Basic Wine Concepts
Wine Types
There are five distinct categories of wines in which most other wines can be subsumed, red, white, rose, sparkling, and dessert wine. Below I will include a brief summary on each of these.
Red Wine
Red wine is wine made from grapes with red or purple skins and can come in many different forms and styles that range from the very heavy and oaky, to very pure and mineral. (The wines I tend to like are more mineral driven, meaning they exude the character of the earth and the environment from which the fruit was picked. Oak to red wine is like salt is to meat. It can enhance the flavor profile, and integrate all the elements of the dish, but when overused can dominate and ruin the taste of an otherwise nice dish.)However, the unique characteristic of red wine that tends to differentiate it from other wines (although not always) is the presence of tannins. Tannins are comprised of an organic substance that resides in the skin, stem and seeds of the grape and is often experienced on the palate through “dryness” and astringency. Tannin, just like the red color of the wine, come from extended contact of the fermenting wine with grape skins. If you have ever had the experience of peeling a grape, you will know that the inside of a red grape is not red, and that the skin of grape leaves an intensely drying feeling on the tongue when consumed separate from the rest of the fruit. A similar phenomenon is playing out in red wine, where the skins impart pigment and tannins. Tannins play an extremely important role in the aging of wine, which will invariably be discussed throughout my posts.
The most common varietals (or types) of red wine grapes are the following:
Bordeaux Varietals (varietals typical of the great French winemaking region of Bordeaux, and the most common varietals used in kosher wines)
- Cabernet Sauvignon
- Merlot
- Cabernet Franc
- Petite Verdot
- Malbec
Burgundy/Beaujolais Varietals
- Pinot Noir
- Gamay
Rhone Varietals
- Syrah/Shiraz
- Grenache
- Mourvedre
- Carignan
Italian Varietals
- Barbera
- Sangiovese
- Montepulciano
- Nebbiolo
Spanish Varietals
- Tempranillo
- Granacha (same as Grenache)
Other
- Zinfandel
- Tannat
White Wine
White wine is generally made from grapes with white skins, although it can be made from red grapes when the fermenting juice of those grapes has no contact with their red skins (called blanc de noir). White wines, even when made from white skinned grapes have minimal skin contact and therefore generally lack the presence of tannins, and are more defined by acid and sugar for their flavor profile.
White wines are perennially under-appreciated in the kosher win, which is a huge shame in my opinion. Given that Israel is such an important source for kosher wines in today’s market, and they are making some of the best white wines in the world, I think the kosher world should make an effort to understand the world of white wine, such that it can appreciate many of the world class wines coming out of Israel today.
The most common white wine varietals include the following:
Bordeaux Varietals
- Sauvignon Blanc
- Semillon
Burgundy Varietals
- Chardonnay
Alsace/German Varietals
- Riesling
- Gewurztraminer
- Pinot Gris
- Muscat
Loire Valley Varietals
- Sauvignon Blanc
- Chenin Blance
- Muscadet
Rhone Varietals
- Marsanne
- Roussanne
- Viognier
- Grenache Blanc
Italian Varietals
- Moscato
- Vermentino
Spanish Varietals
- Moscatel
- Macabeo
Rose Wine
Rose wine is a pink colored wine that is made predominantly from red grape varietals that have had some limited skin contact. The limited skin contact allow the wine to retain the freshness and acidity that drive white wines, while imparting some structure and additional depth of fruit flavor as a result of some skin contact. Rose wines are some of my favorite wines, as when they are done right they can be extremely fresh but have an added layer of complexity that one may find more commonly in a red wine. This is also an underrated category for the kosher drinker, and I believe one that is the result of under education as to what rose is, and what makes it great.
Sparkling Wines
Sparkling wines are wines that have some level of carbonation in them. These wines can be made using varying different methods, although most of the highest quality sparklers are made using the champagne method or “Methode Champenoise”. Methode Champenoise involves the blending of different partially ferment “base wines” from either different vineyards or different vintages, and allowing those wines to ferment for an extended period of time in a sealed bottle. The fermentation both turns the sugars in the wine into alcohol as well as emits carbon dioxide gas, which results in fermentation. The fermenting yeasts are then collected in the neck of the bottle, and in one of the coolest processes in wine making are flash frozen and literally “popped” out of the bottle by the temporary unsealing of the bottle and release of gas. This process is referred to as disgorgement and is one of the most interesting processes in wine making! I am including a link to a video of the process below.
