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
Kentucky Wine Making
Most people would never think of Kentucky as being a good source of wine. However, a winemaker named Jean Jacques Dufour in 1798 planted the first commercial vineyard in the small town of Nicholasville Kentucky and in 1860 Kentucky was known as the third largest producers of wine. Of course this all came to a grinding stop when prohibition hit.
Today with special agriculture business grants and other government incentives the winemaking industry in Kentucky has been revitalized. There are new vineyards popping up all over the place and now Kentucky has almost a thousand acres of grape planted ground with 50 registered wineries.
It is central Kentucky that boosts the most used soil for grape growing. Some say that the soil in the bluegrass is likened to that to the soils in France. Kentucky was once covered with sea water and thus it is rich in limestone from the deposits of the fossils of shell fish. Though the soil is good the climate is not.
Kentucky’s climate is considered to be in a moderate zone, the summers are warm and the winters are cool. The weather in Kentucky is highly influenced by the Gulf of Mexico and thus it gets an average of 50 inches of rain per year.
Alas, the weather is a changing! For the past ten years Kentucky has been in a moderate to severe drought and vineyards have to be hand watered to keep the vines from dying.
The weather in Kentucky changes quickly and they have had problems with spring frosts, ice storms and days of cold, all taking a toll on the grape crop. So why do people want to grow grapes in Kentucky? Well because when they do grow and the weather is good then the harvest is of great grapes and better wine.
One of the problems that Kentucky has faced is that the State does not have any guidance on what to grow, how to grow it or anything. People were simply guessing or going by what their gut told them. This was finally addressed in 2005 when the state hired a viticulturist and enologist.
There is a debate on varieties to plant in Kentucky and with the whole industry being quite new, there is lack of good history and data. Some want a certain variety others want a different one. The ones that follow along with the recommendations of the state will get grants and cost help. The ones that go there own way will have to do so on their own.
So what grapes are being grown in Kentucky?
Vidal Blanc
Chambourcin
Norton
Marechal Foch
Cayuga
No matter what grape is grown it is suggested that the vines be on grafted rootstock. Because of the abundance of disease and bugs in Kentucky it is practically unheard of to try and grow organically here. The hot muggy summers give rise to black rot, powdery and downy mildews, phomopsis leaf and cane spot disease. The insects they deal with are Japanese beetles, grape cane gall maker, grape berry moths and grape flea beetles. Then of course there are the animals such as, raccoon, possums and deer.
Grape growing in Kentucky is alive and well and anyone who takes on this task shows real commitment and passion for persevering through tough times and countless challenges. It is because of this character and the land that two can come together and bring to wine drinkers everywhere a great wine. So give Kentucky wine a chance, they just might surprise you!
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Making Homemade Wine
Making homemade wine is a tradition that many people still continue today. Many people assume that making wine is a difficult process and I am here to tell you that it is not. Making home brew is simple but it can be time consuming and once you start it is hard to stop and what was once a small hobby becomes more like an obsession.
There are definite tools of the trade and instructions you should follow in order to make your wine taste great and that is safe from bacteria or other harmful things that could stand in your way of great wine making. Also, you should realize that you are not stuck just making grape wine, you can use any fruit juice you wish and make any blend that sounds good to you! Creating the perfect blend of fruit and flavor can open up a whole new world for you in regards to wine.
To start making your own homemade wine you will need some basic tools. It is EXTREMELY important that you follow all sanitation guidelines for your tools during the wine making process. Harmful bacteria can quickly ruin a perfect batch of wine, not to mention make you sick, so be sure to be careful when handling and sanitizing all tools used during the process. Here is a list of tools you will need:
Turkey Baster
Old wine bottles (for final product, sterilized)
Siphon (vinyl tubing)
Sanitizer (bleach or other recommended alternatives)
A plastic water bottle or glass jug (unscratched on the inside)
Rubber stopper (#8 or #9)
Airlock (balloon, PVC pipe, or commercial airlock)
Stirrer small enough to fit through opening of bottle
Funnel
This is a basic list to make simple wine, but you can also make very complex wine with just these simple tools. There are many companies today that provide you with kits and that is perfectly fine, but you can also make your wine with the things you have laying around your house already. Either way, once you have your equipment you are ready to begin the fun part!
By this time you probably already know the flavor of wine you want to make and no matter what the flavor you will be needing the juice from the fruit or fruits you choose to use. You can get this juice from one of two ways. You can either buy the juice from the store making sure that it does not contain additives other than Vitamin C, or you can make your own juice from the raw fruit. You will need a few other ingredients such as sugar, yeast and possibly the following chemicals:
Potassium Sorbate
Sodium/Potassium Metabisulfite
Yeast Nutrient
Be careful of allergies when using any substances for your wine making endeavors. There are some substitutions that can be made so do your research!
