Ask the Somm

mccardey

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That looks quite correct to me, and I don't think the study I referred to disagrees. I just think I didn't state it clearly. The average in Europe is three drinks per day according to WHO, and the study I read says nothing about the average. It suggests four to six drinks per day, depending on body weight, correlates with the greatest longevity and balance of cardiovascular and liver health. It doesn't state that that 4-6 drinks is what the average European consumes, it states that those who do consume 4-6 drinks also seem to have the highest levels of health.

That's kind of so vague as to be meaningless. Perhaps you'd better quote the actual figures?

McCardy: A bottle of wine has five glasses in it,

Does it? In Australia a bottle usually has between seven and eight glasses in it. I guess it would differ according to alcohol levels, but do levels vary that much? (I'm not a somm)
so one bottle between four people at dinner is 1.25 drinks per person and sounds like about what I'd go through at a given meal without feeling stinted.
Well it was between three because I'm not much of a drinker. Between two, really because Roberta would only have had a couple of sips of her glass. She's always watching her weight. But one of the four was my Beloved, so yanno... ;)

If you had a single beer with lunch, a cocktail before dinner (a cocktail is 1.5-3 standard pours, usually) a quarter of a bottle during dinner, and a glass of digestif after, you are easily, easily at 4.75-6.25 drinks or more for the day, without ever being buzzed.

Oh you are joking! A beer, and a cocktail and then a quater bottle of wine? I'd be under the table!

I was actually just outside Avignon last year, so I'm not quite sure how we observed such different parts of the culture. Everyone I was around seemed to practice having a single beer or glass of wine with lunch and dinner, and a conversational cocktail at some point in the evening. I spent awhile in Lyon and in rural Piedmont last year as well, a while in Haro (Rioja) and Bilbao (Basque country) two years before that, and spent this fall living in Vals (Catalonia) working the harvest.

A glass of wine (or a beer) with lunch and dinner perhaps. Or an aperitif and a wine with dinner perhaps. (I didn't see "cocktails" drunk - to me cocktails means mixed spirits and syrup, yes?. Closest I got was Pastis with water. They don't do it fancy in Sablet...) But that's a long way from an optimal healthy 4-6 drinks a day (depending on weight).

ETA: I don't mean to fight with you - I just got very tired of the hordes of visiting vomitters hanging around the train stations. There seems to be a kind of "the Europeans are healthy and they drink heaps!" belief - and the fact is, of course, that the healthy Europeans don't drink heaps. Drinking 4 - 6 glasses of wine a day (depending on weight) is not the path to optimal health. It just isn't.
 
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RedRajah

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Anyone who doesn't like Port, I will be more than happy to take those bottles off their hands (even the Australian Port-style wines). :D
 

bewarethejabb

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I have never been to Australia, only bought wine from Australia, and I don't want to rule out that you guys may use a different standard sized bottle. But every wine from every country I've ever purchased (in both the US and assorted European countries has treated 750 ml as a standard bottle size. Twice that would be a magnum, half that would be a half bottle or split. And I've been taught a standard pour in the us and Europe is 150 ml, and that wine comes in 8-15% alcohol by volume, though a few slightly higher exceptions come out of really warm parts of California and Australia.

I'm happy to link to references on this when I'm at a real computer btw. But as far as you know, are bottles usually sold larger in Australia?

Also, the human body, unless something is particularly wrong with it, on average can metabolize alcohol at the rate of one standard-pour drink per hour. I fail to understand how one beer at noon with lunch, one cocktail hanging out at 7pm, and one glass of wine at 10pm with dinner would get anyone buzzed, because you have to drink more than you can metaboize for it to have an effect on you. (Arguably, if you shotgunned that drink at the head of the hour, you would be buzzed starting at the 20 minute mark, after your latent reaction time required to get into your blood stream, but it would be gone in 40 more minutes.) But there's just no physical way those drinks could add up to you being "under the table" unless you actually lack the enzyme to break down alcohol (which does happen. It runs in my girlfriend's family, actually.)