In addition to the process of making sparkling wine, the world of sparkling wine is extremely diverse and interesting. Sparkling wines can be made from 100% white grapes or “Blanc de Blanc”, it can be made from red grapes or “Blanc de Noir” or it can be made from a blend in either a rose format or in a white format. Additionally, while almost every other wine in the kosher market has a vintage year printed on the label, many sparkling wines come in non-vintage format. The historical reason for the prevalence of the non-vintage sparkling wine is intertwined with the history of Champagne as a whole. Champagne is a grape growing region of France, where the practice of fermenting wine in the bottle originated. It is also one of the northernmost grape growing regions in Europe that will allow for grapes to actually ripen on the vine. Given the geography of champagne, the level of ripeness that each vintage year’s grapes attain may vary wildly from year to year. Therefore, in an effort to maintain an even yearly expression of Champagne, the various Champagne houses have adopted the practice of blending various vintages together into the same bottle and releasing their wines in non-vintage formats. In the years in which a certain Champagne house’s grapes ripen to perfection, that house may declare a vintage, and print a year on its bottles. From Champagne this practice spread out through various European sparkling wine makers and now Spanish Cava and Italian Prosecco also come in predominantly non-vintage formats. In contrast the wineries in Israel that have started to make sparklers as well as in California, both places that experience fairly consistent vintage weather almost always produce their sparklers in vintage formats. Regardless of the particulars, its needless to say that the underappreciated world of sparkling wine is one that I think the Kosher consumer needs to begin to explore more deeply, as there are a lot of good options on the kosher market, and good values as well.
Dessert Wines
Dessert wines are often sweet as they are made leaving residual sugar in the wine. This occurs by stopping fermentation prior to its completion and, thereby not allowing all the sugar in the juice to turn into alcohol. Often times the grapes used in the production of dessert wines tend to have higher sugar levels as a result of either harvesting the grapes late and allowing much of the non-sugar elements in the grape to evaporate or allowing the grapes to develop the boytris cinerea fungus or “noble rot” which also serves as a method of concentrating the sugar in the grape, as the fungus spores puncture the grape skin and allow water to evaporate.
Whichever method is used to make a dessert wine, the most important factor to me in the production of these wines is that the wine retain some balance between the sweetness and the other elements of the wine, so that the sweetness is not cloying. When the sweetness of a wine is cloying, the wine tends to be one-dimensional and not posses any of the elements that I find charming in a glass of wine, namely complexity, sense of place, and interesting flavors.
Tasting Wines
As I know this post has probably ran longer than most people will like, I will limit the very important discussion of how to taste wines to a short synopsis here; one that undoubtedly will be revisited in almost every post that I do.
There are four basic things that one looks for when tasting and assessing a wine, color, smell, taste, and “mouthfeel”. I will take them in order.
Color is relatively simple. Is it White, Red, or Rose? Is it dark, light or medium colored? With red wines, darker color tends to indicate a heavier wine, although not always. A brownish color around the rim of a glass of red wine may indicate age or oxidation. Lighter and brighter white wines are usually fresher and younger. Older whites tend to gain depth of color as they age. While color is something to look for in a wine, more often than not, the true “tasting” happens in the nose and in the mouth.
