Health Benefits of Wine

Hi guys,

Today I would like to show you some great benefits that wine can bring to your health. But don’t worry, I am not here to promote heavy drinking or alcoholism 😉 This is because if you exceed the moderate amount you are supposed to drink per day, those benefits will no longer exist, and it will actually bring harmful effects to your body. So what is a moderate quantity? It is about 2 glasses for men and 1 glass for women. And of course, it should be accompanied by a healthy diet, then you will be able to take full advantage of the effects described bellow.

So the first benefit (and the most well known) is: wine lowers risk of heart disease. A substance called procyanidin is supposed to protect the heart since it helps degenerate its cells (simplistically speaking)

The second benefit is: it increases good cholesterol (HDL) and protects our blood vessels. This is due to the presence of a substance called resveratrol, which reduces the risk of inflammation and blood clothing.

The third benefits is: it protects you from Diabetes (type 2) and obesity. That is also due to resveratrol.

The fourth benefit is: it reduces the risk of certain cancers (like colon cancer). A substance called flavonoid interferes with the multiplication of cancer cells, and that substance is also present in wine.

The filth benefit is: it slows brain decline and lower the risk of Alzheimer. This is because of the presence of substances called polyphenols, which block the formation of proteins that destroy brain cells.

The last (but not least!) benefit is: it helps prolong our longevity. Again, this is due to the presence of resveratrol, which acts as an antioxidant, helping prevent certain molecules, known as free radicals, from damaging cells.

So guys, I hope this helps you with some questions you had about the benefits of wine. If you need to do some further research, please do so. Also, a lot of you may think about the reasons why your doctor never talked to you about this, so please understand (and I will emphasize this again) that wine, as an alcoholic beverage, should be drunk in moderation, and not before you drive! 🙂 That is why doctors may feel hesitated to prescribe it.

What Makes a Good Wine

I have always been curious about the reasons why some wines are so expensive while other are very affordable and weather this had to do with an unperceived value; because I have found some of the cheap wines so unexpectedly great, while other expensive wines were not as good in my opinion. So as you can already tell, the idea of a good wine is very relative, and it doesn’t have to be expensive nor old. Nonetheless, generally speaking, what makes a good wine has to do a lot with the grapes, the legs, the smell, and the sensorial experience it creates for the person who is trying it.

Firstly, when we talk about the grapes and how it influences the quality of the wine, we see that it will be based on the climate and the time that is was harvested. On the one hand, if the grapes come from an area that leads to a higher exposure of sun and rain, then a lot of the grape’s tastes would have been modified or lost, and that will affect the taste of the wine. On the other hand, the combination of a propitious weather, the presence of volcanic materials and minerals (thus a propitious soil) and whether the grapes were picked individually at their precise time, will probably lead to a better quality wine. In summary, the terroir (microclimates, soil type, fauna, flora, and slope of the terrain) will bring that special taste, complexity, depth and personality to the particular wine, as well as the time and method of harvest, will deeply impact the quality of the wine and how “good” it is.

When we talk about the legs, which are the slender lines of liquid that slowly drip down the sides of the glass, we will be thinking about its alcoholic content. And the longer they are, it is associated with better quality. However, theoretically speaking, this has to do more with physics than with quality (please read this site for further information), and so lets not give this classification too much importance even though some wine conoisseurs would traditionally pay attention to this characteristic.

In addition, the smell will also give you a good clue weather the wine is good or not. However, this classification will be more associated with everyone’s particular taste, and so it will depend if you prefer fruity, oaky, and so on… Moreover, the more you smell the wine, the higher the probability that you will better enjoy it.

Finally, when we talk about the sensorial experience, some experts will say that a truly great wine has a complete, seamless mouth feel, which can be described as silky, velvety or some other similar descriptor. It will also depend on the wine’s expressiveness (how the characteristics of the aroma and flavors are clearly projected) and complexity (how you find a different peculiarity about it every time you taste it). However, this classification will also depend a lot on each person’s taste.