I don't think you're arguing with me personally, and I hope you don't think I'm arguing with you personally. It just seems like I misrepresented how much alcohol is "four drinks per day" - the problem with the vomiting American tourists you speak of is that they seem to think that it is far more than it is, and based on your annoyance with them, you seem to think it is far less than it is. One martini is three to four shots, and the kind of people throwing up in the alley are the ones who drink two martinis (6-8 units) in twenty minutes and say that counts as "two." Or ask for a second bottle of wine for dinner with four :p

I just maintain that (provided normal metabolism) having single units of alcohol anywhere from 3-6 hours apart, with food each time, can happen over the course of the day without interfering with your life, and adds up to 4 easily if you eat at 7, 10, noon, 6, and 10. (the 10 am snack is a thing in Spain, but I haven't witnessed that in France or Italy, btw, And in france the afternoon snack is at four, rather than the spanish gradual-snacking-until-dinner thing.)
 
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mccardey

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I have never been to Australia, only bought wine from Australia, and I don't want to rule out that you guys may use a different standard sized bottle. But every wine from every country I've ever purchased (in both the US and assorted European countries has treated 750 ml as a standard bottle size. Twice that would be a magnum, half that would be a half bottle or split. And I've been taught a standard pour in the us and Europe is 150 ml, and that wine comes in 8-15% alcohol by volume, though a few slightly higher exceptions come out of really warm parts of California and Australia.

I'm happy to link to references on this when I'm at a real computer btw. But as far as you know, are bottles usually sold larger in Australia?

Bottles in Australia are usually 750ml, and are required to say how many standard drinks are contained. I double checked before I posted the comment, and of the three varieties I looked at, al 750ml bottles, one claimed 7.8 drinks and 2 claimed 8.6 standard drinks. (the first was a NZ Pinot Noir, the others a shiraz and a South Australian mataro.) The alcohol levels were 14.5%. Does that help? I could check some whites, if you wanted.
 
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bewarethejabb

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Yes. I think they just define a standard drink on the very, very conservative side for some reason. Certainly no harm in that, and it makes total sense why we'd be used to different things. Man, if I could get away with selling eight drinks out of a bottle I would make a lot more money.
 

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14.5% is also pretty damned strong. Your typical European wine is around 12% - used to be 11% ish, though it's been creeping up.

When I was in NZ I was told at a couple of vineyards that Australian / NZ wine was naturally higher strength due to the climate, but that some European producers were compensating by adding grape spirit to up the percentage. Not sure how true this is, but it's a shame if it's right. I love a good strong NZ Pinot Noir, but that doesn't mean I want a light Valpolicella to be the same ABV.

[I believe I have already established I know very little of use about wine.]
 
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bewarethejabb

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14.5% is also pretty damned strong. Your typical European wine is around 12% - used to be 11% ish, though it's been creeping up.

When I was in NZ I was told at a couple of vineyards that Australian / NZ wine was naturally higher strength due to the climate, but that some European producers were compensating by adding grape spirit to up the percentage. Not sure how true this is, but it's a shame if it's right. I love a good strong NZ Pinot Noir, but that doesn't mean I want a light Valpolicella to be the same ABV.

[I believe I have already established I know very little of use about wine.]

No, you're spot on. I generally say in my wine classes that wines "range from 8-15% depending on climate," and that higher is from hot places like California and Australia and lower is from cooler places like Northern and Central Europe (southern Spain and southern Italy can obviously make hotter wines than Gemany.)
 

mccardey

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I have a rather shameful number of various C d R (French) wines here at the house, too - just looking over a few labels, they all have alc vol of 14.5 and were listed as 8.3 or 8.6 glasses to the bottle. I suppose it's perfectly possible that the Beloved chose them because he likes his wines punchy - but still, I'm not convinced by your figures...

