Your headache is your own fault

Everyone that thinks working at a winery all is fun and games, you try checking the wines at the start of your shift after an aggressive evening with friends.  Now I am in my bed, listening to The Shirelles, because I need someone to give me hope.  I would also just like to say that this is only the second time I have shown up to work tired from the night before in my life, so please keep the judgment to a limit.

So, this brings me to this rant:

Sulphites aren’t evil, you just make poor choices. Otherwise known as I drank too much of everything last night.

The amount of times that people say to me “I only drink sulphite free wine” is outrageous. So let’s start from the beginning…

There is no such thing as sulphite free wine. Sulphites occur naturally in the wine making practice. In all wines. Wines that market themselves as sulphite free, are likely just less, or no, sulphites added.

Wtf is a sulphite, and why is it added? Sulphites are an inclusive term for S02, which is basically the stuff that smells like dirty eggs.  S02 acts as saran wrap, in the fact that it keeps the grapes fresh, and prevents aging. It is like, why would you make apple cider out of oxidized brown apples? You wouldn’t. So, why have a different opinion on wine, and grapes? Discrimination, it is rearing its ugly head in our society yet again.

I would also like to say that the S02 levels in wine are vastly less than most of your other everyday foods, so relax for a minute. Sometimes people also say to me “I can’t drink red wine because of all the extra sulphites added”, let us get another thing straight, shall we? Red wine actually has LESS sulphites added than white wine. The reason is that there are a whole bunch more natural preservatives in red wine due to the higher levels of natural antioxidants (read: tannins hate people that try to crush their game)

What do sulphites do? “they give me headaches” wah wah wah, do other foods give you headaches and you blame sulphites? Why you gotta hate so hard? You blame things like allergies. Maybe you’re allergic to that grape. Or, here is a wild and crazy thought, maybe because wine is a depressant that dehydrates you, maybe it has to do with the fact that you need more water, or your body doesn’t want to be depressed right now. People need to relax on their sulphite scares.

You’re going to be hungover if you drink too much, or if you are dehydrated; so just deal with it and stop scapegoating things.

EVERY WINE HAS SULPHITES. And if you are allergic to sulphites, I hope you live somewhere where you can have your own orchard and are vegan because virtually everything you put into your body has sulphites.

 I am too tired to write anymore, and I have a date tomorrow in the MORNING. Like, BEFORE I GO TO WORK morning. I regret this choice already. Just leave me in my misery.

All my love,
M

You are too broke to drink Champagne

Oh Thanksgiving, a time to eat too much and then complain about it.

Instead of the annual friendsgiving I’ve been hosting for who knows how long, I ventured to places that remind me how much I need to work on my French. I met my one true love for the first time, baby Charles. Charles turns 1 year old in about a month, and I didn’t even drop him. I also celebrated the beautiful union of my university roommate and her one true love (other than me, obviously).

What do these two events have in common? (*other than the fact that I held off ugly crying at both)

Sparkling wine, people. Charles’ beautiful mother’s drink of choice is Prosecco, and I think every bride drinks sparkling on her wedding day. Even if it is non-alcoholic, you know homegirl has something bubbly in her glass to instagram. Luckily, I love this bride, so I made sure she had at least one beautiful bottle of bubbles. I gave it to the MOH along with strict instructions not to cut it with orange juice, because there is a limit to my generosity.

So, to all my favourite people, here are some basics on bubbly; because you are a bunch of basics. RELAX, I’m joking. Sit down and drink your PSL as you’re flipping out over the 30-second teaser of Adele’s new song.

I would just like to clear up right now, before we go any further… IF IT HAS BUBBLES, IT IS NOT AUTOMATICALLY CHAMPAGNE. On the note of Champagne, a very specific region in France, here is a song to set the mood for the rest of the entry. I listened to it in first year of university, at the ripe old age of 17...

There are different ways to make sparkling wine. Generally there are 4, but one of them only makes garbage because it is literally just injecting the wine with C02 like soda; so I am going to discuss 3.

I am not even going to use the fancy terms for them, you can Google that if you want. THE THREE T’s! May I present you with…

Tank. Transfer. Traditional.

