wine discussion

Got side tracked with RNF on the Humour forum talking about wine so rather continue it there we agreed to continue here being a more apropriate forum.

To kick off, a couple of my tips was;

1) When selecting a red wine make sure it is at least 2 years old, generally older is better although some vintages are better than others but wines under two years just are not mature enough. I can blind taste and know if a wine is under two years old, some wines a bit older than that can also have that not quite mature taste but I find few under 2 years have the maturity.

2) Decanting to aerate a wine that is not quite up to scratch does work and some would suggest that aggressive aeration can work with quite poor wines but personally if it needs that I'm inclined not to but that one again.

3) There is the old saying that red wine should be drank at room temperature, if room temperature is around 18% I would agree but if it’s room temperature is 28 degrees I don’t think so. In summer it doesn’t hurt to chill a red wine and keep it in a cooler, particularly if out side.

Mentioned to RNF about Pedro Ximenez, so just a bit about when I first came across it and a bit more that I know now.

The Pedro Ximenez sherry I was told is made by drying the grapes under the hot Spanish sun, concentrating the sweetness, which are then used to create a thick, black liquid with a strong taste of raisins and molasses that is fortified and aged in solera ( literally the set of barrels) as they do with sherry but the solera had charcoal that the sherry would filter through. Each year a new batch of sherry as add to the solera so that out of the bottom of the system the sherry would be a mix of sherrys from many years, hence sherry’s don’t have a vintage year. Some claim 50 year and more mixes.

I can recall lit was not cheap butt it was heaven.

Years later I tried to track it down Pedro Ximenez I realised that was not the brand name as I thought it was but the grape variety from what it is made and there are a number of brands. Pedro Ximenez sherry is usually only found at specialty stores, sadly since the last bottle I had seem to lack a taste I think is from not being filtered in charcoal but still quite nice.