But I'll get out of your way now. I just was surprised to see 4 - 6 glasses of wine a day and optimal health in the same sentence. You know - in front of the children and all... ;)
 
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GeorgeK

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I'm a wine lover who doesn't know nearly enough about how to identify the traits of what she likes so she can find more like it. Instead, I just buy the same things over and over. It's been a while since I made a discovery...

For a wine drinker who enjoys a sauvignon blanc or pinot grigio with fish or chicken, and who does not like grapefruit or citrus elements, got any recommendations? Especially under $15, or it'll become a special-occasions-only indulgence.

Maryn, who'd drink wine with every meal if that wasn't bad for her (what goes with cereal and milk?)

Try a white merlot. If it's for a party you can get a 5 liter box for under $20. It's sort of like a zinfandel, a blush wine that's very mellow, not as acidic as a zin.
 

GeorgeK

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My question is, what are the sweetest wine(s)? Concord? Sangria? Cherry?
Manishewitz (I know I'm not spelling that right) is an inexpensive brand of kosher wines that have had a lot of sugar added. They're like candy, but in a bad way unless you have a big sweet tooth.

Sweetness has to do with the amount of leftover or added sugars after fermentation has stopped, not the type of fruit used to make the wine.
 

sunandshadow

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Also: thank you for making this thread WAY more interesting and complex than these types of things usually are!
Sure, thank you also, I think the conversation turned out well. I'm pleased to now know to ask about Trockenberenauslese, Sauternes, and Barsacnext time I'm at the liquor store. :) (The ice wine I've at least noticed before, my cousin was rhapsodizing about some he had once and the store has a big label pointing out the shelf of them.)

Just as a random comment, if you ever see a selection of Arrowhead wines, that winery is local to me and I think their stuff is worth tasting for anyone who likes sweet wines. They specialize in some of the grapes and fruits that are grown in my area of the US - concord and niagara grapes especially, vidal for ice wines, and also blueberries, black cherries, and even peaches in the last few decades since some more cold-hardy peach trees were bred that could fruit reliably this far North. Arrowhead has won some medals in regional competitions for American-made wines, like state fairs and such. Their labels on the bottles are really ugly, but I've liked every one of their wines I have tasted so far, especially the Dazzling concord and the Blueberry. The Dazzling Niagara is the one that won most of the awards though. I have not yet gotten to taste their two ice wines, but I look forward to doing so.

The only place I know of that brews tastier stuff locally is the Arsenal Cider House, but they serve live-yeast cider and mead and sell it in growlers, so I'm not sure they can export anything.
 

GeorgeK

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I've never heard of cherry wine, but I assume someone added cherry juice to wine. People do all kinds of gross things like that in north america. "Fruit wines" are not wine, they're some kind of punch where you added the juice of other fruits to the wine. Wine, technically, is alcoholic grape juice. Period..
No, any fermented fruit beverage is wine. It's just that grapes naturally will have on them what is generally a good yeast and so without being able to control for the yeast, fruit wines other than grape have generally not done well. If you are going to use fruit other than grapes you will need to be much more careful about getting a good yeast and properly sanitizing the fruit. Your comment about North America and insisting that that cherry wine can only be grape wine with cherry flavoring added to it shows your lack of experience as an actual vintner. I've brewed beers and I've vintnered as a hobby. Cabernet Sauvingnon made from cranberries is in my opinion better than that from grapes. However, everyone has different preferences, hence the many many styles of wines.

Also without our North American grapes, there would be no French wines so you might not wish to insult an entire continent.
 

sunandshadow

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Manishewitz (I know I'm not spelling that right) is an inexpensive brand of kosher wines that have had a lot of sugar added. They're like candy, but in a bad way unless you have a big sweet tooth.