I would normally say something like “You know when you’re baking bread and…” but you’ve never made a damn bread loaf, stop kidding yourself. So I will say this, you know when you haul into a pizza crust and there are air pockets? (we are talking normal crust here, none of this thin crust garbage) That is because of the yeast.  Yeast eats sugar, and makes air bubbles. These air bubbles either end up baked into your pizza crust (why the hell do people even eat thin crust?), or trapped in a bottle of wine.

What I am trying to say is, you take some grape juice and ferment it to make wine. Then you have a bunch of wine that you made and then high five yourself for being a champion. You then decide you want bubbles, and so you add a little more sugar, throw in some yeast, and seal that baby up like a Y2K bomb shelter. The yeast gets the munchies on the sugar, and makes air bubbles, but they are trapped. Therefore, the wine then went through a secondary fermentation. Poppin’ bottles = releasing pressure = what up bubbles.

There are differences between the methods, but they all take the yeast to make more bubbles (ie: they all go through a secondary fermentation). All have their own pros and con’s, just different.

                  started wearing' less and going out more, glasses champagne out on the dance floor, hanging with some girls I've never seen before....

Tank Method

Make your wine, put it in a super intense super heavy duty thick walled tank, add your yeast to the tank, and then once the bubbles appear, filter and bottle it under pressure directly from the tank.

This is great for holding onto fruity aromatics of wine, it is also generally the cheapest method. The most common wine you see coming out of this method is Prosecco.

Transfer Method

Make your wine, put it into bottles, THEN add yeast and seal the bottles. You can mostly just leave the bottles to hang out, it isn’t that picky really. Once you have the desired amount of yeast contact, and secondary fermentation has occurred, you dump all the bottles into one of those super intense pressurized tanks again. Once in the tank, it filters out under pressure and is then bottled for sale.

This method is cheaper than Traditional method, and used for much more mass production. You get more yeasty character within your wine, since all the yeast goes through the secondary ferment in bottle. This is how a lot of Australian and American sparkling wines are made.

Traditional Method

Make your wine, put it into bottles, add your yeast into the bottle, and seal that baby up. Then it goes through this intense process called riddling, which was traditionally done by hand by creepy cave dwelling people, but is more commonly done now with machine. Basically you add the yeast, and over many, many months (generally more than a year, how much longer is dependent on where you are) you turn the bottle upside down. You know those puzzles that you would see on Survivor challenges where you have to turn a piece 8 different ways before you can turn it back to make it fit? It is reminiscent of that. It is a series of clockwise, and counter clockwise turns to bring the bottle from the side, to upside down. Once the bottle is upside down, thanks to the dance of turns you and the bottle did, all the yeast will be in the neck of the bottle as well. Once that is the case, the neck of the bottle gets flash frozen, and popped open. By flash freezing, you are keeping the yeast in where the cap of the wine is, and it just kind of flies out, but you are able to keep most of the pressure and wine in the bottle and just ditch the yeast. This process is called the disgorging of the wine. I remember it because the clump of yeast looks disgusting, but they make a gorgeous wine. I am basically a scientist incase you can't tell by my super descriptions and technical ways of remembering fancy terms. Once the yeast flies out, most places then top of the bottle a bit to make sure it is nice and full for sale, and cram a cork in it. Literally.

This is the most expensive and time-consuming way of making sparkling wine. It also allows for the most yeast contact with the wine, and a little more control of the whole process since it never returns to a tank. This is how you see a lot of Spanish sparkling wine get made (Cava), anything from South Africa labeled ‘Methode Cap Classique’, and, you guessed it, Champagne.

Champagne is sparkling wine, but not all sparkling wine is Champagne.

Champagne is the name of a place, so if you’re not from that place you can’t pretend you are.  Yeah, I’m looking at you, Americans who pretend you’re Canadian when you travel. Or, when you do something stupid, Canadians who pretend you’re American when you travel. (*admission: I have used the phrase in a French speaking country ‘Jes suis habitee en Texas’ pronounced that way when trying to get out of a jam. It worked.)