The smell of wine can vary greatly based on the taster’s sensitivity to certain smells, by grape varietal, and by region even within the same varietal. It’s a hard thing to explain, but wines tend to smell like their “terroir”. Terroir is a French word, which literally means soil, but has come to be used colloquially in the wine world to describe the sense of place from where a wine comes. So when I say a wine smells like its terroir, I mean to describe, that Israeli wines tend to smell like wild herbs that are common in certain areas of the Mediterranean, certain French wines smell like chalk or limestone, others have smells associated with a river, if a river runs next to their vineyard. I am no scientist, so I cannot explain it but it is one of the most enchanting features of a good wine, the fact that it does not smell generic, but rather captures a place and a moment in the glass. Of course in addition to smelling like their terroir, good wines obviously have beautiful fruity smells that display the high quality of the fruit that the wine is comprised of. Also, faults in winemaking can be detected on the nose as well. If a wine is exposed to certain bacteria during the winemaking process, the wine can smell off.
Of course taste and the flavors that one experiences in their mouth are extremely important to the entire tasting experience. There may be wines that are fun to smell but not fun to taste. I tend to stay away from those wines, as they are an incomplete experience in my book. Wines that smell like they taste and taste like they smell tend to be the highest quality wines, although not always. Very high quality wines may have secondary and tertiary flavors that appear on the palate that do not appear on the nose, and that can be a wonderful and fulfilling experience.
Finally, “mouthfeel” or literally the feeling that a particular wine leaves on your palate is extremely important. Mouthfeel can be described in many ways and incorporates various elements of the wine. The tannins in a red wine is one of the largest contributors to mouthfeel. The younger a wine is the more aggressive, astringent, and drying a wine will feel on your palate, while in an aged the wine the tannins “integrate” with the rest of the wine to provide a rounder mouthfeel. In a white wine, the acid and fruit tend to play together to provide for either a crisp and acidic mouthfeel or a more tropical and almost sweet mouthfeel. Additionally, the weight of the wine will be noticed through mouthfeel. When I say the weight of the wine, I mean how viscous it is and how that feels on the mouth. To borrow from Yehoshua Werth of the Kosher Wine Review Youtube channel (check it out!), full bodied wines feel like whole milk and lighter bodied wines feel like 1% or skim. The weight is an important factor is judging a wine, and pairing a wine, as people tend to dislike wines that fatigue their palate, but rather wines that are refreshing, or have some refreshing element to them.
Methodology/Scoring
Each wine that I taste will be receiving a note, called a tasting note. Tasting notes tend to include the tasters impression of all of the wine’s elements, including color, smell, taste, “mouthfeel”, and overall balance. In addition to providing a detailed note on each wine, I plan to use a scoring system to contextualize my impressions in a way that is easily consumable. I plan on providing those scores on a similar scale to how one may grade a paper. “A” for the best of the best, “A-“ for a very good effort, “B+” for a good but more pedestrian effort, “B” close to average “C” average if not below average, ”D” poor but not completely terrible, and “F” for swill. I will alo be including a score for the value of the wine, which will appear on the same scale as detailed above. While that may sound pretty reasonable to most people reading, the reality is that “scoring” wines is actually quite a controversial topic in the wine world. The reasons for this controversy range from fairly simple, i.e. most people have different tastes and therefore like different wines, to almost ethical, i.e. how can one distill the hard work of wine maker into one letter or number score. However, I do believe that for aspiring drinkers, the combination of a note and a score is helpful (more on the objective/subjective score debate below). Additionally, given that the mission of this blog is to raise awareness with kosher drinkers of their affordable options, scoring a wine based on value is essential. Without a score of some kind, how is one to gauge what may provide good value or bad value, as that is inherently a method of scoring.
While I plan to review and wines and give you my impression of them, I also plan to add another element to the review and tasting note that I have not seen (aside from the Jewish Week Annual Wine Review) used in the world of kosher wine, a consensus review of the wine. Whenever possible, I intend to taste the wines reviewed in this blog with a panel of budding consumers to get their raw impressions of the wine as well as their view of the wine’s value.
I hope that this blog will be enlightening, educational and fun. I am certainly not an expert in all things wine, and will take corrections and comments along the way. I am truly looking to create a forum where we can all learn together, and develop the next generation of educated wine consumers in the kosher market. Please don’t hesitate to leave your comments, questions, suggestions and criticism. Most importantly try new things, don’t be afraid to try and render your own opinion, wine is about enjoyment, and there is no cookie cutter way to enjoy anything in life! L’chaim!!