Sweetness has to do with the amount of leftover or added sugars after fermentation has stopped, not the type of fruit used to make the wine.
Yeah, I've tried Manischewitz' concord and cherry table wine, they were ok though I like Mogen David a bit better for being in the same price class of super-cheap table wine ($15 for 3L). Was not as fond of the blackberry, but then I don't like blackberries all that much. (Their table wine is completely different from Mogen David 20/20, aka Mad Dog, which is terrible.) I do undeniably have a big sweet tooth, lol.
 
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GeorgeK

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No, you're spot on. I generally say in my wine classes that wines "range from 8-15% depending on climate," and that higher is from hot places like California and Australia and lower is from cooler places like Northern and Central Europe (southern Spain and southern Italy can obviously make hotter wines than Gemany.)

No, it's about the sugar content in the must, the strain of yeast used and whether or not the vintner halts the fermentation. Climate can certainly affect the sugar content to an extent mostly by altering the water content and therefore the sugar concentration, but unless you are fermenting outside the yeast selected and the desires and ability of the vintner can counter that.
 
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GeorgeK

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Yeah, I've tried Manischewitz' concord and cherry table wine, they were ok though I like Mogen David a bit better for being in the same price class of super-cheap table wine ($15 for 3L). Was not as fond of the blackberry, but then I don't like blackberries all that much. (Their table wine is completely different from Mogen David 20/20, aka Mad Dog, which is terrible.) I do undeniably have a big sweet tooth, lol.
Mogen David has some nice wines that are inexpensive. Unfortunately it was so long ago that I don't remember what the name was other than Mogen David that I really liked. It was an amber colored medium bodied wine that was sort of like a madeira or a tawny port but with only a slight sweetness and a slightly spicy taste.

If price is your main thing, check out Andre, they have a Cold Duck that is passable. It's not what I would call a fine wine. It's more like a soft drink than most wines, very fizzy from force carbonation instead of natural carbonation. However for not much more by volume, check out the boxed wines. Since you don't open and pour them like a bottle, they don't get air (or much air) when you open the spout and so they don't spoil nearly as fast as a previously opened bottle that then gets recorked. There's a nice selection of good wines in boxes out of California and Australia.
 
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bewarethejabb

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No, any fermented fruit beverage is wine. It's just that grapes naturally will have on them what is generally a good yeast and so without being able to control for the yeast, fruit wines other than grape have generally not done well. If you are going to use fruit other than grapes you will need to be much more careful about getting a good yeast and properly sanitizing the fruit. Your comment about North America and insisting that that cherry wine can only be grape wine with cherry flavoring added to it shows your lack of experience as an actual vintner. I've brewed beers and I've vintnered as a hobby. Cabernet Sauvingnon made from cranberries is in my opinion better than that from grapes. However, everyone has different preferences, hence the many many styles of wines.

Also without our North American grapes, there would be no French wines so you might not wish to insult an entire continent.


George is clearly, overtly trolling. I've flagged all his posts for spreading deliberate misinformation in a thread intended to help writers research on the topic of wine. I suggest anyone who came here seeking factual answers please consider verifying anything he says on google before taking it seriously.

I mean, also please verify anything I say on google and tell me if I misrepresented or missed something (like implying 4-6 glasses of wine was average or a standard anywhere) because this thread is intended to be factual. I promise that although I might say something poorly or simply be ignorant, I'm not going to feed you deliberately misleading nonsense.

Although, sun and shadow, he's ironically completely right about manechevitz. Normally one wouldn't wish that on their worst enemies (and I think he meant to be trolling when he said that,) but it's exactly what we were taking about earlier with relative palates. The prank of trying to trick sometime into drinking manechevitz is based on the incomplete assumption that your worst enemies like things like coffee and black tea. If, as we established, you do like sugary and you do like concord, which is perfectly valid (even if statistically less common) then yes, manechevitz is perfect.

Three buck chuck's white zin is actually pretty elegant for a white zin, too. All strawberries, blueberries, and cream on the nose. Reminds me of one of those fourth of July flag cakes.
 
