Tag Archives: Wines
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.
Types of White Wines
White wine owes its light coloring to the color of the grape used-golden, green, and white being the most common. However, some wineries produce white wine by using only the flesh of a red grape. White wine usually accompanies lighter meals and often pairs well with light meat or seafood.
Generally speaking, white wine has eight different varietals; these are often called “The Big Eight.” These are: Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Sémillon, Viognier, and Chenin Blanc. All of these wines take their name from the type of grape used in their production.
Chardonnay is the number one selling white wine varietal in America, and is extremely versatile in its pairings. Most Chardonnays come from either California or France. People often describe the flavor as “buttery” with a fruity impression. The Loire Valley in France produces most of the Chenin Blanc on the market, although vineyards in California and Argentina also produce this varietal. Its flavor and acidity can vary wildly depending upon the time of the grape harvest.
Pinot Gris or Pinot Grigio comes in two distinct types: Italian and French. The Italian version tends to be less full-bodied than that produced in other countries. Gewürztraminer, coming from a German root word indicating spiciness, pairs well with Asian foods and can have a rose-like flavor. It is produced in a variety of countries.
Riesling wines are known for their versatility; they can be paired with almost anything. The dryness of the wine is often indicated in German on the bottle. New Zealand and France are the major producers of Sauvignon Blanc wine, and the difference in geography shows in the wide variety of flavors that a Sauvignon Blanc wine can display.
Sémillon and Viognier are lesser-known varietals that hail from specific regions of France: the Sémillon grape often is grown in Bordeaux and Côtes de Gascoigne, and the Viognier in the northern Rhône regions. These grapes often figure in blends, and so, as stand-alone wines, they are much more rare and more expensive.
Types of Red Wines Around the World – Part I
California is the only place in the world planted with just about all the better known wine grapes, producing variable qualities of wines. Elsewhere in the world, wine and grapes are location specific. While some regions have same grapes, no two regions plant identical grapes and make identical styles of wines.
This article is Part I of the three-part article series on the types of red wines in the world. The connection of grapes, wines and the regions would help the understanding of this lovely drink that we call wine.
Barbera: Indigenous to the most prominent wine region of Italy, Piedmonte, Barbera makes two styles of wine: youthful, lively, with sour-cherry flavor, or oak-aged, complex, with darker fruit, toast, spices notes. The latter is meant for aging with the maturity bringing out the best of its characteristics.
Cabernet Sauvignon: Bordeaux and California are the largest planting and production regions for the King of Red Wines. The different approach in these two regions is that in Bordeaux, Cabernet Sauvignon is almost always blended with other regional grapes, while many California producers make varietal Cabernet Sauvignon wines. The advantage of the Californian winemakers is the reliable weather, while the weather in Bordeaux dictates the quality and thus the “vintage” is so much talked about when it comes to Bordeaux reds.
Cabernet Franc: Cabernet Franc’s charms are in its fragrant aromas rich with red berries, blackcurrant leaves, and herbaceous notes, and approachable styles of tannins. With the right terroir – combined elements of the natural environment, for examples, Napa and Sonoma, Cabernet Franc could produce dark fruit, well-structured and complex full-bodied single varietal wine.
Carmenère: Originated in the Bordeaux region of France as a blending grape but never playing a major role, Carmenère has found its stage to shine in Chile as a single varietal wine. Well, there was a little hiccup when it was mistaken to be Merlot in the vineyard and made into wines labeled Merlot, but that confusion has since then be cleared. The Chilean Carmenère offers velvety texture, low acidity and almost-sweet fruit flavors, as long as the grapes are ripen properly, not harvested unripe.
Wine Making Recipe For Homemade Wines
The equation to a successful home made wine is fifty percent strictly following the instructions and fifty percent involving a good wine making recipe. If you do not have one, and even if you follow the instructions down to the letter, chances are you end up with home made vinegar rather than wine. Among the most basic recipes around involve only five ingredients which are grapes, granulated sugar, Campden tablets, pectic enzyme and wine yeast.
Grapes
Have at least eight to ten gallons of grapes. Buy those really sweet varieties and seedless types for an easier process. Crush the grapes in batches to produce a consistent grape must. Place the must in really clean buckets or similar containers leaving at least a fourth of the container empty.
