Gus Clemens on Wine explores and explains the world of wine in simple, humorous, fun posts

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Bordeaux blends 4-27-2022

When people speak of red wine blends, Bordeaux invariably is in the conversation. Here is a quick primer on the region and its blends.

The Bordeaux wine region is located in southwestern France, centered around the port city of Bordeaux. North of the city, the Dordogne and Garonne rivers join to create the Gironde estuary. With a vineyard area of around 300,000 acres, Bordeaux is the largest wine region in France.

Bordeaux Rouge is almost always a blend of grape varieties, with strict rules covering the grapes. Permitted varieties include:

• Merlot is the most-planted grape in Bordeaux. Merlot delivers generous cherry and plum flavors and soft, polished tannins.

• Cabernet sauvignon is the second-most planted grape. It delivers black cherry and blackcurrant flavors and high tannins.

• Cabernet Franc is the rarest primary variety. Its profile falls between merlot and cabernet sauvignon, which is understandable since it is the parent grape for both of those grapes.

• Malbec is a blending grape. It brings blueberry and chocolate flavors to the party.

• Carménère, now rare in Bordeaux, contributes red fruit and tobacco-like notes.

• Petit verdot brings intense aromas of blueberry and violets and very deep color. Because of its intensity, it cannot be more than 10% of a blend.

• Responding to climate change, Bordeaux recently added four hot-weather varieties to the permitted-grape list: touriga nacional, castet, marselan, and arinarnoa. As with petit verdot, these grapes cannot be more than 10% of a Bordeaux blend.

Chateau Haut Brion-BillBl Flickr

There are three primary styles of Bordeaux wine.

• Merlot is the lead grape for vineyards on the “right bank” of the Gironde. These are the most popular and most available. Expect a fruity style with smooth tannins. Aromas and flavors include black raspberry, blackcurrant, chocolate, tobacco, plum, lavender, and wet rock. It is common for cabernet franc to join merlot and cabernet sauvignon in a “right bank Bordeaux.”

• Cabernet sauvignon is the lead grape for vineyards on the “left bank” of the Gironde. These are the most sought-after and expensive Bordeaux blends. Black cherry, blueberry, violet, tobacco, and crushed rock are primary characteristics. Left-bank Bordeauxs are tannic and usually require several years of cellaring.

• While not as common, cabernet franc-led blends are on the increase. These blends present the rich, savory notes of cabernet sauvignon and the texture and smooth tannins of merlot.

Last round: What rock group has four famous men that don’t sing? Mount Rushmore. Wine time.

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Diary of a Serial Hostess is a weekly column about the ins and outs of entertaining at home and witty anecdotes of life in the stylish lane. How-to's and advice from yours truly, the Serial Hostess.

As We Eat is a multi-platform storytelling project exploring how food connects, defines, and inspires.

Balanced Diet by Charlotte Rutledge is a rotating selection of original recipes, curated links pertaining to the food system, and recipe reviews.

This is the weekly newspaper column.

Needed changes in the wine world 4-20-2022

There are many things right in the wine world. Historic quality and availability, increasing embrace of environmentally responsible farming and winemaking, to name some of the most important.

But there always is room for improvement. Suggestions:

• Stop using monster bottles. Bottle weight and size does not affect wine quality. It does affect the environmental cost of producing, shipping, and disposing of the bottle. And—this is a personal peeve—such bottles often do not fit in wine racks or the shelves of wine refrigerators.

• Use certified taint-free closures. Screw caps, composite corks, cans, wine boxes eliminate the threat of cork taint, but many people still consider cork the classic and best closure. OK, fine. Some cork companies now use processes to remove TCA (the cork-taint villain) and test individual corks. All cork closures should be certified taint free.

• Continue to eliminate barriers to direct-to-consumer sales by wineries. Delaware, Mississippi, and Utah ban all winery-to-consumer direct shipping. In Rhode Island wineries cannot ship directly unless you first visit the winery. Ohio allows direct shipping only by wineries making less than 250,000 gallons per vintage. Nonsensical wine laws must go.

• Make “reserve” and other terms meaningful. In the U.S., a winemaker can slap the term “reserve” on any old plonk. Other terms like “old vine” and “cuvée” are meaningful when used by conscientious winemakers, but the terms are not regulated. Unprincipled makers use them with impunity. The Tax & Trade Bureau—it regulates wine labels—should define the terms and require honesty on labels.