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bewarethejabb

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I have a rather shameful number of various C d R (French) wines here at the house, too - just looking over a few labels, they all have alc vol of 14.5 and were listed as 8.3 or 8.6 glasses to the bottle. I suppose it's perfectly possible that the Beloved chose them because he likes his wines punchy - but still, I'm not convinced by your figures...

But I'll get out of your way now. I just was surprised to see 4 - 6 glasses of wine a day and optimal health in the same sentence. You know - in front of the children and all... ;)

You are not in the way at all :) I learned something very interesting about how wine is sold in Australia, with the 100 ml or so.

And I also learned that I misrepresented myself badly, which is probably the most important thing one can learn from a writer's site, no? I never meant to imply that 4-6 drinks was either average or any government's suggestion, but obviously I did. I meant to say, plenty of people in Europe (not all, not average, just enough to casually observe and not be surprised by) seem to have a single unit of alcohol with each meal (which, if you count glasses being larger than standard units, adds up to four units way faster than people think; it's quite easy to do with two large glasses) and one study says they seem the healthier for it. I find this notion amusing and like to cite it, because I rather like the attitude of every meal being a leisurely affair with a glass of wine.

The study didn't control for the fact that two hour lunch breaks, afternoon naps and thirty five hour work weeks might also contribute to health, btw :) although it did specify that taking rapid shots did not have the same effect as very spread out consumption always with food, which seems to hint a second study testing if simply relaxing that muchwould do the trick is merited :D
 
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cornflake

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You are not in the way at all :) I learned something very interesting about how wine is sold in Australia, with the 100 ml or so.

And I also learned that I misrepresented myself badly, which is probably the most important thing one can learn from a writer's site, no? I never meant to imply that 4-6 drinks was either average or any government's suggestion, but obviously I did. I meant to say, plenty of people in Europe (not all, not average, just enough to casually observe and not be surprised by) seem to have a single unit of alcohol with each meal (which, if you count glasses being larger than standard units, adds up to four units way faster than people think; it's quite easy to do with two large glasses) and one study says they seem the healthier for it. I find this notion amusing and like to cite it, because I rather like the attitude of every meal being a leisurely affair with a glass of wine.

The study didn't control for the fact that two hour lunch breaks, afternoon naps and thirty five hour work weeks might also contribute to health, btw :) although it did specify that taking rapid shots did not have the same effect as very spread out consumption always with food, which seems to hint a second study testing if simply relaxing that muchwould do the trick is merited :D

It doesn't matter if you take a nap and work five hours less (I suspect that's likely the same - take out an hour of every weekday for lunch out of a 40-hour workweek...), 4-6 drinks a day isn't a healthy level of alcohol consumption, much less -

It suggests four to six drinks per day, depending on body weight, correlates with the greatest longevity and balance of cardiovascular and liver health.

I want to see the study that says 4-6 drinks per day correlates with optimum liver health.

You note people metabolize a drink an hour, then say thus if you drink 4-6 drinks over 4-6 hours, no problem. Except this doesn't account for the slowdown of the liver as the alcohol just keeps coming, that's what it's doing for hours and hours a day, and there's buildup. I'm not a medical researcher or anything, so goodness knows I could be wrong, but everything I've ever read about biology says 4-6 drinks per day is not a level that's going to work out well for anyone as a long-term strategy.
 

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Okay then, Mr. Somm (and everyone else), I did a double take at that 4-6 drinks a day statement, too. But then, who knows. Perhaps a glass of wine with each meal and snack, spread out over many hours daily really doesn't have the same cumulative effect as chugging a few beers each evening. I don't know that the studies we hear about get that specific. It might make a difference if the liver is slowly fed toxins vs. hit with a high level at once. Maybe the studies we know start with alcoholics and work backwards, which could make a difference in the findings (I have no idea, so just a random thought there). I'm sure other cultures have different drinking patterns than in the US and it *may* make a difference in health outcomes. *Woot! Zooms - nay - strolls in a refined fashion, to the booze cabinet*

I have ordered Wine for Dummies but in the meantime, I do have some wine dummy questions:

Is the wine in the little individual serving (screw top) bottles generally lower quality than equivalent-ish priced wine in a standard bottle (and a cork)? I'm usually the only one who drinks wine here so I buy the four packs of individual bottles. But I've started on the "real" bottles lately because I could swear they (all different kinds) taste better, have more different flavors or something. But that might just be in my mind, as I am easily impressed by the cork, haha.

