Wine Knowledge Blog

Are there any benefits of drinking wines?

In early 1990s, a cardiologist, Dr. Serge Renaud, found that the fat-derived cholesterol that builds up in the arteries and can eventually lead to heart disease by blocking the heart’s supply of oxygen can be dispersed by the tannins in red wines.

Statistically, with moderate drinking, the risk of death from cardiovascular disease may be reduced by up to 30 per cent, especially for men over 40 and post-menopausal women. However, drinking wines has no health benefits to younger age groups. Anyway, it is not recommended that anyone should start drinking for health reasons.

Alcohol and Its Metabolism

Alcohol is absorbed by the body through the stomach and small intestines. As the body cannot store alcohol, so it has to be excreted by the metabolism of the liver and through urine, breath and sweat.

The metabolic process is very complex. To cut it short, the liver first convert alcohol into acetaldehyde (highly toxic), which is then changed to acetate (harmless), which is then turned into carbon dioxide and water, and are finally excreted from the body.

Heath Concerns

About 90-95% of alcohol consumed is processed by the liver. Therefore, excess drinking will cause serious damage to the liver. In the extreme case, it will lead to alcoholic fatty liver and cirrhosis.

In addition to liver trouble, excess drinking on a regular basis can also increase the risks of

• Alcoholism
• Sexual difficulties
• Cardiac arrest and stroke
• Pancreatitis
• Stomach disorder, such as ulcers
• Certain types of cancer, especially of the aero-digestive tract and breast cancer.

Most wines are made as an accompaniment to food, and there are many established guidelines for matching wines with foods, though there is no single choice of wine that must be drunk with a certain dish.

The best match is that neither the wine nor the food overpowers the other. Even better is that the wine and food can enhance each other.

Wine and Food Matching Guidelines

Wine and Food Matching in Detail

There are a wide range of glass shapes and sizes available in the market for the service of wine. Each of them is designed to emphasize a particular wine’s characteristics. Below is the general guideline for selecting the right glass.

Tip: As long as the shape and the size of a glass is right, its price does not affect the taste of a wine.

Decanting a wine

• when it is having heavy deposit. The deposit may not indicate a fault and it is likely formed during the aging process of good red wines.
• if it is a young wine with high tannins. In this case, aeration (during decanting) helps smooth the tannins and “unveil” the aromas. Tip 1: Decanting may not be necessary in this case since you can actually pour the wine directly in a glass and swirl it gently. This should have the same “aeration” effect. Tip 2: “Airing” a wine by opening its bottle some time before consuming has no or very minimal effects. This is because only a tiny portion of the wine is in contact with air.

The Correct Steps of Decanting Wine

1. Remove the wine horizontally from its rack and place it in a decanting basket (if you have one) or hold carefully to avoid agitating the deposit in the bottom of the wine.
2. Remove the top of capsule and cork very gently.
3. Take the bottle from the basket carefully so the deposit is not disturbed.
4. Hold the wine in front of a light, pour it carefully into the decanter until you see the deposit near the neck of the bottle. At this point, stop pouring the wine.

If a wine is stored improperly, it may lose its flavors or become faulty, in extreme cases. Below are the guidelines for storing wine

• if you are going to keep a wine for a long time before consuming it, you should keep it in an environment with constant and cool temperature (10-15°C). This is a very important rule and should apply to light wines, sparkling wines and fortified wines.
• Unless you have a wine cellar with constant temperature, do not ever keep your wines in kitchen where is usually the place in your house having a wide fluctuation of temperature
• it is also not a good idea to keep your wines in refrigerator for an extended period since the corks may be harden and lose their elasticity in such environment. As a result, the seal fails and air can attack the wine causing it to become stale. Sparkling wines lose their fizz.
• Store wine on its side to ensure the cork remains in contact with the wine. This prevents the cork from drying out and failing. A failing cork lets air in, and the air will oxidise the wine.
• Keep wines away from strong light which heat the wine and makes it stale.
• Keep wines away from vibration

Wine is simply an alcoholic grape juice or a more complicated definition - wine is a drink made from the fermented juice of freshly-picked grapes. Fermentation is a natural process caused by wild yeasts (outside of grape skin) or cultured yeasts (from laboratory). During the process, yeasts will convert sugar in grapes to alcohol or wine (main product), carbon dioxide and heat (by-products).

Generally, the more sugar the grapes have, the higher alcohol level the wine will be. However, you will only find wines (excluding fortified wines) with less than or equal to 15% alcohol. This is because yeasts will die when the wine alcohol level reaches 15% even though some sugar may still be left in the wine or the alcoholic juice.

