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May 29, 2017/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by admin

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For as long as wine has been made, wine has been manipulated, adulterated and counterfeited. In ancient Rome, Pliny the Elder complained about the abundance of fraudulent Roman wine which was so great that even the nobility could not be assured that the wine they were pouring on their table was genuine. For the poor and middle class of Rome, local bar establishments seemed to have an unlimited supply of the prestigious Falernian wine for unusually low prices. As wine is technically defined as the product of fermented grape juice, the term “wine fraud” can be used to describe the adulteration of wine by substances that are not related to grapes. This can refer to the use of elderberry juice, or flavorings such as cinnamon and ginger. While some varieties of wine can naturally have deep, dark color and flavor notes of spices due to the presence of various phenolic compounds found, the use of additives to artificially create these characteristics is generally frowned upon in the wine world.
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In recent years, much attention has been focused on the label fraud, where counterfeit labels from cult wines and other rare and expensive wines are affixed to bottles of less expensive wine and then resold. Wine fraud can involve less expensive wines if they are sold in large volumes. Wine Spectator noted that some experts suspect that as much as 5% of the wine sold in secondary markets could be counterfeit.Over the years, winemaking techniques have evolved. The first, primitive “natural wine” or “authentic wine” was most likely the result of crushed grapes being forgotten while stored in a container.

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The process of allowing wild yeast conduct fermentation in an uncontrolled environment creates a very crude style of wine that may not be palatable to many people. Hence the development of various techniques and practices designed to improve the quality of the wine but which could be viewed as “manipulating” or “adulterating” the wine from its natural or “authentic state”.

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At various points in history, these technique may be considered too much manipulation, more than what a consumer would likely expect, and thus labeled as “fraud”. However as these techniques became more common place in the wine industry, an air of acceptability followed and they eventually became just another tool in the winemaker’s tool box to help craft quality wine.

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Most techniques of manipulation arose from need. Early wine had many wine faults that caused a wine to spoil quickly. Classical writings from the Greeks and Romans detailed recipes that could cure “sick wines”. These include adding various items like milk, ground mustard, ashes, nettles and lead.

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Another example of early “manipulation” that became accepted, common practice was the process of adding grape spirit to wine made in the Douro region of Portugal. This process of fortification gave the wine chemical stability for long sea voyages and left the wine with a balance of residual sugar and alcohol content that gave the wine a unique taste.
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Other winemaking techniques include chaptalization, fermenting and aging in oak barrels, using oak chips, stirring lees, racking, clarification and filtration, reverse osmosis, cold maceration, the use of cultured instead of wild yeast, cryo-extraction, micro-oxygenation and the addition of enzymes, anti-oxidant agents, acids hat may be used to “balance” the wine.

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May 20, 2017/0 Comments/in Wine News /by admin

The earliest recorded mention of Merlot (under the synonym of Merlau) was in the notes of a local Bordeaux official who in 1784 labeled wine made from the grape in the Libournais region as one of the area’s best.

In 1824, the word Merlot itself appeared in an article on Médoc wine where it was described that the grape was named after the local black bird (called Merlau in the local Occitan language) who liked eating the ripe grapes on the vine. Other descriptions of the grape from the 19th century called the variety lou seme doù flube (meaning “the seedling from the river”) with the grape thought to have originated on one of the islands found along the Garonne river. By the 19th century it was being regularly planted in the Médoc on the “Left Bank” of the Gironde. After a series of setbacks that includes a severe frost in 1956 and several vintages in the 1960s lost to rot, French authorities in Bordeaux banned new plantings of Merlot vines between 1970 and 1975.

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It was first recorded in Italy around Venice under the synonym Bordò in 1855. The grape was introduced to the Swiss, from Bordeaux, sometime in the 19th century and was recorded in the Swiss canton of Ticino between 1905 and 1910. In the 1990s, Merlot saw an upswing of popularity in the United States. Red wine consumption, in general, increased in the US following the airing of the 60 Minutes report on the French Paradox and the potential health benefits of wine and, possibly, the chemical resveratrol. The popularity of Merlot stemmed in part from the relative ease in pronouncing the name of the wine as well as its softer, fruity profile that made it more approachable to some wine drinkers.

In the late 1990s, researchers at University of California, Davis showed that Merlot is an offspring of Cabernet Franc and is a half-sibling of Carménère, Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon. The identity of the second parent of Merlot wouldn’t be discover till the late 2000s when an obscure and unnamed variety, first sampled in 1996 from vines growing in an abandon vineyard in Saint-Suliac in Brittany, was shown by DNA analysis to be the mother of Merlot.