• End excessive wine pricing in restaurants. I get it that restaurants make their margins through alcohol sales. “Customers eat you poor and drink you rich,” the old adage goes. But excessive markups have been shown to reduce on-premise wine sales. Applaud and patronize restaurateurs who opt for increasing the volume of wine they sell by selling at reasonable prices.

Tasting notes:

• Gnarly Head Wines Old Vine Zin Zinfandel, Lodi 2019: Home run value for those who like juicy, jammy, big red wine. $8-12 Link to my review

• Domaine Bousquet Brut, Tupungato, Mendoza NV: Fresh, clean with bright acidity and charming fruit. $10-14 Link to my review

• Mount Veeder Winery Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley 2018: Eloquent expression of Napa cab power and dark fruit at entry-level price. $36-46 Link to my review

Last round: I thought about going on an all-almond-pecan-cashew diet. Then I realized that was just nuts. Wine time.

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Links worth exploring

Diary of a Serial Hostess is a weekly column about the ins and outs of entertaining at home and witty anecdotes of life in the stylish lane. How-to's and advice from yours truly, the Serial Hostess.

As We Eat is a multi-platform storytelling project exploring how food connects, defines, and inspires.

Balanced Diet by Charlotte Rutledge is a rotating selection of original recipes, curated links pertaining to the food system, and recipe reviews.

This is the weekly newspaper column.

White oak crisis 4-13-2022

American white oak is unique to the United States, essential to bourbon production, important in wine production, and threatened.

There is no snap-your-fingers solution. White oaks need 60-90 years to mature into trees suitable for barrel production. We may have as little as a 30-year supply.

Jackie Zykan, master taster for Old Forester Bourbon, notes: “American white oak is synonymous with bourbon for me. Using a different kind of wood would change the flavor entirely. The wood has a high vanillin content, oak lactone, and wood sugars. Very different than other woods. It also helps give American bourbon its amber hue.”

The wine industry uses white oak but is not as dependent upon it as the bourbon industry. American white oak tends to be more dense and less porous than French oak. American oak allows more of the tree to be used in barrel making. Compared to French oak, American white oak is higher in lactones and vanillin, which imparts sweeter flavors of vanilla and coconut. French oak has more tannins. Winemakers often finish their wines in a mixture of American and French oak for this reason.

Winemakers can use English and Hungarian oak, Italian chestnut, stainless steel, concrete, and amphora to finish wine—albeit each with different results. The wine world is not in the panic of bourbon/whiskey world, but winemakers certainly are concerned.

Both industries responded by forming the White Oak Initiative. While there are about 104 million acres of white oak forestland, some 75 percent of those trees are classified mature. Surveys show 60 percent of American white oak acreage has no white oak seedlings and 87 percent no white oak saplings. Other trees, mainly maple and beech, are taking over.

Involved parties responded. Bulleit Frontier Whiskey pledged to plant one million white oak trees over the next five years. Beam Suntory, Brown-Forman, and Sazerac pledged to source 50 percent of their barrels from sustainably managed forests by 2035. All well and good, and we may dodge the barrel bullet. But it will be a near-run thing.

Tasting notes:

• Hammeken Cellars Gotas de Mar Albariño, Rias Baixas, Spain 2020: Excellent example of albariño made by a cutting-edge Spanish wine operation with wide distribution. It is light, dry, superb acidity. $18-22 Link to my review

• Roederer Estate L’Ermitage Brut, Anderson Valley 2015: Deliciously complex special occasion wine. Elegant, luxurious, rich, polished. $47-65 Link to my review

Last round: The broom was late for work. “I’m sorry, I over swept.” Wine time.

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Links worth exploring

Diary of a Serial Hostess is a weekly column about the ins and outs of entertaining at home and witty anecdotes of life in the stylish lane. How-to's and advice from yours truly, the Serial Hostess.

As We Eat is a multi-platform storytelling project exploring how food connects, defines, and inspires.

Balanced Diet by Charlotte Rutledge is a rotating selection of original recipes, curated links pertaining to the food system, and recipe reviews.

This is the weekly newspaper column.

Wine sugar and calories 4-6-2022

Perhaps you encountered the recent Cassandrian caterwauling of Neo-Prohibitionists about wine. Wine is loaded with sugar and calories and certain to cause health problems!

A study cited by the Alcohol Health Alliance in the U.K. (a Neo-Prohibitionist group) noted guidelines recommend ingesting no more than 30 grams of free sugars a day. Horrors—sip two standard five-ounce glasses of a popular wine—Barefoot Bubbly Pink Moscato—and you have swallowed 27.6 grams of sugar. They also pontificated that two glasses of wine have more calories than a McDonald’s hamburger.

