete smaak had en bedachte haar dan ook met deze naam.

Citaat

"Het was een waar feestmaal. Ze aten samen bij maanlicht, op hun balkon, en genoten van truffels, krulsla en risotto. Ze dronken Dolcetto-wijn en praatten tot laat in de avond."

Uit BROWN, D., Het Bernini mysterie.

Wijn op basis van de dolcettodruif, hierover valt nog het één en ander te zeggen, maar dat zal voor een andere keer zijn...