Squeeze some of the must with cheesecloth to produce a cup of juice. With a hydrometer, the juice should have a specific gravity reading of less than 1.090. Properly covered, set aside the juice.
Campden tablets
With a cup of warm water, completely dissolve five Campden tablets. Stir the solution into the must with a wooden spoon. The tablets will be used to kill any present bacteria and prevent the must from getting contaminated in the future. Leave the bucket covered with cloth and wait for at least twelve hours before mixing in the next ingredient.
Pectic enzyme
Add four teaspoons of pectic enzyme to the must. Cover again and set aside for another twelve hours.
Wine yeast
While waiting for the twelve hour period from adding the pectic enzyme, mix at least five milligrams of wine yeast to the juice earlier set aside. After the second twelve hours, mix in the yeast juice with the must. Stir the whole mixture two to three times a day keeping it covered in between. As with any wine making recipe, the fermentation process is the most crucial.
Granulated sugar
When the fermentation process is done, add sugar to taste and to reach a specific gravity reading of 1.090 after removing the non-wine particles and substances present.
This wine making recipe allows you to switch the grapes to any fruit you wish to make your wine with and experiment with the amount of sugar to come up with the sweetness your wine would have.
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A Wine Lover’s Weekly Review of $10 Wines – A Red Sicilian Blend
Please let me apologize. Usually I place these weekly reviews on my website Sunday night or Monday night. This one went up on Tuesday; last night was President Obama’s first prime time news conference. I’m not going to talk about the press conference here, except to repeat that this wine column is our attempt to deal with the present economic problems. We feel that in these very difficult times it’s important to keep your chin up, and to find a way to enjoy life without spending too much money. What can be better than the right $ 10 bottle of wine? We help you find the right ones.
Italy produces many fine wines. We have reviewed about two dozen fine Italian wines, coming from eighteen and soon nineteen of the twenty regions of Italy. Sicily is the number one Italian wine region both in terms of acreage devoted to the wine grape, a whopping third of a million acres, and total production, over two hundred million gallons. In fact, if Sicily were an independent country it would rank seventh in the world for wine production. Now quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality. The wine reviewed is a blend of the indigenous Nero d’Avola and the international Cabernet Sauvignon, both red grapes. Nero d’Avola wines usually aren’t very expensive but I was quickly able to locate a $ 80 bottle on the web. Cabernet Sauvignon produces some very expensive wines such as the California Opus One costing hundreds of dollars, depending on the vintage. Enough of that; let’s see if this bottle is a good choice for dealing with these hard times.
OUR WINE REVIEW POLICY All wines that we taste and review are purchased at the full retail price.
Wine Reviewed
Montalto Nero d’Avola Cabernet Sauvignon, 2007 14% alcohol about $ 8
Let’s start with the marketing materials. Tasting Note: Deep red violet color; dark fruit and spice aromas and flavors; dry, medium to full bodied, long, smooth finish. Serving Suggestion: Roast lamb or beef, meat pastas, and grilled meats. And now for my review.
At first tasting the wine was thin but long with moderate acidity and a touch of oak. The initial meal involved homemade shepherd’s pie. There was dark fruit. The red blend washed the food down pleasantly. It was robust. Simple food, simple wine. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. I added some Turkish Harissa, a hot pepper sauce and the wine followed, picking up some spiciness.
The second meal was a combination of meat balls and recooked steak, slow cooked with potatoes. The Nero d’Avola/Cabernet Sauvignon was now powerful; it definitely packed a punch. I could taste the oak. The length was good.
The final meal was a middle-eastern specialty, kube, also called kibbe, ground meat in jackets made from ground bulgar, in a spicy tomato sauce. It was strange, at the first sip the wine was thin, almost watered. But as I drank more the power built. There was some oak and dark fruit with moderate acidity.
I finished the tasting with two cheeses. The first cheese was a provolone. The wine was balanced with good tannins and moderate acidity. But it was short. A marbled cheddar cheese flattened the wine somewhat. After the cheese the fruit came back.
Final verdict. If you feel like washing down simple meals with a simple wine this is an option. But I think I will keep looking.
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