Why does everyone say they are drinking Champagne? Kick ass branding, that’s why. Like tissues are tissues, not Kleenex, and searching something on the web is searching, not Googling. Just amazing branding. So stop it, because I am judging you, and you are wrong, and the people from Champagne will likely be as offended as the people from Texas are after reading my admission (I am sorry about that, but I do speak enough French to think they were literally trying to sell me. I wish I was joking.)

So please, stop saying you’re drinking Champagne, because you likely aren’t unless you swim in $100 bills as a pre-dinner work out.

So how about this for a deal, I will work on my French so I don’t have to pretend to be American, and you will stop calling your sparkling wine, Champagne?

All my love,

M

Because most people have to be drinking to be willing to date anyway...

Let’s be really honest for a moment. A lot of people don’t know what they are looking for when they are looking for a partner/significant other/someone to spend the night with.  For example, for a long time I thought I was destined for a Gemini who worked in health in some way, shape, or form. Clearly, as I am watching Oprah show re-runs from 2007 on the other half of my computer screen, I don’t have to share my bed tonight.

THANKFULLY, this isn’t a dating blog. I am here to talk about wine.

So,

WHY PICKING A WINE IS LIKE PICKING SOMEONE TO SPEND TIME WITH, AND WHAT WINE YOU SHOULD CHOOSE FOR EACH OCCASSION

You think you know what you like, what you are looking for. What you really know? What purpose you want your wine to fill. Do you want a long-term relationship? Are you ready to settle down? Are you just looking for someone to celebrate with, or someone that your friends will love? Have you decided you just want someone to make you breakfast tomorrow, or have someone you hope you don’t have to see by breakfast?

Let me tell you my friend, picking a wine is the same thing. You think you like Cabernet, you think you like dry, you think you hate oak. Sometimes you’re right, sometimes you’re wrong.  So, this is my stereotypical assumption about dating methods and wines for the moment. Here I have focused on online/technology based dating.  They are similar for two basic reasons: 1) There are a lot of strangers, and all you really get is a photo of the image the other person wants you to see and a vague write up about food they like, or things they like to do. This is similar to seeing a label, thinking it is cool, and reading the back to wonder what ‘pairs well with local fare’ even means. 2) Chances that you will pick correctly the first time, and love the first wine you try and only want to drink that for forever, is slim. This is like the first time you agree to meet one of these mysterious strangers in real life, are you really going to leave those other messages unanswered? Doubtful.

Before divulging deeper into this, here are some hypothetical situations and the wines that match them. Disclaimer: There is no judgment on any of these, not one situation is better than the other, they are all just different. Like the wines I will suggest will be different for the occasion. This is meant to be an exercise of understanding.

Grindr / HER (or Tinder, but that is a spoiler)

It’s 3am. You came home from the bar alone, or with friends.  Either way you want a night cap, and you want it now. Your standards? They are low. Your preferences? Flexible. But you want it to be inexpensive and accessible, because you won’t be able to enjoy it fully.

What are you going to get?  Something that is close, and likely already in the cupboard.  This wine is probably red, because unless you already have some in the fridge ready to go, red is more convenient.  The solution is something that is easy drinking, maybe with a little bit of residual sugar, and pretty simplistic. One that does the trick with not too much finesse. Try a more mass produced version of a California Pinot Noir, Australian Shiraz, or Beaujolais [France].

Tinder

 It is Tuesday and you have had a terrible day at work/school. But alas, you have a new match, so not all hope is lost. “Hi, ur hot. U want 2 cum ova 4 Netflix + chill 2nite? I have chips if u got drinkz”

Most people drink white, so that is a safe bet. Plus it pairs better with many chip kinds rather than red. Something that says, ‘I’m not a bad human, I have cash but I don’t want to impress you. I have had a bad day and I want something I am going to enjoy.’

What you chuck in the fridge: A Rhonê [France] Viognier, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, or a Gewürztraminer from Alsace [France. Along the border with Germany, look at a map. There are a whole bunch of mountains, it is hard to miss, I promise.]