Different yeasts may be more or less efficient at converting sugar to alcohol. Generally, it takes, roughly, about 16.5g/l of sugar to generate 1% alcohol. Interestingly, yeasts consumes less sugar for white wine to generate the same alcohol level of red wine.

Some wine makers will let the wild yeasts to “participate” the fermentation as they believe the yeasts may generate special aromas for the wine that is to be made. However, if a wine maker believes that the wild yeasts will produce some off-flavors to his wine, he may use sulphur dioxide to kill them and use cultivated yeasts alone for the fermentation. Different wines may use different cultivated yeasts to achieve certain wine styles. Generally, the main yeast used for alcoholic fermentation is Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Wine types or wine styles can be broadly divided into three categories

• Light Wines
• Sparkling Wines
• Fortified Wines or Liqueur Wines in EC countries

Click types of wines to have more information. If you are interested to know how wine is made, click wine making process.

Light Wines

When people are talking about wine, they are normally referring to Light Wines. A light wine is still. This means the wine is not sparkling or fizzy.

Wines in this category will normally have 8-15% alcohol, with the majority containing 11.5-14%. Many light wines are named after the region where they are made. For example, Bordeaux/Burgundy/Alsace from France, Rioja from Spain and Chianti/Soave from Italy.

In addition, the wine label will always indicate the name of grapes used, such as Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon.

Sparkling Wines

During the alcoholic fermentation, carbon dioxide is produced as one of the by-products. If the gas is not allow to escape and trapped in the wine when bottled, a sparkling wine is produced.

Popular sparkling wines include, Champagne from France, Cava from Spain and Asti from Italy and Sekt from Germany.

Fortified Wines

Liqueur Wines is the name in EC countries equivalent to fortified wines. High-strength grape spirit is added to a wine during fermentation or after fermentation depending the wine style to be achieved. Therefore, the wine is fortified to have a higher alcohol level, usually between 15-22%.

Some popular fortified wines include Sherry from Spain and Port/Madeira from Portugal.

Wine Tasting Technique 1 – Appearance

Clarity

• identify whether the clarity of a wine is clear or dull.
• if the wine looks dull, it may indicate that there is a problem though it is not 100% sure at this stage – an aged red wine may look dull. This can be confirmed in the next steps.

Colour

• The intensity and hue of the wine colour can tell you a lot of things such as weather the wine has been aged and/or oaked, and the grape variety has a thick or thin skin if it is a red wine.
• In order to get the true color of a wine, hold it away from you at an angle of 45 degree against a white background such as a A4 white paper.

Wine Tasting Technique 2 – Nose

Condition

• have a gentle sniff first if it does not smell odd, then swril the wine carefully and have a deeper sniff
• Cork Taint is the common fault which can be identified at this stage. It may be faint on the nose but is usually more pronounced on the palate.
• It is believed that 5% of all wines are affected by Cork Taint.
• The smell of excessive Sulphur Dioxide is another fault you may notice at this stage. Sulphur Dioxide is a preservative and may give you an arcid smell of burnt matches.
• Oxidation is another problem. It has a burnt smell like the wines of Madeira or of caramel.
• If a wine was not handled with care during bottling, acetic bacteria and oxygen may be left in it. This wine will then have a aroma of Volatile Acidity like vinegar and should be rejected at once.

Intensity

• A weak wine is usually smell-less, except a smell of alcohol
• A good ready-to-drink wine will commonly have a healthy and outgoing nose
• If a wine is youthful, the fruity aromas from the grape varieties used to make the wine will dominate. For a wine which has been aged, you will find subtle and complex aromas such as honey and vanilla depending on what wine you are tasting.

Wine Tasting Technique 3 – Palate

Important: In order to liberate the full flavors of a wine, purse your lips, lean forward and draw air in through the wine.

Sweetness

• Sweetness is always your first sensation if a wine is sweet. This is because this sensation comes from the tip of your tongue.
• Be careful – You may have a sweet sensation if a wine is made of very ripe grapes but the wine is, in fact, dry (not sweet).

Acidity

• It is the sensation at the sides of your tongue towards the back, and makes your mouth water.
• If a wine does not have enough acidity, it will be flappy and unappealing

Tannin

• Only red wines have tannins and young red wines will usually have more pronounced tannins
• Tannin has a drying effect on your gums and teeth.
• It contributes to the texture or body of a wine.
• A higher tannin level allows a red wine to age better

Body

• It is the “weight” of a wine felt in your mouth.
• If a wine gives you a light or heavy feel or weight, it is said to be light-bodied or full-bodied respectively.
• High levels of alcohol and tannin, and concentration of fruit give a fuller bodied wine.