Now find a recipe to follow and do that to the letter and you will soon be drinking your own special homemade wine. Many recipes can be found by doing a simple search on-line. Soon you will understand the basics and be able to make your own recipes!
Wines – Pairing Wine And Pizza
Till now, beer was seen and considered one of the only options to accompany the popular Italian dish pizzas. But, the pattern has changed now. More and more people liking to combine the Italian treat pizza with classy wines now-a-days. There are various kinds of wines that may be paired with different sorts of pizza toppings. Not all wines can be combined along with all pizzas. There has to have a blend of flavors because pizza has a massive number of flavors ranging from simple onion-garlic pizza to beef and chili pizza.
Considered one of the biggest myths of wine and pizza coupling is that red wine must only be served with pizza owning dark meat toppings. You may pair any appropriate wine together with any meat pizzas, be it dark meat or light meat. Yet, you have to pay extra attention while you’re not following this rule. A gloomy flavored red wine is valued more when paired with seafood pizzas. And among the weirdest combos could be coupling white wine with chili beef or jalapeno flavored pizzas. Along at the end of the day, you need to make use of your own personal judgment and taste buds while coupling any sort of foods and drinks.
All kinds of pizzas might be paired with at the least two nice red and two white wine varieties. All you might want to be careful about is to always select the average wine kinds. Dont go for too bizarre or too strong or excessive sweet. All extreme wine tastes are extremely hard to join up. So, be very simple and usual in your wine selection.
Many of the pizzas are made up of this very acidic tomato sauce, which sometimes retort with wine which makes it a very weak and full-bodied. To attenuate this unenthusiastic result, you possibly can go together with medium-bodied wine choices like Cabernet Sauvignon, California Zinfandel, or Shiraz. You can actually even make it an entire Italian meal by pairing the pizza with Italian Chianti. Additionally, it is better to dish up white pizzas along with earthy Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio.
To match the taste and savor of a pizza sauce and topping, it is always highly recommended that you choose more acidic wines. One of the best wine option for any crusty pizza would be a little strong and flavorful. This may mechanically lessen the crust effect of the pizza in the tasty way. Always, confirm the sauce, base, topping and main ingredient for the pizza prior to a pick any complementary wine to match.
Want Adventures In Wine? Join a Wine Club
The Internet is good for quite a number of things – not least of which is its propensity to make information and opportunity available to the masses. Now, with holidays on the horizon and approaching fast, there’s another opportunity arising – and that, of course, is to join up with a wine club, or to get a membership in one for a loved one. What better way to start the festive season or to enjoy what would normally be an ordinary month of January, than by sampling some of the best wines that new and old worlds have to offer?
A wine club works like this. You get wines selected for you, by the expert buying team at the wine retailer of your choice. Generally you’ll then receive a case of wine every quarter, which is composed of bottles and vintages specifically selected by the buyers who source wines for the wine retailer as a whole. The better clubs offer a great deal of flexibility along with their normal bottles – so you can start off by taking their advice completely, and then use the bottles you have liked to inform your future decisions.
A comprehensive selection of tasting notes and information packs further add to the joy of the wine club, allowing novice wine lovers to learn and grow as the year goes on. There are some excellent examples of these clubs on the Internet – notably including the excellent offering from the legendary Colchester Wine Company, which has gone to great pains to tailor a wine lover’s membership that brings a great deal of choice along with very little in the way of commitment. That makes club membership the ideal way to start the New Year, and even to enjoy the festive holidays itself to the fullest. People who know they like wine, but aren’t sure how to go about exploring that like to its best extent, can only benefit from wine club models like the one espoused by The Wine company, which offers a friendly and informative service along with some excellent selections.
It’s this idea of learning without feeling embarrassed that makes the club experience so rewarding. Wine is a wonderful thing, but it is also a famously involved and complicated obsession. The more you find out about the stuff, the more you realise how little you know. In the past, it has been quite difficult to get past this feeling of “novice hood” – before the Internet, the only way to get the information you need to expand your wine tastes was to seek it from people who can (whether they mean to or not) give off the same air that an educated elite does – a kind of “if you don’t know, then you don’t know” feeling that can be very discouraging to the beginner.
Using a wine club to get to know what you really like and what you don’t can be a fun, rewarding and fascinating experience. Enjoyment is always better with knowledge – and knowledge is exactly what the club helps you explore.
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