Disclaimer: I was once in a monogamous relationship for a brief couple of months with someone I met on Tinder. I was promptly dumped by text message.

OkCupid

You want someone to kiss on New Years, someone you can get dinner with on Valentine’s day, someone to spend the summer on the beach with, and to instagram your pumpkin patch adventures in the fall. You know you may not find THE person, but you want A person that is worth your time. You want to try something new, to put yourself out there and see what you can find. You arnt at the point where you want to start paying for a dating service yet, but you want a more substantial connection than you have found.

Your wine for that is something versatile, that you haven’t tried before.  A wine you could age, but don’t need to. Likely something on trend, but not too hard to understand, while still holding some complexity and interest the more time you spend with it. Try a Hunter Valley [Australia] Semillon, a Uruguayan Tannat, or a Pinotage from South Africa. A crisp white that turns to honey, or your choice of two reds that you likely haven’t tried or drink often. Both are bold, and have this earthy grounded aspect to them, which I think everyone is looking for in a mate.

Match.com

You have seen your share of heartbreak and disappointment. You are ready for a long-term commitment, someone to spend your life with. Enough of casual dating, you are open to love. You want something rich and fulfilling that improves with age, and makes your meal brighter and more delicious. You’re at least mid-late twenties, and like ‘being outdoors, my dog, and adventures!’ because at least vague means common ground. What do you put in your cellar of love to open on your 10^th anniversary? German Riesling, Italian Amarone, or a Petit Verdot (preferably from France, but if you cant find a full expression try Australia, Canada, or South Africa)

A religious dating site. I am not naming one because there are a bunch of different ones and I don’t want people to think I am evil and picking on certain beliefs.

You want commitment, and you have your priorities in order. You likely have your own apartment or your car paid off. You have a steady job, or are doing something fancy in school that no one really understands. If you live at home you are likely well read, or have an art collection. You also took piano when you were growing up, and can maybe still play a bit. It is important that you find someone with the same values as you.

Your wine is sweet with a low alcohol content. You likely haven’t done a ton of social drinking in excess, and you want a lower alcohol option so you can drive home or not make any choices you would regret. Something you can enjoy with dessert, since you will likely be literally eating dessert until you are happily married. Something you are willing to spend a little money on because the person you are eating with should know you are putting forward some effort.

You enjoy a Canadian Icewine, a Tokaji [it is Hungarian. Pronounced toke-i] in the 4-6 puttonyos range, or a Sauternes [France people. Bordeaux. Sound fancy].

The day you realize you will likely end up alone and baron

Traditional method sparkling wine. Put pants on and go buy Cava, because you can get a lot more for the same price as a single bottle of Champagne. Cava pairs well salty foods, so buy yourself some oysters, because you don’t have to pay for anyone else. Or, if you don’t want to wait for something to refrigerate, go buy yourself some Tawny Port because it should be only slightly cooler than room temperature, and you can have it with dark chocolate or a salty blue cheese. Goodnight, Moon.

This was completely useless to everyone, but hopefully is displays that every wine serves a purpose. Those purposes are not always the same, but they each have a role. The same wine, or same KIND of wine, are not for every occasion, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t flexibility. Everyone is looking for something different, and there is nothing wrong with that.

All my love,

M

You hate oak, I hate you

One of my first solid wine related memories, is my mother at restaurants. My dad doesn’t drink, so there wasn’t really wine at home unless there was company coming over. But every now and then, typically on a girls lunch or on vacation, my mother would step into the unknown and order a glass of wine.

“A white, nothing oaked, and not Chardonnay”

This is when I realized that wine + oak could be a thing, and that there were different kinds of wines with different tastes. Incase you’re wondering, my mother would often end up with a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.

I love my mother very much, but she will be the first to admit that she doesn’t know anything about wine.

Which gets me to today’s topic… You don’t hate oak, so drop it.

So, oak is like if you're trying to drunk cook and you hurt yourself. The injuries vary, and the causes vary, but you always get the same result. Something is different, either your pride or you body, in the morning.

Professor Oak, in different versions of himself. GET IT? 