This grape, later discovered in front of houses as a decorative vine in the villages of Figers, Mainxe, Saint-Savinien and Tanzac in the Poitou-Charentes was colloquially known as Madeleina or Raisin de La Madeleine due to its propensity to be fully ripe and ready for harvest around the July 22nd feast day of Mary Magdalene. As the connection to Merlot became known, the grape was formally registered under the name Magdeleine Noire des Charentes.

Through its relationship with Magdeleine Noire des Charentes Merlot is related to the Southwest France wine grape Abouriou, though the exact nature of that relationship (with Abouriou potentially being either a parent of Magdeleine Noire or an offspring) is not yet known. Grape breeders have used Merlot crossed with other grapes to create several new varieties including Carmine (an Olmo grape made by crossing a Carignan x Cabernet Sauvignon cross with Merlot), Ederena (with Abouriou), Evmolpia (with Mavrud), Fertilia (with Raboso Veronese), Mamaia (a Romanian wine grape made by crossing a Muscat Ottonel x Babeasca negra cross with Merlot), Nigra (with Barbera), Prodest (with Barbera) and Rebo (with Teroldego).

Over the years, Merlot has spawned on color mutation that is used commercially, a pink-skinned variety known as Merlot gris. However, unlike the relationship between Grenache noir and Grenache blanc or Pinot noir and Pinot blanc, the variety known as Merlot blanc is not a color mutation but rather an offspring variety of Merlot crossing with Folle blanche. Merlot grapes are identified by their loose bunches of large berries. The color has less of a blue/black hue than Cabernet Sauvignon grapes and with a thinner skin and fewer tannins per unit volume. It normally ripens up to two weeks earlier than Cabernet Sauvignon. Also compared to Cabernet, Merlot grapes tend to have a higher sugar content and lower malic acid. Ampelographer J.M. Boursiquot has noted that Merlot has seemed to inherit some of the best characteristics from its parent varieties—it fertility and easy ripening ability from Magdeleine Noire des Charentes and its color, tannin and flavor phenolic potential from Cabernet Franc.

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May 14, 2017/0 Comments/in Wine News /by admin

White wine is a wine whose colour can be straw-yellow, yellow-green, or yellow-gold coloured. It is produced by the alcoholic fermentation of the non-coloured pulp of grapes which may have a white or black skin. It is treated so as to maintain a yellow transparent colour in the final product. The wide variety of white wines comes from the large number of varieties, methods of winemaking, and also the ratio of residual sugar. White wine has existed for at least 2500 years. It has accompanied economic development and colonized every country whose inhabitants are wine drinkers: Europe, America, Oceania, although less systematically in Africa and Asia due to climate and religious reasons. The white grapes from which white wine is mainly produced are green or yellow of which there are many so that white wine can be produced anywhere that grapes can be grown. Some varieties are well-known such as the Chardonnay, Sauvignon, and Riesling. Others have a discrete existence hidden behind the name of a wine resulting from the assembly of several varieties.

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Tokay, Sherry, and Sauternes are examples of these. The winemaker can also use a variety with a coloured skin provided she is careful not to stain the wort during the separation of the pulp-juice. The Pinot noir, for example, is commonly used to produce champagne. Among the many types of white wine, dry white wine is the most common. More or less aromatic and tangy, it is derived from the complete fermentation of the wort. Sweet wines, whether moelleux (Sweet: 12-45 g/l of sugar) or liquoreux (Fortified: >45 g/l sugar) wines are where the fermentation is interrupted before all the grape sugars are converted into alcohol: this is called Mutage or fortification. The methods of enriching wort with sugar are multiple: on-ripening on the vine, passerillage (straining), or the use of Noble rot. Sparkling wines, which are mostly white wines, are wines where the carbon dioxide from the fermentation is kept dissolved in the wine and becomes gas when the bottle is opened giving a delicate foam beverage considered the festive wine par excellence.

Celebrated by writers, poets, singers and painters, white wine is used as an Apéritif during the meal, with dessert, or as a refreshing drink between meals. They are more refreshing, lighter in both style and taste than the majority of their red wine counterparts, making them ideal for spring and summer occasions. The old guideline of “white wine with white meat” still holds true in many instances, but there are plenty of exceptions and palate preferences that dictate which wines to pair with what foods. As an example, Chardonnay combines well with the taste of fleur de lis (triple cream cheese). White wine also contributes to the development of dishes in the kitchen thanks to its acidity, aroma, and its ability to soften meat and deglaze the cooking juices. Its benefits to the body are however lower than those attributed to red wine because it is low in Polyphenolic compounds.

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