Also, to go with this, I have ordered a couple of wine bottle stoppers that supposedly pump out the air. Do you think it makes any difference? I've always heard you are not supposed to save wine at all.

Also related to the above, does it change the taste of red wine when you refrigerate after opening? Would it be better to only buy white. Or no difference and just let the red warm up before drinking it?

And... if I bought "wine in a box," does it tend to be lower quality than corked bottled wine, in general?

I may be overly impressed with corks. :)

P.S. *Is* a cork any indicator that it's a better wine than a screw top bottle or is it just a tradition? What is the reason for the cork? Nothing else has a cork.
 
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GeorgeK

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I have ordered Wine for Dummies but in the meantime, I do have some wine dummy questions:
I'm not familiar with that particular book, but when reading about brewing and winemaking you need to know who is writing it and from what perspective. The Germans have the Reinheitsgebot and so what is called beer there will be different than what is called beer in the rest of the world. The Germans at least are civil about it and don't try to demand that the rest of the world follow their rules and definitions. Similarly the French have their ideas about wines but they try to demand that the rest of the world follow their lead when they are not the leaders. If you read something written by the French it will not agree with the rest of the world.
Is the wine in the little individual serving (screw top) bottles generally lower quality than equivalent-ish priced wine in a standard bottle (and a cork)? I'm usually the only one who drinks wine here so I buy the four packs of individual bottles. But I've started on the "real" bottles lately because I could swear they (all different kinds) taste better, have more different flavors or something. But that might just be in my mind, as I am easily impressed by the cork, haha.
Theoretically it should be the same wine that was bottled in a larger container, but I agree there often is a subtle difference and it's not really an issue of aging because only wines and beers bottled with live yeast in them will age and commercial beverages have been filtered to the point of having no yeast. The only guess I can come up with is a difference in how they sanitize their bottles and perhaps the smaller bottles having a higher surface area to volume ratio might retain a bit more of their sanitizing solution, but that's a guess.
Also, to go with this, I have ordered a couple of wine bottle stoppers that supposedly pump out the air. Do you think it makes any difference? I've always heard you are not supposed to save wine at all.
If you are going to drink it in under three days, I don't feel like it makes a difference. Longer than that and yes the oxidation does start to alter the flavor and the longer it goes the higher risk of it getting contaminated with ethanol consuming bacteria that will turn it to vinegar.
Also related to the above, does it change the taste of red wine when you refrigerate after opening?
yes
Would it be better to only buy white.
that's purely a matter of personal preference
Or no difference and just let the red warm up before drinking it?
For most people's purposes that's fine
And... if I bought "wine in a box," does it tend to be lower quality than corked bottled wine, in general?
Not for equally priced volumes of wine. Also drink what you like. Just because a bottle of wine is $100 doesn't mean that you will like it any better than a $15 box of wine. Also your taste buds change over time. What you like in your 20's is not likely to be the same as what you like in your 50's. Don't trust anyone who insists that you get a particular style or from a particular winery or pay a particular price. Don't trust anyone who insists that you aren't allowed to drink a particular wine with a particular food. Do what you like. Those are merely wine snobs. A better approach is to ask someone who tends to like the same foods as you, "I like wine X, do you think that I'd like wine Y?" If you ask someone who eats entirely different foods than you, you probably won't agree with their assessment of what you will like.
I may be overly impressed with corks. :)

