Grapes - good for more than wine
Let’s get one thing straight right away. Wine is BY FAR THE BEST things to make out of grapes, but it is not by any means the ONLY thing that one can make from this miracle fruit…
The first thing that comes to mind is grape seed oil. As can be inferred from the name, the stuff comes from grape seeds (most of which come from Italy by the way). The first and most obvious use for grape seed oil is in the kitchen. Grape seed oil is an excellent frying oil due to its very high smoke point which allows for the application of some fairly aggressive heat without the risk of burning. Second, grape seed oil is obscenely healthy. Grape seed oil has no cholesterol, it is very high in all kinds of vitimins and minerals, as well as antioxidants, and it is very low in calories when compared with other cooking fats. In addition, the flavor of grape seed oil is fairly neutral making it appropriate for applications where other flavors are the stars, and the fatty components are part of the supporting cast.
And grape seed oil’s uses do not stop at the kitchen door. In fact the most important application of this great product is in the cosmetics industry. Grape seed oil is used frequently in wrinkle creams, shaving creams, hair care products, lip balms, and suntan oils as well…
The other grape product other than wine (and jelly and juice, etc.) that comes to mind is cream of tartar. Cream of tartar which is a potassium acid salt of tartaric acid which is obtained by scraping the whitish, powdery substance from the inside of used wine barrels. OK, agreed, not the sexsiest subtance in the world, but a grape by-product nonetheless. Cream of tartar is essential in the production of baking powder, in baking to stabilize egg whites when heat is applied, and is extensively used in the preparation of frozen vegetables to prevent discoloration.
I’m SURE that there are other uses for the fruit of the vine, but these are the two that come most readily to my mind. If anyone thinks of any others, please post them!
TOM CIOCCO
A wine term - “Delestage”
…the second installment in the “wine terminology” series…
This term is quite a technical one, it referring to a very specific operation in a wine cellar. Delestage is a type of “cap management”. What’s that you ask? In short, the cap refers to a layer of grape soilds (like stems, seeds, and skins) that floats on the top of a wine that is still in the fermentation stage. Delestage involves pumping out the must from the bottom of the fermentation vessel into another large vessel. The cap is then allowed to drain to near dryness for several hours, and then the bottom of this tank is re-sealed. Then, by means of a gentle, low pressure pump, the nascent wine is spilled or sprayed back over the cap which again floats to the top of the tank.
Sounds like fun right? …or maybe not…so why is this done? The answer is compound, but very simple. Delestage does a few things. First, it aerates the must (not fully fermented juice) which augments the final aroma profile. Second, this action allows for a greater color and flavor extraction from the source of these substances, the skins, and to a lesser degree, the seeds and stems as well. Finally, this process has the tendency to remove a certain percentage of the seeds from the whole system. Seeds are often the source of harsh and bitter tannins in wine, especially if they are cracked or become broken down.
Many wine makers utilize this technique, other do not. Some of the delestage skeptics believe that all the pumping and splashing, while it does indeed accomplish the three things above, does so at the expense of a certain delicacy and elegance in the final wine. Some of those who reject delestage often employ a couple of other methods to accomplish most of the same ends. One is called “punching down”. This is a more rustic technique by which a cellar worker, with aid of what looks to be a big canoe paddle, repeatedly “punches down” the floating cap into the wine. The second method is called “submerged cap”. In this method, the cap is trapped between two screens, one above the cap, and one below. Then, by either mechanical means, or by weighting, the cap is submerged into the middle of the must, and let to macerate (steep) for a certain period of time. The proponents of this method tout its gentler extraction of tannins an color.
Something tells me that this is not an operation that everyone was dying to learn about, but it remains a very important technique in the canon of cellar operations nonetheless.
TOM CIOCCO
Schiava - Nobody’s slave
…and the “Rare Grape Series” continues…
This time ’round we consider SCHIAVA (pronounced SKYA-va). Schiava is this variety’s Italian name (which means “female slave” by the way - the common wisdom is that this may point to the grape’s Slavic origins), but the variety is also known by two German language names: Vernatsch in the former Austrian region of Alto Adige (Italy), and by the name of Trolliger in southwestern Germany. Schaiva is a red-skinned grape, but a particularly light red. Because of this, Schiava is as often used to produce rose` wines (or Kretzer(s) as they are called in German) as they are for making reds.