Alcohol

• Alcohol is part of the wine body as mentioned above.
• It normally represents 8-15% of the total volume.
• Its strength can be told by the degree of burning effect at your throat.

Wine Tasting Technique 4 – Conclusion

Quality

• A good quality or enjoyable wine must have a good balance between tannin, acid, sweetness, alcohol and the flavour components.

Readiness for Drinking

• If you take notes for your findings on each steps, not only you can tell the quality of the wine tasted, you can also be able to tell whether the wine is at its peak and needs to be drunken at once or it can age further to evolve more interesting characters.
• For a wine to be age worthy, it generally needs a higher levels of alcohol, acid and tannins, and still have some fruit flavors retained.

Wine Making Process (Vinification)
Red & White Wine Making Process Diagram Tip Right click on the picture to download a full size image	Process of Making Red Wines Red wines are generally made from black grapes only. However, winemakers can vinify the black grapes with a small proportion of white grapes if they want and if the local wine laws permit. Below are the major steps for the process of making red wine.	Process of Making White Wines The vinification process of white wines are very similar to reds. However, it need to be treated more carefully since white grapes are more likely to have oxidation problem than reds.
Preparation	Stalks are usually removed first before the grapes are crushed. However, if the wine maker wants to increase the tannin level of the resulting wine, he will keep the stalk intact when crushing. Note that stalks contain tannins. The crushing is usually not very hard so the pips will not be broken to release bitter oils which will damage the flavour of the wine to be made. After crushing, must (juice and pulp), skins and pips are put into a vat where the alcoholic fermentation will start. The vat could be a stainless steel vessel or a new oak barrel or a used oak barrel.	After the grapes arrive at the press-house, they will be de-stalked and pressed. The juice may be left with skins at low temperature for 2-3 hours for flavor extraction. Afterwards, it will be drawn off from the press either into a vat or cask, where the juice will be fermented.
Fermentation	For red wines, fermentation normally starts at about 20ºC and can be raised to anything between 32ºC and 35ºC if necessary. Generally speaking, the warmer the temperature, the higher levels of tannin and color can be extracted from grape skins. However, fermentation will stop if the temperature rises above 35ºC. The ideal temperature will vary from grapes to grapes and regions to regions. As carbon dioxide is generated as a by-product during this process, it will carry the pulp and skins up to the top of the vat when escaping. Therefore, in order to maintain good contact between the skins and juice for optimal color extraction, the pulp and skins will be pushed down constantly by various means. The length of fermentation will be up to the wine producers. It might be 1 to three weeks.	Fermentation usually begins at a lower temperature, normally between 15ºC and 20ºC, sometimes it could be as low as 9ºC. The white wine fermentation process usually takes longer period then red wine. This is because more fruit flavors can be imparted to the wine and loss of freshness can be avoid. As alcoholic fermentation generates heat as a by-product, so cooling is required to keep the process going under the acceptable temperature level. To date, modern wineries are all using vats with individual heating/cooling system. Fermentation at higher temperature (within the acceptable level) can develop more complex aromas, but the varietal fruit characteristics may lose. If the process is kept at a too low temperature, it creates peardrop aromas to the wine and fails to extract fruit flavor from the skins. If the wine is fermented in barrel, the lees may be stirred up on a regular basis to impart additional flavor and richness.
Maturation	After fermentation, the wine can be run off from the vat naturally. This is called free-run wine. More wine can be extracted by pressing the residual (pulp and skins) left in the vat. This is known as press wine. Press wine is usually darker in colour and more tannic than the free-run wine. They can be blended together before setting for maturation or they can be separated into different barrels for maturation. Depending on the wine styles to be made and the grape varieties, the wines can age inside a vessel for as long as 2 years before bottling. If the vessel is a new French oak barrel, the maturation process will impart a spectrum of flavors and tannins to the wine which can help bottle aging. If it is a new American oak barrel, it will integrate sweet vanilla and coconut flavors to the wine. If used oaks are used, it will have no or very little effects on the resulting wine dependent on the number of times used. A French oak barrel is a lot more expensive than an American one.	Maturation is less common in white wines than reds. This is because the fruitiness of whites will be dissipated during the process. If maturation is thought to be necessary, the aging period is normally shorter than red wines. In many cases 12 months is the upper limit.
Bottling	As some consumers, particularly Americans and Japanese, expect a bottled wine to be clear and bright, therefore, the wine makers will remove any particles that may cause cloudiness. This can be done by fining, filtration, or chemical and microbiological stabilisation.	White wines are generally bottled much earlier than reds. These wines are specially produced for early consumption. Up to the time of bottling, white wines will be kept in a temperature controlled stainless-steel vat.

If you are interested to make wine at home, click here for the related ebooks that I have read and my short comments about them.