Wine & Food

Though there are some foods that need rigorous attention, there are few truly unpalatable combinations. In general if you like the food and you like the wine, you will like the match.

The following guidelines will, however, help ensure a good match.

See also

» Storing
» Serving
» Wine Tasting

Storing

Storing wine is an important aspect of enjoying wine.  Since wine is relatively sensitive to storage conditions and is one of the very few products that can improve with age it must be treated very carefully when stored over a period of time.  The key factors are temperature, light, and humidity.  If wine is kept too hot, or exposed to strong sunlight, it rapidly deteriorates.  If it is kept too cold it can freeze, expand, and push out the stopper of whatever container it is held in.
For bottles stored for a few weeks the primary concern is to keep them from strong direct light and to ensure that they do not reach temperatures more than about 25°C at which point the wine may be spoilt and forever afterwards taste cooked.

A fairly wide range of temperatures is suitable for wine storage, although, in general, the lower the storage temperature, the slower the reactions involved in wine maturation.  Dramatic temperature swings should be avoided and an average temperature somewhere in the range 10 to 15°C is considered suitable.
Some degree of humidity is beneficial, to ensure that the exposed end of the cork does not dry out and allow in oxygen.  The disadvantage of very damp cellars is that labels eventually deteriorate and make identification difficult.
Bottles to be stored for more than a few weeks however should be stored so that any cork is kept damp and there is no possibility of its drying out and allowing in the enemy, oxygen.  This usually entails storing the bottles horizontally, ideally in a wine rack so that individual bottles can easily be extracted.  Many producers deliberately mark their cases in an effort to keep bottles upside down, and corks damp during shipment.  It is also important that there are no persistent smells in a long-term wine-storage area.

Serving

The factor which has the single greatest effect on how a wine tastes is temperature. Because of the well-known general rule that white and rosé wine should be served chilled and red wines should be served at something called room temperature, and because many refrigerators are set at relatively low temperatures, in practice many white wines are served too cool and many red wines dangerously warm.

White wines should be served at approx 10/11°C Red wines should be served at approx 16-18°C

Wine Tasting

Wine Tasting is the act of consciously assessing a wine’s quality, character, or identity.

This is not necessarily the same as wine-drinking. Most of what is commonly called the sense of taste is in fact the sense of smell, whether applied to wine, or any food or drink, since by chewing we transform our food into liquid which gives off smellable vapour.

The process of tasting is generally divided into three stages – the eye, the nose, and the mouth.

The role of the eye in wine tasting is mainly to assess clarity and colour, as well as to monitor the presence of carbon dioxide and alcohol (the former indicated by bubbles & the latter by any tears of the wine that may form on the inside of the glass when it is rotated). The clarity of a wine is an indication of the extent to which it may have been filtered during production, and also of the wines condition. Many wine faults result in a haze of some sort. The colour of a wine, both its intensity and its hue, is one of the potentially most valuable clues to any wine taster. Intensity of colour is best judged by looking straight through a glass of wine from directly above.

The nose is the single most important stage in wine tasting. The trick is to persuade as many flavour compounds as possible to vaporize and come into contact with the olfactory bulb. It is then necessary to be able to interpret the messages received. The simplest way to achieve maximum vaporization of the compounds is to agitate the wine by spinning it in the glass. As soon as the wine has been agitated, the aroma collects in the bowl of the partly filled glass above the wine and can be transmitted to the olfactory bulb through the nostrils with one inhalation. Check whether the wine smells fresh and clean, otherwise any off-odours might indicate the wine is tainted or faulty. Now comes the tricky part in the tasting – identifying everything that you are smelling. It is the recognition and recording of these elements which make up the aroma or bouquet that is so important in wine tasting. Being able to do this effectively means that information about the wine can be shared and passed along to other people enjoying the same wine.

The mouth should simply confirm everything that you have just identified on the nose. Many tasters take in a certain amount of air over their mouthful of wine to encourage additional vapours to be emitted and travel to their olfactory bulb. The main function of the mouth in tasting is to assess the texture and measure the dimensions of the wine by assessing sweetness, acidity, bitterness, viscosity, and tannin level. Monitoring all of these elements help to identify and describe the “mouthfeel” of the wine.

After rinsing a wine around their mouths, and noting the impressions given by the rising vapours the wine may be spat into a spittoon and all analysis of the wines character documented!

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