Alarming stuff, no? The devil is in the details and illuminates how advocates will find and cherry-pick statistics to back up apocalyptic claims. Or make stuff up if they need to.

Yes, Barefoot Bubbly Pink Moscato delivers sugar. But it is far from the norm. The U.K. group analyzed 30 wines. Seven—all sweet wines or fruit wines—contained more than 3.1 grams of sugar per ounce—15.5 grams in a five-ounce pour. Nineteen of the 30 wines contained less than two grams of sugar, eleven less than one gram. And those low-sugar wines were wines you likely drink: chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, sauvignon blanc.

Yeah, but what about more calories than a McDonald’s burger? In the study, an average five-ounce glass of wine ranged from 75 to 139 calories. The average: 117 calories—234 calories for two standard pours. According to McDonald’s, their simplest hamburger contains 250 calories. A Big Mac contains 550 calories.

Two glasses of wine deliver more calories than a McDonald’s hamburger? Even the Neo-Prohibitionists’ own data does not support their Chicken Little claim.

It should be no surprise. The Neo-Prohibitionists goal is to frighten you away from drinking wine. Something to consider as you sip your next glass of the fruit of the vine.

Tasting notes:

• Alessandro di Camporeale Grillo Vigna di Mandranova, Sicilia DOC 2018: Flaunts grillo’s fresh fruitiness. Crisp with intriguing minerality-saline notes on the finale after the citrus and green apple first act. $13-16 Link to my review

• Zenato Lugana di San Benedetto Bianco 2020: Excellent expression of trebbiano grape. Fresh, lively, appropriate acidity, polished, balanced, long finish. $14-20 Link to my review

• L’Ecole No. 41 Merlot Columbia Valley 2018: Marvelous merlot effort by merlot maestro in Washington State. Soft, plush, palate-pleasing exemplar of excellence. $23-27 Link to my review

Last round: I got angry when Mark plagiarized my wine review. I told him: “Mark, my words!”

Email: [email protected]

Newsletter: gusclemens.substack.com

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Links worth exploring

Diary of a Serial Hostess is a weekly column about the ins and outs of entertaining at home and witty anecdotes of life in the stylish lane. How-to's and advice from yours truly, the Serial Hostess.

As We Eat is a multi-platform storytelling project exploring how food connects, defines, and inspires.

Balanced Diet by Charlotte Rutledge is a rotating selection of original recipes, curated links pertaining to the food system, and recipe reviews.

This is the weekly newspaper column.

Removing red wine stains 3-30-2022

If you drink red wine, inevitably you spill some of it. On your clothes. On your tablecloth, On your carpet.

Take heart, red wine stains are not the heart-halting débâcle you imagine. Especially if you act quickly to remedy your ghastly gaffe. Some tips:

• No matter what you spill it on, take swift action. Use a paper towel, clean cloth, or clean sponge to absorb as much wine as possible. Blot, do not scrub.

• On light-colored clothes, mix equal parts of dishwashing detergent and hydrogen peroxide. Pour the mixture on the stain and let it soak. The stain should fade quickly. Then launder as you normally do.

• On darker-colored clothes, cover the stain with white vinegar to neutralize the red and purple pigments. Rub in liquid detergent immediately after applying the vinegar. Launder in hot water.

• Use bleach on white, bleachable fabrics. Soak the fabric in bleach for 5-10 minutes, check to see the stain is gone, then launder in hot water.

• Boiling water can rescue your tablecloth. Boil water in a tea kettle. Put a large bowl in the sink, stretch the part with the stain over the bowl, keeping it taught with a rubber band or some other method. It is important for the fabric to be taut. Pour the boiling water directly on the stain with the pot about a foot above the taut cloth.

• On carpet, cover the entire stain with salt until you cannot see the stain. Let the salt soak on the stain until the salt is dry. Vacuum up the salt.

• Baking soda can work on both carpets and clothes. Liberally cover the stain with baking soda and add a small amount of water—just enough to smooth it out as a paste. Let the paste dry completely, then vacuum the carpet or launder the clothes or tablecloth.

• There are several commercial products available with the usual plethora of promises. In online reviews, Chateau Spill Red Wine Stain Remover was a consistent winner.

If red wine stains are a recurring vexation, consider drinking white wine.