P.S. *Is* a cork any indicator that it's a better wine than a screw top bottle or is it just a tradition? What is the reason for the cork? Nothing else has a cork.
If it's a live wine, where there is still live yeast and it is not sealed with wax or foil then yes a cork is possibly better, because however slowly there is some gas exchange across the cork, necessary for the yeast. If not like the vast majority of commercial wines then a proper seal is more important than whether or not they used cork.
 

bewarethejabb

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Okay then, Mr. Somm (and everyone else), I did a double take at that 4-6 drinkss a day statement, too. But then, who knows. Perhaps a glass of wine with each meal and snack, spread out over many hours daily really doesn't have the same cumulative effect as chugging a few beers each night. I don't know that the studies we hear about get that specific. It's might make a difference if the liver is slowly fed toxins vs. hit with a high level at once. Maybe the studies we know start with alcoholics and work backwards, which could make a difference in the findings (I have no idea, so just a random thought there). I'm sure other cultures have different drinking patterns than in the US and it *may* make a difference in health outcomes. *Woot! Zooms - nay - strolls in a refined fashion, to the booze cabinet*

I have ordered Wine for Dummies but in the meantime, I do have some wine dummy questions:

Is the wine in the little individual serving (screw top) bottles generally lower quality than equivalent-ish priced wine in a standard bottle (and a cork)? I'm usually the only one who drinks wine here so I buy the four packs of individual bottles. But I've started on the "real" bottles lately because I could swear they (all different kinds) taste better, have more different flavors or something. But that might just be in my mind, as I am easily impressed by the cork, haha.

Also, to go with this, I have ordered a couple of wine bottle stoppers that supposedly pump out the air. Do you think it makes any difference? I've always heard you are not supposed to save wine at all.

Also related to the above, does it change the taste of red wine when you refrigerate after opening? Would it be better to only buy white. Or no difference and just let the red warm up before drinking it?

And... if I bought "wine in a box," does it tend to be lower quality than corked bottled wine, in general?

I may be overly impressed with corks. :)

P.S. *Is* a cork any indicator that it's a better wine than a screw top bottle or is it just a tradition? What is the reason for the cork? Nothing else has a cork.

Cornflake: I'm happily link to it when I am next at a real computer. I'm traveling right now and answering from my phone. Also, I want to stress that this is one study that I cite because it is funny, and in my eyes, likeable. It's entirely possible another will come out to the contrary. My field of expertise is not wine and health, it's wine, and I read this one article because it's periphially related.

Fruitbat:

If you're interested in reading up, check out Karen MacNeil's "Wine Bible." It's extremely comprehensive, yet doesn't feel like an encyclopedia to read.

The size of the bottle, or it's presence in a box, is not in and of itself and indicator of quality. However, there are trends towards what kind of wines gets packaged in what sizes, so you are more likely to see better things in certain formats.

So, an underlying thing that relates to all your questions is that wine, like all other fruit, oxidizes with exposure to air. This is good up to a point and bad after a point. As you age wine (in a barrel at the winery or in a bottle in your cellar) one of the main things you are doing is allowing the wine to interact gradually with air, through the porous barrel walls or the cork. Like with anything else alive, there's point where it will start declining and eventually die (an easy metaphor is the bananas, avocado, or pear you left on the counter to ripen... too long and it will be brown and mushy, way too long and it will actually start decomposing) so don't take that as an implication that age universally = good.

So: the presence of a natural cork indicates that the winemaker believed it had aging in bottle potential after it was released from the winery. A synthetic cork it a screw top goes on wines that are ready to consume now. They're a little bit like sealing a carnival goldfish in a plastic baggie to bring it home: just fine for dispensing them in large quantity, but don't think it will survive forever cut off from air like that. (I'd drink synthetic corked or screw topped wetness within a year.) Cork is over-harvested, so I'm a big fan of only use it when necessary and recycling it afterwards (google recorkit for a company that does, lots of wine shops and restaurants have drop off points.) That all being said, some wines that do not have aging potential will still use natural corks in an attempt to look fancy, because lots of people are overly impressed by natural cork.