And so my advice to you is to explore the world of wine, either it would be from California, South Africa, or Burgundy in France, and stick to the ones you like the most. Because at the end of the day, I believe you should be drinking it for pleasure and not because you should like a certain wine that a respectable sommelier said it was the best, or because of its price. Bellow is a video that briefly talks about what makes a good wine:

Wine and Food Pairing

Ok guys,

If you have read my posts up until now, you should have acquired a decent basic knowledge about wine. I hope they have been helpful, and don’t be shy to go deeper into the subject, since I am normally touching it briefly and broadly. Since you are probably able to identify certain wines by now, I can already introduce to you the idea of wine and food pairing. A lot of us may have already been to a situation where you go to a restaurant but you are not sure which wine would best accompany the meal you’ve chosen. Likewise, when you are cooking a meal for your friends but you don’t know what bottle to buy and to serve to them. So bellow I will introduce you to some tips about wine and food pairing that will help you with further information beyond “red meat goes with red wine, and white meat goes with white wine”. Just keep in mind that the idea of wine and food pairing is to create harmony in the senses and enhance each other qualities, and in order to do so you can complement (with similar tastes) or contrast (with opposite tastes).

The first tip I can give you is don’t match strong to light, such as a strong wine with a light food. Lighter whites are  Pinot blanc, Riesling, Sauvignon blanc, Chablis, Champagne and sparkling wines. Heavier whites are white Bordeaux (Semillon), White Burgundy, Rhone whites. Light reds are Beaujolais, Dolcetto, Madeira, some Pinot Noir. Heavier reds are Cabernet franc, Merlot, Malbec, Zinfandel, some Pinot noir, Syrah, Brunello di Montalcino, Cabernet Sauvignon, Port.

The second tip is Choose earthy wines with earthy foods, like combining Pinot Noir with a steak with garlic, or Nebiollo with food prepared with mushrooms

The third tip is to use lighter wine with deserts, like Madeira with dulche de Leche deserts

The fourth tip is to use low alcohol wines with spicy food, like a Riesling with a spicy curry

The fifth tip is that Champaigne goes really well with salty food, like a bacallau dish

The sixth tip is that Chardonnays go really well with fatty fish food, like a salmon with avocado salad.

The seventh tip is to match rich red meat with strong reds, like Cabernet Sauvignon or Syrah

The eighth tip is to use rose wines with starters/hors d’oeuvres, like cheese plates.

The ninth and the last tip I can give you for today is not to add too much complexity to the meal, like if you have a very good bottle of wine that you wanna show off, then don’t serve a complex dish with it so that you can center the attention to the wine, and vice-versa.

Bellow is a video that will give you some further information and this is a good website to finding out what food goes to which wine and vice-versa.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOye2tSRv84

Classification of Wines

As we all may have noticed, there are several different types of wine that are white, red, or even other types that are rose’, or sparkling, table wines… and all these classifications make us so confused in terms of understanding our preferences, the differences between the wines, and at which occasion we are supposed to drink them. Beyond this, the classification of wine can be done through various methods that range from their place of origin, vinification methods, sweetness, and their means of use. So we have plenty of reasons to be lost in the wine world since there is so much information that we need to address in order to understand it. But don’t feel scared, unmotivated and give up on reading this blog! 🙂 I am going to try to explain in a more didactic way on how these classifications are done, and hopefully this post will give you a better understanding of the different types of wine.

So I would like to use this post to talk about 4 different types of classifications: by vinification method or wine style, taste, vintage,  and quality.

When we classify wine by vinification method or wine style, we will be considering whether the wine has had contact with the grape skin or not, or had sparkles added to the wine, or even addition of another spirit. In this case we can classify them into red wines, which are made from red or black grapes, and the skin of those grapes is left in contact with the juice during the fermentation; the white wines are made from any color of grapes since the skin is separated from the juice during fermentation, but they are generally done using “white” grapes; rose wine is a mixture of red and white wines blended together; champagne and other sparkling wines are made with the addition of carbon dioxide during the fermentation or afterwards; fortified wines are alcoholically stronger since they are made with an addition of a spirit, such as Brandy; desert wines are normally sweeter than the others.