What is the friggin point of oak anyway? We only use oak because everyone thinks the air is too clean and there are too many trees in too many forests so we are just aimlessly chopping them down.  That’s a joke people, that’s a joke.

Basically oak does a couple of things…

Firstly, it does something called “micro-oxidization” or, microox if you’re trendy and cool. What that means it is rounds the wine. You know when you’re swimming and you can’t breathe and it gets to a point when you’re stressed the eff out? But then you bust out and are breathing and everything is relaxed and chill again? Wine likes to breathe too, bro. In oak, teeny tiny beads of oxygen, micro amounts if you will, (lawl. I’m super funny) get into the wine, and the wine is drowning so it gobbles the air up. When it does that it helps to soften the wine and relaxes it, so the tannins and acids become less firm and more palatable.

This DOESN’T mean wine gets sloshed around like the subject of a hose with your slip ‘n’ slide in the summer. Too much oxygen and your wine gets this dried fruit flavour and aroma, and spoils faster. It would be like taking a bite of an apple and then just putting it back in the ‘for sale’ bin. Gross. Wine barrels are always super full, and are topped up constantly due to the absorption of wine into the wood, and evaporation.

The second main thing does is add mouth feel, and aroma to the wine. Mouth feel = literally how it feels in your pie hole.  Is it sticky? Oily? Gritty? Bubbly? Oak helps to add something called ‘hydrolysable tannins’ which basically means the wine is thieving aspects from the wood instead of stuff that was already there. They just have a slightly different feel in your mouth than stuff that comes in off the grape. Basically the wine gets a tannin boob job, enhancing what it already has, a slightly different feeling, but the same general concept. In terms of aroma, different oak has different flavours. Typically you’re looking at things like coconut, and vanilla, or smoke, and tobacco.

Every wine can be oaked, but not every wine should be oaked. Yes, like we know you could get back with your ex, but that doesn’t mean you should get back with your ex. Balancing oak can sometimes be tricky, but when does balance properly it is rockin’.  You can also put your wine in huge vats of oak, or in tiny barrels. (*I am not discussing fake oak here. Here I am talking OG oak barrels). Use your brain, smaller container = more oak contact = more oak flavour, and vise versa.

Wtf do I even mean, different kinds of oak?

For all intensive purposes, there are three kinds of species of oak trees that are used.  Quercus Alba = American, Quercus Sessilis = French, Quercus Robar = Other Europe (ex: Slovenian, Hungarian)

They are all the same tree, but with different aspects. The same way that European grapes are vitis vinifera, but different kids of grapes.

American oak = perceived sweeter, more prominent impact on the wine (generally). Smells like coconut, dried almond, and vanilla; a little smoother on your palate. This is what people generally associate with oak that they hate, the over use of American oak. Often found in California (Chard’s and others) and in Rijoa (Spain, 9/10 times using the Tempranillo grape)

French oak = more of a mouth feel (more hydrolysable tannin, more common for long term aging of wine), typically less overt on the nose in the same way as American oak. What you do get is grittier; smoke, cedar, tobacco. Take a guess where you find French oak guys… you’re right, France. Friggin genius.

Other Europe oak = Literally the middle ground, more mouth feel than American, sweeter aromatics than French. Here you find more cedar, and almost a raw popcorn kernel thing going on. Can be found in extremely varying of sizes and ages through Italy, and Eastern Europe.

Most wineries use oak multiple times, anywhere between 3-8 depending on the winemaking style and ca$h flow. The more you use the oak, the less oak flavour you get. It goes in half lives, like fossils. So the first time you peel the oak out of plastic you get 100% oak influence, the second time 50%, the third time 25%, you get the idea. Eventually, the oak flavour disappears, and you just get the benefit of the microox. This means that wine where you don’t taste the oak, still could have spent a couple years relaxing in a barrel.

So, no, you don’t hate oak. You may hate a certain kind of oak, or oak paired with a certain grape, or you may even hate the use of new oak. But, I highly, highly, doubt that you hate oak all together. Quit being so narrow minded, n00b.

All my love,

M