After some recent rigorous DNA testing, it was discovered that there are at least two quite distinctive “branches” of the Schiava family. One is often named Schaiva Grossa or Grossvernatsch in German. This side of the family is considered to be the more rustic, less refined one. The more noble branch is most properly called Schiava Gentile or Kleinervernatsch in German. As can be inferred from the German name, the berries of this cultivar are smaller and with thicker skins, producing wines with more elegant flavors and aromas.
In the glass, Schiava shows an often pale red color, and is fairly pungently, but still elegantly scented with a tannin/acid structure that belies its “lightweight” look. Because of this lighter character, Schaiva-based wines perferm beautifully when lightly chilled.
At the table, Schiava is most at home with stuffed pastas, speck (the smoked prosciutto of Alto Adige), fresh cheeses, and grilled or roasted chicken. Once again, due the wine’s light touch, it makes for an excellent aperitif or “patio sipping” wine as well.
As always, if anyone picks up a bottle, please post your tasting notes here! *NB* - The wine to which I’ve linked below does not say “Schiava” anywhere on the bottle (the appellation is actually “Lago di Caldaro” or “Kaltersee” in German).
TOM CIOCCO
Beware the continuing “Bobification” of wine
In DECANTER’s August issue, under their “Good Month…Bad Month…” section at the front of the magazine, there appeared the following “newslet”:
Bobhuggers
Maryland luminary Robert Parker’s wine notes are to be printed on the backs of U.S. Airways seats, revealed when the tray table is deployed, causing the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE to muse on the ‘omnipresence’ of the the ‘wine god’.
Now let me immediately state that this is NOT another attack, veiled or otherwise, on Robert Parker, and the phenomenon that has grown up around his criticism. Now while my tastes more often than not clash with Mssr. Parker’s, I freely admit that he has done great things in shining the flashlight into the dusty corners of the wine world, and further, to bring every day wine drinking and wine appreciation to “the people”. And this is, after all, the good old USA - a place exhalts both the self made man, and the celebrity, when there is a coincidence of the two, a certain segment of the citizenry just falls all over itself to follow the leader, but, like the old saying goes “Hey, it’s a free country”. More power to HIM. Robert Parker has built HIMSELF a little empire, but he’s had more than a little help from us…
No, it’s not Robert Parker that I have a problem with, but rather the sycophants who sniff his chair like it was their jobs, and this development with US Air DEFINITELY doesn’t help matters…In the end, if you want to be an optimist, this development is the simple case of siding with a winner. If you’re a bit more circumspect, it’s pandering to the least common denominator, or even just “piling on”. But again, whatever you call it, who can blame anybody for striking such a deal? No, in the end, it’s our job, YOUR job to resist the seemingly irresistable avalanche of homogenization.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve recommended wines to folks in the shop, and after walking away, and casually glancing back in the customer’s direction, have caught them surreptitiously sliding out a copy of THE WINE ADVOCATE to see if they could find my pick amongst Bob’s. If you trust Mr. Parker more than you trust me, I don’t blame you, but then why ask me in the first place? Maybe this is a bit of paranoia on my part, but it FEELS like the customer is checking the official “answer sheet” to see if you’ve misled them or not. THIS is the problem, i.e. the notion that there is actual, “right” and “wrong” in wine, and worse, that there is only one man who knows just which is which…
Once again, I don’t mean to impugn Mr. Parker’s accomplishments in any manner, but I simply cannot understand why anyone would kowtow to anyone else’s OPINIONS about something so readily and completely. Americans are often nearly pathologically independent and contrary with almost everything else in their lives, so why do so many of us just roll over and accept the OPINIONS of one man as Gospel? I really don’t get it. Putting Mr. Parker’s opinions on wine on airline seatbacks only serves to further the notion that Mr. Parker is not only the greatest wine critic of all time, but that he also DESERVES to be…no one else could even get whiff of such a deal, so he MUST be “the best”, right? To me, those that hang on Parker’s every word are nearly exactly analogous to “bandwagon” sports fans, i.e. those that believe that if they side with a winner, it will grant them immediate credibility and status. In my eyes, however, all it makes you is a lemming.
And there are surely those out there that say “So what that Parker’s got the wine world on a string, he’s just one guy.” And my retort would be that he is indeed just one man, but a man with the sort of power in his field that Ruppert Murdoch has in mainstream media - grossly disproportionate. And even THIS might be fine if this disproportionality weren’t eventually driving the kinds of wine that winemakers are actually turning out onto the market. More than one winemaker has admitted, off the record of course, that he makes a special barrel for Robert Parker that is deliberately dialed in for Parker’s palate, and that is substantially different from the rest of the production of the “same” wine. When “one man” elicits this sort of response from the world’s finest winemakers, some of whom are working out of literally hundreds of years of tradition, you know that things gone bass ackwards.