When we classify the wine by taste, we will be noticing the different tastes each wine has. In this case, they can be dry, fruity, sweet, spicy, and this is associated with the different compounds winemakers add to the juice. Bellow I will show you the different compounds of the most popular types of wine:

Red grapes

• Cabernet Franc: tobacco, green bell pepper, raspberry, new-mown grass.
• Cabernet Sauvignon: blackcurrants, chocolate, mint, tobacco.
• Merlot: black cherry, plums, pepper, coffee.
• Mourvèdre: thyme, clove, cinnamon, black pepper, violet, blackberry.

• Petite Sirah (Durif): earthy, black pepper, dark fruits.
• Pinot Noir: raspberry, cherry, violets, “farmyard” (with age), truffles.
• Pinotage: banana, bramble fruits.
• Sangiovese: herbs, black cherry, leathery, earthy.
• Syrah (Shiraz): tobacco, black pepper, blackberry, smoke.
• Zinfandel: black cherry, pepper, mixed spices, mint.s improve in flavor as they

White grapes

• Chardonnay: butter, melon, apple, pineapple, vanilla (if oaked, i.e. vinified in new oak aging barrels)
• Chenin Blanc: wet wood, beeswax, honey, apple, almond.
• Riesling: citrus fruits, peach, honey.
• Sauvignon Blanc: gooseberry, lime, asparagus, cut grass, bell pepper.
• Sémillon: honey, orange, lime.
• Viognier: peach, pear, nutmeg, apricot.

Furthermore, when we classify the wine by vintage, we are taking into consideration the year in which the grapes were harvested. Based on the assumption that wines improve in flavor as they age, we can see that superior vintages from reputable producers can become very costly. We should also notice that not every wine age well and so they are supposed to be drunk immediately, such as White Zinfandel or Champagne.

Finally, when we classify the wine in terms of their quality, we will consider how rare or premium they are. Exclusive wines comes from the best winemaking regions of the world, such as Bordeaux, Burgundy or Port.

This website can give you a good idea of wine classification by regions and types.

I hope this summarizes  your general assumptions about wine classifications. I know it can be overwhelming to learn all the regions and types of wines. But an advice I can give you is, when you try different bottles, make sure to pay attention to its origins, year, compounds, and that will help you foster your learning about its classifications.

Wine Tasting

After writing about the history of wine and the process of winemaking, I believe that a subject that naturally comes after is wine tasting and learning how wine connoisseurs do it. So, before you hit that vineyard and wine tasting room, you should probably read these three blogs first in order to sound a bit more knowledgeable about the subject and look professional.

As you all may know, wine tasting is the sensory examination and evaluation of wine, and the person who does that as a career or professionally is called sommeliers. By tasting the wine, we are able to identify different flavors, aromas and other general characteristics. But wine tasting does not only involve drinking the wine: it also involves observing its color and smelling the different aromas that come from it. We should include the aftertaste in this process as well, since the finish taste can give us many clues about the wine characteristics.

However, a lot of you may think, from previous experiences in trying different wines, that it is hard to recognize the peculiarities of every wine and that they all seem to have the same taste. But to be able to judge the different aromas, flavors, and so on, it requires time and practice, and you can acquire this sensibility by trying more and more wines, paying attention to the process and trying to mentally analyze the taste. Moreover, a good way to improve your vocabulary and understanding your senses when you are tasting wine would be to start writing what you see and feel into a piece of paper using your own words. Then you can later compare these notes to other notes you have made from other wines, thus noticing the differences.

So, in order for you guys to have a better idea on how wine tasting is done, I have uploaded a good video that will explain what you should do when tasting the wine.

This is a good blog that talks about wine tasting experiences from the wine tasting guy.

Winemaking

Good’ay everyone! 🙂

Today I want to talk a bit about the process of making wine, or vinification. I’ve realized that, even though I have been to different vineyards and taken tours around them where the tour guide explained the process to me, I wasn’t completely on top of the whole system yet. So, before you go on one of these tours, it is probably a good idea to have some background of how everything works before you can see it live.

It all starts with the selection of grapes. The quality of the grapes will deeply affect the quality of the wine, and that is why it is a very important part of the process. Nonetheless, the quality of the grape will also depend on the type of soil, time of harvest, weather, and pruning method. Concomitantly, this process is initiated with the harvesting, or picking, which can be done by hand or mechanically. Consultants, winemakers or vineyard managers would normally taste the grapes in order to determine the precise time of harvesting.

