More About Wines

Good wines are produced in Spain, Portugal, South Africa, Chile, and in the Argentine but the best of these are rarely obtainable in the United Kingdom. Fairly good red wines are produced in great quantity in North Africa and much of the yin ordinaire sold in France is more Algerian than French. The good wines of Yugoslavia and of Russia are not apt to appear in your local shops. Finally, you may wish to try Australian wines. It should be possible to produce good wines there but we have been unfortunate and abandoned experiments in that direction long ago.

"Table wine" means grape wine (of any colour), not sweet, and containing not over about 15 per cent (by volume) of alcohol, the minimum being perhaps 8 to 9 per cent and the average being about 11 to 14 per cent. The Burgundies are at the upper end, and most Rhine, Moselle, and Swiss wines are at the lower end of this scale in alcoholic strength. Claret and Chianti are "medium" at 12 to 13 per cent. These are the wines to drink with a meal and they do not include Sherry, Port, Vermouth, Muscatel, Madeira or Marsala, all of which are much heavier and usually stronger, running from 18 to 20 plus per cent alcohol.

Champagne is like a strong table wine in strength but has limited use in ordinary eating; reserve it for weddings, the Derby and other hilarities. Sparkling Burgundy and most other sparkling wines that are not real champagne are avoided by us but we have friends who like them, and it is amusing to contemplate any wine bubbles rising in a tall stemmed glass. Some light wines naturally bubble a little (the term is petillant) and are, or can be, delicious in their homelands - the purple-black Gragnano of the Bay of Naples and the green-gold Vino Verde of Portugal are in this class. These wines are low in alcohol and will not travel.

The lightest of good wines you are apt to find are the delicate white wines of Alsace and Switzerland. They resemble the Rhine and Moselle wines of Germany but keep less well and are usually less fragrant. They, like their German relatives, are ideal for summer, and if you are thirsty, dilute them with plain sparkling water. This is a good hot-weather trick with most wines, and it is especially favoured in Italy where it gets hot and where there is a vast number of good wines besides Chianti. Look for the reds labelled Valpolicella, Barolo, Bardolino, and Barbera, and the whites labelled Soave, Orvieto, Frascati, Verdicchio.

Vintage Years And Storage

The complications of French vintages and vintage years frighten some potential wine lovers. Some of the world's finest wines are produced close to the climatic limit of the grape type where rainfall and sunlight vary greatly from year to year so the crop is highly variable. In France and Germany the wine from a given vineyard can be poor one year and wonderful the next. Fortunately, the "good" years usually produce great abundance as well as good quality. The wines of Italy are less variable. Rely on your wine merchant's advice in choosing the first bottle of a given vintage. Then drink it and decide if you like it. Do not buy old wines offered at low prices; they are either bad years or wines spoiled by improper storage. Never buy or drink a wine that remains cloudy or one that does not appeal to both the nose and eye as well as the tongue, no matter what the salesman says.

Up to a point, most wines improve with age in the bottle if they are stored protected from heat and big changes in temperature. If you have no good place to store wines, do not lay in large supplies. White wines are usually at their best when four to ten years old, they are often quite drinkable at two years and they seldom live beyond 20 years. The lighter (less alcohol) they are, the shorter the life. Red wines are best left alone for at least three years; they improve for 20 years or more. As they age the colour fades a little and a tinge of brown appears.

A large deposit of lees in a bottle of wine means little, but make sure you do not stir it up and drink it. Most good red wines throw a deposit so be prepared to waste half a glass at the bottom of the bottle. An "old" Port that contains little sediment has either been rebottled recently or the salesman is dishonest.

Drink all white wines cold but not ice cold. Drink all red wines slightly cool (meaning at around 600 F., or average English room temperature!). Wines should delight the eye, and they all taste better in good glasses. Select stemware without a flare top and without colour or ornamentation. A glass holding five to seven ounces will do for all wines but should be filled no more than two-thirds full (so you can stick your nose into it!).