Tag Archives: Wine
Growing Grapes For Wine – Healthy Grape Vines For a Great Wine
If you are a gardening enthusiast or a wine lover, growing grapes for wine may be an exciting activity for you. Making your own wine is indeed a good idea. You must remember though your backyard grapes may not be the variety that is great for wine making, thus if you want to venture into growing grapes for wine, here are some important tips that you may consider.
Choosing your wine grape
One main factor in making best wines, of course, is having the best quality of grapes. The variety of your grape vines should be the first consideration. Choose a type that is great for wine making and pick a variety that can thrive well with the climatic condition of your area. Most often, grapes grown healthily on areas with hot and dry summer and mild winters, as very low temperatures during winter can kill the grape vines.
Choosing your location
Make sure to choose a location that there is plenty of sun. This will in the proper ripening of the fruits that will contribute also to the taste of your wine. Other major considerations to take note in growing grapes for wine making include the soil, the topography, the fertilizers and the climatic conditions of your area. Planting your grape vines can also be done in slopes because these areas have good drainage and prevent the roots to be soaked with too much in water and that can freeze in winter. Slopes facing south are the best locations that you can get for growing grapes for wine as these areas will sure get good sunshine for your wine grapes. Bathing your vines with good sunlight helps a lot in the formation of sugars in fruits that become alcohol after fermentation. Beware of low lying areas too as these are prone to frosts that can damage your vines.
Disease and Pest Control
Like any other crop, growing grapes also involves monitoring especially for possible attack of pests and diseases. You can make use of pest attractants to drive pests away from the fruits. At mid summer when the fruits begin to swell and ripen, birds also begin to peck on the fruits, thus, before everything will be gone, you can put nets over the vines to stop them from feeding on the fruits. A gardening net would be a great one for this purpose.
Pruning for better fruits
Pruning your grape vines is also a factor that you should consider in growing grapes for wine, as this affects the production of good quality fruits. Pruning will help balance the production of fruits and prevent overbearing, which can lead to poor fruit quality. Aside from getting rid of messy vines, pruning also allows sunlight to nourish the vines well and helps maintain disease-free vines.
Harvesting your grapes
Harvesting the fruits at the right time is also important in growing grapes for wine making. It is not just enough also to look at the color of the fruits to determine if it is in its right ripeness for harvesting. Tasting the grapes is recommended. You can start harvesting your grapes if the seeds are dark or brownish and if the sugar level is just right. You can also make use of hydrometer to help you determine the sugar content of the grapes and if it is already right for harvesting.
Finding The Perfect Wine Corkscrew
More than one wine corkscrew is a necessity in any serious collection of wines. Most wine collectors have at least two or three corkscrews of their collection. You can have three of the same type. Or, if you want to be more adventurous, you can add unique corkscrews to your collection. If you want to take your wine collection seriously, you need to take your collection of wine accessories just seriously. You can find a lot of personality in many types of corkscrews, coasters, and collars available on the market today.
Be sure you have the appropriate accessories, besides the wine corkscrew, to enjoy your wine collection. Every serious wine collection requires the right accessories. A corkscrew is an obvious necessity. However, you also need things like coasters. Coasters are available for both the wine glass and the wine bottle. Their practical purpose is to catch any stray drops to come off the container. This prevents staining of tablecloths and furniture. Wine collars are just as important for catching wine drips coming out of a bottle. These sit just below the lip of the bottle and catch drops with absorbent material.
Select the right glasses to complement your wine collection. Some people think you can drink any type of wine properly out of a generic glass. However, those who take wine very seriously want to have a variety of glasses available. Some wines taste better in a deep bowl glass such as reds. A tulip glass is a great option when dealing with a light and sparkly white wine. Champagne tastes better when you taste it out of a champagne flute. There are any number of sizes and shapes available in wine glasses. When thinking about adding a wine corkscrew to your collection, make sure your collection of glasses is just as comprehensive.
Keep your wine in good shape with a bottle stopper. Once you use a wine corkscrew to remove the cork from a bottle, you need something to close the bottle with if you do not drink the entire thing. That is where you need a bottle stopper. As with corkscrews, you can find a wide range of designs and styles that comes to bottle stoppers. This is some corkscrews also double as bottle stoppers. Make sure that you have a few of these on hand to keep your wine tasting great.
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Selecting Wine To Match Food
Making the ideal mix between wine and meals could be a challenge if you’re not entirely certain what you are doing. With such an array of wine and food available you have often many options to think about. When preparing dinner, choose combinations that are popular with a wide range of people. You need to usually make sure that the wine doesn’t overcome the dish, and you also need to stay away from flavor transferring. This occurs when a flavour is transferred from the wine to a meal, as it can result in an unpleasant taste.
White Wine:
When making a wine and food mixture, Chardonnay is most appropriate complimented with Veal, Salmon, grilled cheese and white sauce. You must stay away from spicy foods with this drink. Gewurztraminer is ideal when matched with Pork, Chinese foods and Swiss cheese but must be eliminated with light foods. Pinot Grigio is not an ideal choice for Tomatoes and spicy food as this mixture may create a rather unpleasant taste. Riesling is often a very dry wine and best when teamed with Veal, Shrimp, cream sauces and Turkey. Sweet food really should be avoided with Riesling and Sancerre nevertheless.
Red Wine:
In an ideal world a food suggestion should be listed on the back of a wine bottle. Fortunately we can provide you with the insiders ideas to acquiring a wine and food mixture just perfect. Barberra red wine is best with Pizza, pasta, lasagne and lemon chicken. When consuming fish or tomatoes, Cabernet Sauvignon should be eliminated. This wine is much better matched with chocolate, roast lamb, steak and duck. Merlot is properly matched up with grilled meats like barbecue meat and chicken. Avoid sweet food with this wine. Pinot Noir isn’t nicely matched with spicy foods such as Indian foods, instead it really is ideal with Salmon, tuna, lamb and duck. Shiraz is wonderful with a meal of barbecue, peppered red meats and sausage but really should be avoided with fish.
In basic, wine is ideal served at a chilled temperature, as it really is capable to breathe and create the best mix of aromas which will delight the senses and impress your guests. Each and every form of wine has a glass that coordinates with it. In the event you don’t have a cupboard filled with every wineglass imaginable though, use the next closest looking glass. The cause that you can find a lot of types of wineglasses accessible, is the fact that every single one is intended to emphasise the full aromas and tastes inside a given type of wine. If the wine is not served in the right glass, all these aromas and flavors may not be entirely realised.
Temperature Guidelines:
Typically a bottle of wine may take as much as three hours just before it’s appropriately chilled inside the refrigerator. Serving the wine at the right temperature might be a distinction of whether or not the wine will be ideal to drink for maximum aroma and taste, and might make or break a charming dinner experience for you and your guests. A great way to chill your wine to perfection rapidly and easily would be to place your bottle into a bucket filled with ice along with a sprinkling of salt. The more high-priced the wine the warmer it can be served. White wines especially the dry sorts are ideally served at lower temperatures nevertheless. And, lastly heavy wines are best served at the room temperature.
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