After the grapes arrive at the winery, they are then gently crushed and pressed. For thousands of years, this process was done by men and women “dancing” on barrels, but now winemakers can use mechanical presses in order to separate the contents of the berries. Up until this point, both white and red wine follow the same process. However, for white wines, there should be a separation of the skin, seeds and solids from the juice, since it should be as clear as possible.

Following, we have the fermentation process, which is done with the help of yeasts that are present in the berries and the air, or by specifically adding cultured yeast to the barrel. When wine makers intentionally chose the yeast that will ferment the wine, they are looking for more predictable results. During the fermentation process, the yeast will use the sugar to multiply and produce alcohol, and the temperature where this process is being done will affect the end result. This can take from ten days to several months.

After fermentation, the process of clarification begins. This is when the wine maker filters and separates solids from the wine. This process can also include the adding of other substances to help precipitate dead yeasts or other solids. Finally, after this fining process is done, the wine is taken to another vessels for bottling or further aging. Wine makers can use bottles, stainless steel, ceramic or wooden barrels to help with the aging, and each method will give us different results in tasting.

So guys, this is a summarized explanation of how vinification occurs. And of course, the different ways to make it, the products that are added, and any other process that is chosen, will influence the way each wine tastes, giving it unlimited results. And that is what makes it amazing because every wine will have a different taste, apart from the ones that were made during the same harvest and with the exact same method.

This is a good website that shows different techniques of making wine, thus creating an unique taste!

Hello everyone!

As you can see from the title, the concept of this blog will be about wine and the way I see it. It will be composed of information I gathered from different sources, together with my own opinion in certain topics related to wine. Therefore, this blog will have my personal thoughts in some topics, along with other people’s ideas and concepts. And its main purpose will be to inform everyone about wine, while bringing some other extra information that you will not normally find while surfing the web.

And, to start, I would like to share with you some information about the history of wine. I thought it was a good way to formerly initiate the topic because a lot of us do not have much knowledge on where wine comes from and how old it is. Moreover, history will also give us a background on understanding such an ancient practice and will help us visualize how it influenced culture throughout the course of history.

Historians would suggest that the process of wine making goes back to as early as 6,000 BC, based on archeological evidence of wine press and fermentation jars that were found in areas around the Mesopotamia (Iran and Armenia). Back in those days, wine was savored by royalty and priests, while commoners drank beer, mead, and ale. The Egyptians were the first ones to document the process of wine making, and in that society, wine was also part of the social elite life. Then, at around 6,500 years ago, wine making made its way to Western Europe and became part of the Greek and Roman culture. Wine, then, became part of the mythology and popular classes. Furthermore, during this time, the process of wine producing improved significantly, and much of the modern wine culture derives from the practices of the ancient Greeks. They were the ones who improved the technology of wine press, who developed barrels for storing and shipping, who discovered other grape varieties (by classifying it and its colors, observing and charting ripening characteristics, and recognizing soil-type preferences) and cultivation techniques.

By the first century AD, wine became a product of exportation to France, England, Germany, and Spain, and was produced in an industrial scale. These regions also began to develop their own vineyards, and, over the next few centuries, France would become dominant on the world wine market.

Later, in medieval times, the Catholic Church acquired the habit of drinking wine in its mess celebrations, and that made wine increasingly popular from the 15^th century onwards. Adding to that, exploration, conquest and settlement brought wine to the Americas and South Africa in the 1500s and 1600s.

For centuries wine was produced and enjoyed with little thought and true understanding of its underlying science. But, in 1857, French chemist Louis Pasteur first proposed that wine should be made by microscopic organisms, called yeasts. This process brought better hygiene, less spoilage, and greater efficiency in wine production.

In conclusion, we can see that the history of wine goes back to thousands of years and is closely intertwined with the history of agriculture, cuisine, civilization and humanityitself. And that is why I will be writing about this topic: it is a complex product that has survived through our history and is still appreciated by the whole world today.

This is a good book to learn more about the history of wine and this is a good webpage if you want to gather more information.