Overview To Sampling Wine
The fundamentals of tasting red wine are reasonably straightforward to find out. As soon as the basics are understood, the nuances and details can be enhanced over a lifetime. Like any kind of various other skill, More »
Red Wine Types
Red wine has a lot of different types, among which, the most popular include Merlot, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz. Moreover, More »
Category Archives: Merlot
Choosing the Ideal Summer Wine
If you plan to go on a picnic during the summer, packing a dependable wine bottle is a must in order to enjoy what the season has to offer. This is especially true if you plan to around some exotic locales and try to enjoy the best of what Mother Nature has to offer.
Your choice of wine, however, will dictate how well it will taste in the summer heat. Make the right choice, and you will be able to savour the flavour as best you can. Make the wrong one, though, and you may end up feeling terribly heavy and lousy for the rest of the trip. It is for this purpose that you need to select either a lighter wine or a heavier wine, and your choice will dictate how much you will enjoy them:
The lighter, fresher wines
White wines or red wines with a more fruity and tangy bite to them are the most common wines that can be found during summer. Their refreshing taste helps to uplift the spirits, while the low acid and alcohol content make them ideal for light snacking and picnicking.
These lighter, fresher wines are thus recommended for outdoor excursions that will either require a lot of activity before or afterwards, or for those who want to enjoy their summers sitting lazily on the beach or on the park. These come highly recommended for anyone and everyone who plans to enjoy the great outdoors during summer, and should definitely be selected over their heavier, headier cousins if any activities are scheduled for the day. The wine, of course, must match the food you plan to bring during your summer activities. White wine and the lighter red wines really do not go well with intense foods, so pack food that is easy on the tongue and light on the stomach.
The heavier, headier wines
Deep, dark red wine with high alcohol content is generally not recommended for summer activities. The heat will get to you even faster when you have a lot of alcohol in your system, and you may just end up feeling sluggish even when you still have a lot of things left to do in the day.
The exception to this, though, is the classic barbecue with huge chunks of beef steak on the grill. A few glasses of well chilled red wine will go well with the barbecue, provided you have little else to do during the day except wind down and relax. If you wish to do so, just make sure that you stay nice and cool if you do not want to feel like a huge sack of potatoes in the middle of the summer heat.
All in all, the lighter wines like white wine or fruity red wine are best enjoyed during the summer. Their light flavour helps to add some zing without putting you down, but may prove to be bland when mixed with heavier, more intense foods. If you plan a major barbecue with some dripping T-bone steaks at the side, then you may want to set aside a bottle or two of deeper, darker wine for that meal alone.
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How to Conduct a Wine Tasting
Wine tasting is a fine art that has been perfected over time. While professional wine tastings are conducted by wine merchants and buyers, it is easy to have your own informal wine tasting at home with friends. Here are some tips to properly taste wine.
First, pick 3 to 6 wines. If you aren’t very familiar with wine yet and are just looking to explore some wines, pick some that you have been eying at the store, anything from red to white. If you want to conduct a more sophisticated wine tasting, limit your wine selection to one type of wine, such as Merlot or Chardonnay, or even to one vineyard. If you want each taste to be a surprise, put the bottles in brown bags so that you and your friends can’t see what wines have been chosen.
For each wine, pour a small amount of wine (2 ounces or less) into stemmed glasses. Smell the wine first to get an impression of the aroma. Taste the wine, then spit it out discreetly, or if you prefer to make your wine tasting more lively, feel free to consume the wine!
Between each sampling, have some small snack foods available to cleanse your palate. Bread with cheese and mild fresh fruit usually work well. Don’t get anything too strong that will interfere with the taste of the wine. Have water available and rinse the wine glasses by swirling some water inside and dumping it out. Continue with each wine until you and your friends have had a chance to taste them all. To make it more interesting, you could set up a contest to see who can correctly guess the type of wine for each bottle.
Wine tasting is a great way to try several wines and learn about the large diversity of wines available. While wine tasting can be as sophisticated and formal as you desire, it can also be as fun and unique an experience as you and your friends want. Think of your own fun personal touches to add to your wine tasting, such as a theme, blindfolded tasting, making special snacks, and more.
For more information on foods to pair with your wine and recipes to try, please visit the informative, interactive food website CD Kitchen here.
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Yeast in Homemade Wine Making
Yeast kicks off the fermentation process in wine making. After adding it to your must, it begins to consume the sugar, producing equal amounts of ethanol and carbon dioxide.
There are wild yeasts everywhere around us, including on the skins of grapes if you’re making wine from fresh fruits. Generally, winemakers discourage these yeasts from fermenting by adding sulfites to kill them off before they can get started. This is done so the winemaker has more control over the fermentation and can produce a consistent wine from batch to batch.
There are basically two types of wine available to home winemakers; liquid and dry.
Most homemade winemakers prefer to use dry yeast. It’s easier to store and to work with.
A subject of debate among homemade winemakers is whether or not to re-hydrate the dry yeast you’re working with. I’ve found that re-hydrating is really not necessary and in fact can lead to problems if the process is not done exactly right.
Two things that can adversely affect the performance of your yeast are the temperature and also the oxygen level. In order to achieve a proper, vigorous fermentation the temperature needs to be maintained between 70 -75 degrees. There are exceptions and variations to this. Some white wines are fermented at lower temperatures to enhance certain flavors, but special yeast is used to do this.