Tasting notes:

• Beacon Hill Winery & Vineyard Riesling Beacon Hill Vineyard, Yamhill-Carlton 2019: Exuberantly ripe fruit inundates your palate, balanced by topflight acidity. $21-26 Link to my review

• Marchesi Frescobaldi Tenuta Perano Chianti Classico Riserva DOCG 2015: Punch and power paired with elegance and easy drinkability. $30-40 Link to my review

Last round: Pessimist: “My wine glass is half empty.” Optimist: “My wine glass is half full.” Realist: “My wine glass needs a refill, and you can leave the bottle here.”

Email: [email protected]

Newsletter: gusclemens.substack.com

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Links worth exploring

Diary of a Serial Hostess is a weekly column about the ins and outs of entertaining at home and witty anecdotes of life in the stylish lane. How-to's and advice from yours truly, the Serial Hostess.

As We Eat is a multi-platform storytelling project exploring how food connects, defines, and inspires.

Balanced Diet by Charlotte Rutledge is a rotating selection of original recipes, curated links pertaining to the food system, and recipe reviews.

This is the weekly newspaper column.

U.S. wine statistics 3-23-2022

Grape growing and winemaking are really big businesses in the United States. Some interesting facts:

• The U.S. consumes more wine than any other country.

• There are some 11,000 wineries in the United States.

• There are wineries in every state.

• With four wineries, Alaska has twice as many wineries as Mississippi.

Hawaiian vineyard—Maui Wine Company

• Hawaii has three main winery-vineyard operations. There is a designated American Viticultural Area (Ulupalakua AVA) on the island of Maui.

• The U.S. has one million acres of grape-bearing land.

• Grapes are the highest-value fruit crop in the U.S. Wine, table grapes, and raisins bring in more than $6.5 billion a year.

• The U.S. produces more than 7.5 million tons of grapes every year.

• The U.S. produces more than 900 million gallons of wine each year, 12% of worldwide production.

• The U.S. is the fourth-largest wine producer in the world, behind Italy, France, and Spain.

• The U.S. annually exports some $1.5 billion worth of wine. The top five markets for those exports are the European Union, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, and China.

• The top five wine-producing states are California, Washington, New York, Oregon, and Texas.

• The top three states measured by the economic impact of wine are California, New York, and Texas.

• The top five states measured by the number of wineries are California, Oregon, Washington, New York, and Texas.

• Ten wine companies produce 75 percent of domestic wine sales.

• Fifty wine companies produce 90 percent of domestic wine sales.

• E&J Gallo is the world’s largest wine company. It sells some 100 million cases annually—1.2 billion bottles—almost one-third of all the U.S.-made wine sold in the U.S.

• Gallo dominates its competitors. The number two maker, The Wine Group, sells 51 million cases—half of Gallo’s sales. The number three maker, Trinchero Family Estates, sells 20 million.

• By comparison to Gallo, General Motors and Toyota combined control less than 15 percent of the U.S. car market. Amazon and Walmart account for less than 10 percent of the U.S. retail. You have to add GM, Toyota, Amazon, and Walmart together to match Gallo’s percentage of domination in its market.

Last round: A Vicks VapoRub truck overturned on the highway. Amazingly, there was no congestion for eight hours. After enduring a joke like that, you earned at least one glass of wine.

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Links worth exploring

Diary of a Serial Hostess is a weekly column about the ins and outs of entertaining at home and witty anecdotes of life in the stylish lane. How-to's and advice from yours truly, the Serial Hostess.

As We Eat is a multi-platform storytelling project exploring how food connects, defines, and inspires.

Balanced Diet by Charlotte Rutledge is a rotating selection of original recipes, curated links pertaining to the food system, and recipe reviews.

This is the weekly newspaper column.

Best wines for cooking 3-16-2022

Wines pair with meals. Wines also pair with cooking meals.

Foundational understanding—bad wine is not good cooking wine. If you do not like the wine, why mess up a meal with the same bad wine? Sure, avoid using high quality wine in cooking, but that leaves an ocean of very drinkable, affordable, widely available wine to abet your gastronomic adventures.

For braises, stews, long-simmering sauces, add wine early in the simmer stage after you brown the meat and vegetables. There is an abundance of flavors in the juices in the pan. Add wine, garlic, and shallots, let it simmer—reduce—to create great sauces. Wine also is a marvelous marinade to tenderize and enhance flavors. Here are common wines and ideas for cooking pairing:

• Cabernet sauvignon as a marinade softens the meat and adds flavor at the same time. It is ideal for braising meats. When the braising is done, use the liquid left behind to make a glaze. Cab also works if you want to deglaze a pan. With its low sugar content, you will not have an issue with cab caramelizing in the pan.