Here’s my prescription: read Parker, but ALSO read Steven Tanzer, and WINE SPECTATOR, and FOOD & WINE and THE WINE NEWS and THE WINE QUARTERLY and DECANTER. Learn and compare what one publication values versus another, but MOST importantly, compare their values with YOUR OWN. Parker is indeed a major force in the wine world, but it is only the blind followers of his every word that allows him to, albeit figuratively, to reach right down into vineyards worldwide to determine, at least in part, what grapes get planted, how they are cultivated, and how they are handled in the cellar, and to my mind, that is EVERYONE’S loss. So the next time you feel Parker’s hand guiding yours to this or that bottle, smack it away. Take the advice of your favorite shop’s consultants. Take the advice of another publication or pundit. Take the advice of a friend, family member or colleague. Cast dice. Flip a coin. Eeenie meenie miney mo, just be a LEADER or at least a dissenter and resist the opinions of the man whose reputation was made by the herd.
TOM CIOCCO
The long and the short on corks
Let me open this piece by making it perfectly clear that this is NOT the umpteenth “CORK VS. SCREWCAP” debate (not there’s anything WRONG with that…). No, this is a little number about judging a wine by its cork…
Well, I guess that it’s not strictly a “judging” scenario, but rather one of gleaning information…The next time you open a bottle of wine (and hopefully it’s today!) pay a little extra attention to the cork. One of the easiest things to note about a wine’s cork is its length. Some may say: “Big whoop - this one’s short and this one’s long, and this one measures somewhere in between - they all do the same job.” This is true, but without even putting a drop of wine to your lips, you can often get SOME idea of what the winemakers intentions are (or were) for this bottle. If the cork is short, one can be reasonably sure that the winemaker intends or expects that the wine be consumed sooner rather than later. Why? Well, as is almost too obvious to even note, corks keep air out of wine bottles. If a cork is short, there is that many fewer millimeters of neck/cork contact. And as we all know, eventually, EVERY cork degrades and ultimately fails, but shorter corks make it just that much easier for air to meet wine, ergo you’re probably dealing with a wine that was intended to be drunk young. Concomitantly, if one encounters a particularly long cork, one can be just as sure that the winemaker expected this particular wine to have a chance at a long life.
Another thing to note about corks is quality. The ultimate quality of a cork can play into cork length, but this aspect is another indicator of what the winery thinks that they’ve put into the bottle. A very dense, smooth cork is generally of higher quality than one that is more spongey and covered with pits or “eyes” (the former is more resistant to expansion and contraction). But there also needs to be a stronger caveat regarding this aspect too, and this is where it dovetails with cork length. For example, a winemaker might choose a long, but lesser quality cork over a shorter, but higher quality one for reasons that involve both wine preservation and the winemaker’s ultimate budget. He or she may feel that if the prices of these two cork styles are equal, that one or the other is more approriate for this or that particualr wine, and depending on just how good and just how long the corks actually are can give the drinker a keyhole view into the winemaker’s mind.
The last, and perhaps the least important but still informative aspect of the cork is what it “says” or what is printed thereon. Now clearly, this aspect has little to no effect on how the wine ages, but it DOES tell you a little bit about what the winery or the winemaker thinks of it/himself, and where it thinks it’s going. I’ve pulled plenty of corks that have precisely NOTHING printed on them. Some corks have a generic message for the drinker - “Mis en bouteille au chateau” (”estate bottled”) is a common French message. “Vini di qualita`” (”wines of quality”) is a frequently encountered Italian printing. Still other producers pay the extra scratch to have their names, logos, and even some bons mots, special symbols, sketches, the vintage, etc., etc. printed onto the corks. Now clearly, it’s harder to actually QUANTIFY just what all of these inclusions and omissions mean vis a` vis what’s in the bottle, but it can provide the base for a bit of educated speculation…
As is true with every pursuit, the more examples of “X” that one has seen, the more one can begin to classify and differentiate just what’s afoot, so don’t get too discouraged if at first you can’t tell “long” from “short”, or “good quality” from “bad quality”, but as you continue to drink wine, and notice exactly what’s emerging from the necks of the bottles that you’re drinking - both familiar and unfamiliar - the more you can “read between the lines” and consequently begin to have fun guessing what this or that bottle holds in store before drop one evn hits your tongue…
TOM CIOCCO