As for small bottles: ironically, the things you are most likely to find in small bottles are the two extremes. VERY expensive wines will release half bottles so that people who might hesitate at the price of the full bottle can have a option in their price range, she because you don't want to leave a bottle open forever without it going off from overexposure to air, so you can have half a bottle now and half a bottle later without rushing or risking over oxidizing the second half. But also, really cheap plonk will package itself in single serving four packs because marketing convenience and the ability to take to a picnic packed like a juice box is their only selling point. You can look for visual clues (serious wines in small bottles will be in miniature glass versions of the real thing and still cost twenty to sixty dollars or more. Plastic bottles in a cardboard pack with labeling like Mike's hard might be in small servings for a different reason...)

Your air pump is totally legit, as you've probably already construed from the other information. It simply lessens the amount of air inside the bottle and slows oxidation, making an open bottle last three to five days instead of going off overnight. It will still change slightly. If you open a fresh bottle of the same thing on day five and compare it to the one that's been re sealed, the latter one is much closer to going off. If you left a third bottle totally open it's well gone. An inexpensive place to experience the difference yourself is any restaurant with a wine by the glass that doesn't sell through the whole bottle very fast; all the time it happens where a customer is sold the last pour from a bottle that's been open and re sealed for several days, then when they order a second glass, obliging the bartender to open a new bottle, they exclaim over how different it is. Most restaurants and wine bars can easily show you the contrast on purpose if you ask the bartender to pour you both the last glass of something that's been open and the first glass of a fresh bottle of the same at the same time. Way cheaper way to learn about oxidation than to buy two bottles, open one and wait. You can probably also find a bottle of something that's been allowed to completely go off for comparison (which they shouldn't charge you to smell/taste of you really want to) because restaurants let stuff go off by accident all the time. Almost every other day I open some re sealed bottle that's been left too long that I have to discard rather than serve to a guest.

Gtg, work. Answer the rest later.
 

Fruitbat

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Thanks, guys. Much appreciated. :)
 

jennontheisland

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It doesn't matter if you take a nap and work five hours less (I suspect that's likely the same - take out an hour of every weekday for lunch out of a 40-hour workweek...), 4-6 drinks a day isn't a healthy level of alcohol consumption, much less -



I want to see the study that says 4-6 drinks per day correlates with optimum liver health.

You note people metabolize a drink an hour, then say thus if you drink 4-6 drinks over 4-6 hours, no problem. Except this doesn't account for the slowdown of the liver as the alcohol just keeps coming, that's what it's doing for hours and hours a day, and there's buildup. I'm not a medical researcher or anything, so goodness knows I could be wrong, but everything I've ever read about biology says 4-6 drinks per day is not a level that's going to work out well for anyone as a long-term strategy.
The only way I can see 4 to 6 drinks a day maintaining health, is in someone who has been drinking that much every day already. Because when they stop, they're going to go through alcohol withdrawal.
 

quicklime

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Fwiw...


...there have been several studies to say a screw top is actually the best for long term aging. Aesthetics aside more than a few high end makers have switched for this very reason. Many good reasons for cork and good cork is excellent (although the best cork is also invadiably part synthetic as the ends are reglued disks and often the imperfections are filled) but screw tops allow less microoxidation.

George is correct....most of the.worlds grapes grow on vinifera hybrid rootstock due to phylloxera. And anyone sneering at all american grapes and hybrids hasnt tasted a solid norton or some of the better white crosses as a late harvest ot icewine where their acid can shine counterbalanced properly.

I would not call a cranberry a cab sauv any more than calling chicken stock beef but have had many excellent fruit wines....and the oppurtunity to watch very experienced and.sopgisticated wine tasters mistake them for grape wine. One can do a lot with care..although it rarely happens in commercial fruit wine. Still....if you havent had one that compares it is because you dipped your toe into an entire pool and tried to judge the depth from there....