• Merlot is ideal for pan sauces and reductions. Combine merlot with other ingredients like broth or spices, then simmer. When reduced, you will have a versatile, thick sauce for your meat dish.

• Pinot noir, with its lightness, goes best with lighter dishes, including chicken. Because of its lightness, pinot does well with dishes that ask for a lot of wine. It will tenderize the meat while not adding excess flavor. It also can be added to a hearty beef stew to generate elegance that flirts with decadence.

• Zinfandel. Not “white zinfandel”—we are talking about big, fruity, sometimes-jammy, often-high-alcohol zin. That zin easily will overpower lighter dishes, but it will work well with steaks such as ribeye, curries, burgers and other full-flavored meats.

• Boxed wine. We are not talking about louche plonk of your college days. Today, there are many respectable bag-in-a-box wines. They are more than quaffable and reasonably priced, which makes them ideal candidates for cooking wines. Tap into that resource.

Tasting notes:

• Baron Philippe de Rothschild Escudo Rojo Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon, Chile 2018: Polished, easily approachable. $15-18 Link to my review

• Ritual Pinot Noir, Casablanca Valley, Chile 2017: Wonderful pinot noir value. Good fruit, excellent acidity. $17-21 Link to my review

Last round: Why should you never use “beef-stew” as a password? Because it is not stroganoff. Wine time.

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Links worth exploring

Diary of a Serial Hostess is a weekly column about the ins and outs of entertaining at home and witty anecdotes of life in the stylish lane. How-to's and advice from yours truly, the Serial Hostess.

As We Eat is a multi-platform storytelling project exploring how food connects, defines, and inspires.

Balanced Diet by Charlotte Rutledge is a rotating selection of original recipes, curated links pertaining to the food system, and recipe reviews.

This is the weekly newspaper column.

Wine-steak pairing 3-9-2022

You do not have to be a wine cognoscente to know cabernet sauvignon plays well with the salty and fatty flavors of a rich, well-marbled steak. But, what if you want to go beyond that pairing?

Grilled steaks—strip, rib-eye, hanger—certainly pair with cab, but so do syrah and merlot. Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Gigondas (both grenache-syrah-mourvèdre blends) are in the conversation. Syrah/shiraz is a bit lighter, but brings whiffs of smokiness to its role as another cab alternative.

Rib-eye, T-bone, and porterhouse steaks win with zin. Zinfandel delivers acidity, tannins, spice, and grapey notes to complement the meat flavors. High alcohol can abet the bonhomie of the beef feast.

Photo by Sphilbrick

Leaner cuts of meat like top sirloin or flank steaks enjoy pairing with malbec and its jammy, dark fruits, and chocolate elements. If you prefer filet or tenderloin—lighter cuts with less fat and more delicate cooking such as searing and/or oven roasting—then lighter reds enter the dinner drama: pinot noir, beaujolais, nebbiolo, sangiovese.

As cuts get lighter with little or no fat like filet mignon, pairing with pinot noir certainly enters the pouring picture. A light, tasty cut such as New York strip, even with its marbling, works with gamay (Beaujolais). In both cases, the less assertive wines allow tender and delicious meat to play the lead in the meal.

Finally, if you refrain from plunking down big bucks for meat and instead chow down on comfort food like meatloaf, circle back to big reds—cab, merlot, shiraz, malbec, cab franc, red blends. Beauty here is you can go with the more affordable examples of those wines, even ones that come in boxes, and still be proud of your pair.

Tasting notes:

• Galil Mountain Winery Merlot, Galilee, Israel 2018: Soft, easy drinker. Classic approachable merlot. $13-16 Link to my review

• La Gioiosa Et Amorosa Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG NV: Vibrant, with just the touch of sweetness you want from a top-shelf prosecco. $16-22 Link to my review

• Robert Hall Paso Red, Paso Robles 2017: Bold, rich, loaded with dark ripe fruit flavor and accompanying significant alcohol. $18-20 Link to my review

• Westcave Cellars Vigneron Texas Hill Country Estate Red Wine 2018: Yet another demonstration of high-quality, well-made Texas wine. $50 Link to my review

• Daou Vineyards Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Paso Robles Adelaida District 2018: Elegant and astonishingly smooth and approachable. $85-90 Link to my review

Last round: The Swiss are so confident in their chances of victory they include a corkscrew in their army knife.

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Links worth exploring

Diary of a Serial Hostess is a weekly column about the ins and outs of entertaining at home and witty anecdotes of life in the stylish lane. How-to's and advice from yours truly, the Serial Hostess.

