Harry Haddon’s Incomplete And Unofficial Guide To The Hedonistic Pleasures Of The Grape
Chapter Three: Drinking Smarter
Download Real Time Wine & register to join the community!So. Wine is fundamentally awesome and to get to that awesomeness we need to taste for difference. So far, so good.
We now hit a little snag in the road. All those differences you taste in wine are messages. They talk to you in a language we are always learning, about the weather the grape was grown in, tales of how the winemakers worked, and mayday signals alerting you to faults in the wine. To learn this language we need to enter into a labyrinth with no centre, a maze without end, we need to learn about vines, weather, grapes, winemaking techniques, oak forests, styles, chemistry, and biology.
We will make small forays down some of these paths in the weeks to come. For now let us sit down at the side of the path, with whatever knowledge we have, crack open a bottle, and talk about a few practical measures around wine imbibing.
Wine writer Andre Simon said there is one rule that needs to be remembered when enjoying wine: “The best wine is that which is the most suitable, hence the most pleasing at the time.”
With this elegant little dictum in mind, let us look at a few ways to make the wines in our glass more suitable.
Temperature
As a wine warms up the flavor compounds – who make their pilgrimage to the olfactory bulb – become more volatile, and easier for us to experience. Too cold and the wine is stripped of its aromas and flavours. Too hot and the alcohol starts evaporating at a rate which overwhelms everything else.
It is not just flavor compounds and alcohol that are affected by temperature. High tannins – the compounds in wine that dry out your mouth – are exacerbated by low temperatures, and wines that are sickly sweet can be made more refreshing by chilling.
You want to be drinking your wines in a temperature band between 18 degrees Celsius and a minimum of around 6.
Harry’s Rough Wine Temperature Guide:
15-18 degrees Celsius
Your good, solid, tannic red wines should be served at this temperature. Think Cabernet Sauvignon and the rest of the Bordeaux brigade, Syrah/Shiraz, Pinotage etc.
12-16 Degrees Celsius
At this temperature you want to drink complex white wines like wooded Chardonnays, Chenins, and white blends. Aged whites would be best at around this temperature too. You could fit in serious Pinot Noirs here as well.
10-12 Degrees Celsius
If you open a cheap red wine that tastes a little kak, try it down at this temperature. Just as warmer wine lets good flavor compounds jump out of the glass, cooler wines mask the unattractive ones. Use this temperature for fresher, lighter reds and other white wines.
6-10 Degrees Celsius
At this chilly end of the thermometer we should be drinking sparkling wine – warm sparkling wine creates too much froth – sweet wines, flabby white wines, and rose. Also anything that still tastes kak at 10-12 degrees.
Here’s my tip: always err on the side of cold. It is very easy to warm a wine up in the glass; our African ambient temperature will do the job, and our grubby mitts the rest. However, a wine too warm can only be saved with ice, and while this is fine for something cheap by the pool, it’s not ideal to dilute something you have paid good money for.
Glassware
Context is everything. For some reason I derive great joy from drinking simple whites and reds out of tumblers. Serious wines deserve the chance to show their stuff, so thin glasses with a big enough bowl is best. Remember don’t fill up your glass. A third is good enough. You look less of a glutton, and it gives the aroma room for your nose to sniff up.
Those thick-lipped chunky wine glasses are the worst. They’re called goblets, and you have my permission to smash them all. Honestly, you are better off necking it from the bottle.
Decanting
There is a misguided belief that decanting – the pouring of wine from bottle into specially designed glass receptacles – is only for ridding older wines of their sediment. While this is the best way to avoid sediment in your glass, younger wines benefit even more from a good decanting.
The point of decanting young wines is for oxygen to work on the wine. Forget the science for now. Just think of a person sitting on a couch. Imagine them first sitting tensely, on the edge of the couch, all elbows and knees. Now imagine them leaning back into the couch, comfortable and at ease. Decanting wine is basically getting it to relax on a couch. Once decanted and relaxed the wine will present you with far more aromas and flavours.
Decanting is all about time, the younger and more tannic the wine the longer you need to decant. Experiment. Taste every hour or so to get an idea of how the oxygen is working.
You don’t need a fancy decanter; a glass vase is a good substitute.
Food
It matters less than everybody says. Eat, drink and be merry.
Ritual
Ritual is important in wine. Whether it is that little thudding pop as a cork is extracted, or the time you spend before dinner lovingly decanting the evening’s wines, or how you meet up with the same three friends each month to catch up over a bottle of wine.
Since the ancients we have included an element of ritual in our wine drinking. The Greeks had a spitting game called Kottabos, Christians and Jews have it tightly woven into their own religious rituals, and F1 drivers celebrate winning with champagne. Wine is made for ritual. Be aware of them, and develop your own.
Context
Where you drink your wine, who you drink it with and the attitude with which you drink it are more important than anything else. What else can explain the exquisite memory I have of an MCC drunk in a river with my lover even though it was a fifth full with river water, or dull flat experience of a great wine drunk amongst douche-bags? If you drink your wine with joie de vivre, you will drink better wine.
To round off out first four articles next week we will be looking at a few of the major grape varieties in South Africa and what to expect when drinking them.
Harry.
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