Oxygen is needed during primary fermentation because the yeast are multiplying rapidly during this stage and without air this multiplying can be severely restricted. During primary fermentation the use of an airlock is discouraged so the wine can get all the oxygen it needs. Primary fermentation lasts approximately 7 days and 70 percent of the fermentation is complete at this point.
During secondary fermentation the wine is usually placed in another vessel with an airlock attached. The airlock is to allow carbon dioxide to escape while preventing bacteria and other micro-organisms. The reduced exposure to air also gets the yeast to stop multiplying and put its energy into making alcohol.
Yeast is a crucial part of homemade wine making. The more you learn about yeast and the fermentation process, the more you’ll be rewarded wine batch after batch of consistent, delicious homemade wine.
Plum Wine For Ripe Plum Flavor
Flavor of fruits, especially that of ripe plums is the favorite one of all. However, season for plums is limited, and you will have to wait for another season. Still, there is a way to help you taste the ripe plums, that is plum wine.
The plum wine that we are talking about is seldom mentioned by professional wine aficionados because this wine has not been created with wine grapes. There are some people who will let you know that even though plum wine is not considered as a true wine, it does have a lovely flavor and you can even make this wine at home.
For this reason there are quite a few plum wine recipes that can be found on the internet. These recipes can range from the simple plum wine recipe to the highly complex looking plum wine recipe. For these plum wine recipes you should have some ripe plums that have a rich taste to them. There are a few other items that you will need to have when you start making your plum wine.
The main ingredients for a good plum wine include ripe plums, tannin, yeast, water, sugar or light honey, yeast nutrient, Champagne or Montrachet yeast, peptic enzyme and Campden tablets to kill off any excess bacteria that could be present in the plum wine. Once you have all of these ingredients you will need to find a good recipe to get the correct measurements. Follow the instructions and hopefully you will have a good plum wine that you can drink once the fermenting process and aging time has finished.
There is another way that you can enjoy drinking plum wine. This plum wine that you can find is that of the Japanese version. The Japanese plum wine is called ume-shu. The taste of this plum wine is slightly sweet and sour. The Japanese plum wine has been drunk with meals as an aperitif for over 1000 years in Japan. Since the Japanese plum wine is made from green Ume plums and white alcohol. It contains potassium and calcium, and is also said to be good for your health.
I am sure that while you may have never heard of plum wine before this you can now appreciate the fact that many people have drunk some form of plum wine. The difference in the Japanese and western plum wine is clear but they both have a delicious taste that you will always remember.
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Why Only Maotai Platinum Breakthrough Health Wine Tasting Wine Bottleneck – Maotai, Health Wine –
Tiger Spring Sugar Wine Will be during the high-profile Maotai Platinum Wine As the audience the highlight, then, wine has become a platinum Shanghai Expo licensed products, from August 2009 on the market, Maotai platinum wine has not retired and sit as before, the market continued to heat, has continued to affect consumer choice . Many consumers, said: “Platinum breaks through the traditional wine Health wine Taste bottleneck, not the kind of deep sense of taste, drink up the flavor with Maotai almost taste very good. “
Health wine on the market today there are many varieties, most health wine products can not escape the taste of Chinese medicine, in fact, the only way to ensure the health function of health-care wine, and guarantee its taste is extremely difficult, which is why many consumers prefer to drink wine do not drink alcohol because of health. With the platinum wine, the traditional health wine out of the drawbacks of being unable to break through thick Yao Wei, platinum wine taste wine market can not break the improvement of health care legend. Of course, this wine with platinum production plants using high-quality Maotai Maotai Spirit As the base wine, the efforts of its senior bartenders are inseparable. Platinum
Maotai wine Maotai Group own wine, is the national liquor Maotai and the secrets of the perfect combination of Chinese medicine, plant it to produce high-quality Maotai Maotai liquor to wine base, use a variety of natural botanical science compatible by who was Nixon, Kim Il Sung, Tanaka and many other leaders modulation Maotai Mr. Tao-Yeuan Wang Maotai Group senior bartenders carefully modulated, the power of using alcohol, drugs of power, inherited the original Maotai taste, Maotai prominent, light alcohol. Mr. Tao-Yeuan Wang After years of research and development efforts continue to improve platinum wine taste, the final show in front of consumers of platinum test numerous wine Tao-Yeuan Wang obtained the best results. He said: “Platinum wine is nursed back to health for the people of wine, I am 70, and drinking a little, in excellent health.”
Platinum breakthrough health liquor liquor taste of traditional Chinese health wine industry is a big step forward, but also the quality of Maotai Group, the embodiment of winning. In addition, approved by the state, platinum wine can regulate immune function, alleviate fatigue effect, consumption of a variety adjustable and blood, regulating immunity, enhance body resistance to disease is the most perfect health and taste combination.
Learned that there are different price points Maotai platinum wine, different degrees for different consumer groups, but especially for its price range from 100 to more than 800 yuan, choose a large space, many consumers say: “Buy the grade of both platinum wine benefit. “
Lawrence in 2009 Alcohol Fair, Maotai Group Chairman Ji Keliang personally Tasting wine Maotai platinum and spoke highly of his instructions to insist on platinum wine Food Quality and safety as the first principle, subject to implementation of the quality of group output, the speed of development subject to quality, efficiency complying with the quality and volume of complying with the quality, safety of the four subject to the principle of quality first, never play the quality card!
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