As We Eat is a multi-platform storytelling project exploring how food connects, defines, and inspires.

This is the weekly newspaper column.

Cru Beaujolais 3-2-2022

Beaujolais is a lovely French region sandwiched between Burgundy and Lyon. Last century, it was known for its kitschy, flash-in-the-pan plonk—Beaujolais nouveau. Today, it is known for being the next big thing in quality wine. Such are vino’s vicissitudes.

Virtually all the 44,000 acres of Beaujolais vineyards are planted in gamay grapes. Gamay is a cross between pinot noir and gouais blanc, a progenitor of many varieties, including chardonnay. Gamay ripens two weeks earlier than pinot noir and is very vigorous. Those traits caused trouble in Burgundy. In 1395, the Duke of Burgundy Philippe the Bold outlawed gamay because it was a “very bad and disloyal plant.”

Gamay growers moved south into Beaujolais where authorities were less supercilious and welcomed folks who could produce large quantities of light bodied, fruity wines.

Gamay grapes

Gamay vines focus on making grapes rather than deepening roots, which means when stressed by lack of water gamay produces wines with high acidity. Acidity is a reason Beaujolis is the darling of food-pairing sommeliers. To tone down acidity, many Beaujolais wines are made using carbonic maceration where grapes ferment in a carbon dioxide-rich environment before crushing. Much of the juice ferments inside the grape.

The result is a very fruit-forward wine with low tannins that is easy to drink soon after it is made. That spawned the Beaujolais nouveau craze at the end of the 20th century. Beaujolais nouveau can be sold just six weeks after harvest—officially beginning on the third Thursday of November.

Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Noveau

That marketing shenanigan clicked in the U.S. since it coincided with Thanksgiving. No hoity-toity hostess could pass up Beaujolais boasting at her dinner. In fact, minutes after release, some cases of Beaujolais nouveau were loaded on the Concorde to be whisked at supersonic speed to inflate the egos of New York City parvenus.

Of course this went the way of all fads. Growers over-produced. Consumers recoiled. In 2001, more than 1.1 million cases of Beaujolais—most of it nouveau—had to be destroyed. Scandals blossomed—it is very hard for the French to pass up a good scandal. Beaujolais bombed.

Give the French credit. They assessed and pivoted from quantity to quality. Today, Cru Beaujolais is in demand as an up-market, food-friendly wine any time of the year, not just Thanksgiving. And so it goes.

Last round: What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta. Pair with red wine.

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When to decant 2-23-2022

Newspaper readers and online followers know of my advocacy of decanting—pouring wine into a vessel to expose it to air to soften tannins and encourage wine to “open up” and become more balanced.

Same time, decanting is not a panacea for flawed wines, often is unnecessary, and potentially can harm some wines. So, what is a wine drinker to do?

Think of the inveterate inventor Thomas Edison. The holder of 1,093 patents had an unusual method of evaluating potential employees. He presented soup to the job applicant.

Thomas Edison (goodfreephotos.com)

Edison carefully observed when soup was served as part of a larger meal. If the job seeker immediately applied salt and pepper, he was rejected. If he tasted the soup first, he had an employment chance.

Edison reasoned he did not want employees who relied on assumptions and preconceived notions. Edison believed a lack of curiosity and an unwillingness to ask questions and test a situation was not the trait of an inventor. How could you know if seasoning was needed if you had not first tasted the soup?

And so it goes with wine and decanting. Pull the cork or twist off the cap, pour, give it a swirl, smell, and taste. If it is a little tight and tannic, give it some more swirls and a few minutes in the glass. If the wine still has not come around, pour the wine into a decanter and let oxidation do its thing.

The majority of the value and mid-level wines you drink do not need to be decanted. If you buy multiples of the same bottle or have certain go-to wines you drink regularly, you likely know before opening which wines are fine on pop-and-pour and which benefit from decanting, especially if you experimented.

Older wines may benefit from decanting to avoid gritty sediment in the glass, but such wines do not fare well with prolonged exposure to air. Decant and drink them right away.

Decanting can do wonders for wine when needed. It is unnecessary when not needed.

Tasting notes:

• Plungerhead Old Vine Zinfandel, Lodi 2018: Profusion of ripe red fruits, 16% of which is parade of non-zin that gives this unexpected depth and complexity. $13-15 Link to my review

• Sanford Rosé of Pinot Noir, Sta. Rita Hills 2020: Easy-drinking, red-fruit-forward, tasty, bright. $20-$22 Link to my review

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