The weather is cooling down. The days are getting shorter. The leaves are turning. For wine drinkers, fall also marks the return to red wine after a long summer of chilled whites and rosés. My husband had just returned from Zurich with a bounty of Swiss chocolate by Läderach. And I wanted something that would go well with the delectable treats.
Fall marks the return to red wine
It may be a romantic notion, but picking a dry red to go with chocolate is surprisingly difficult. The tannins in the chocolate sometimes clash with the tannins in the wine. Not to mention both chocolate and wine have varying degrees of fruitiness and acidity that may result in a poor match.
2012 Nina Lee with Swiss Chocolate
In my experience, the dry red that often has a chance to pair well with chocolate is Syrah. In fact, my go-to for that is Spring Valley Vineyard's Nina Lee. And I am not the only one who thinks so.
Nina Lee by Spring Valley Vineyard
If you go to the Spring Valley Vineyard tasting room in downtown Walla Walla, you will be treated with a whole line-up of outstanding single varietals and blends. Saving the best for last, Nina Lee is often showcased with a piece of chocolate specially made to pair with the wine.
From the stash of Swiss chocolate, I picked a dark chocolate bark balanced with the perfect amount of almond and orange bits. And I matched it with the 2012 vintage of Nina Lee.
On the nose, the Nina Lee was fruit-forward with cherries and berries. On the palate, the full-bodied luscious mouthfeel coated the creamy chocolate flawlessly. The tannins were fine and smooth. The earthiness and hints of spice and even cocoa from the wine complemented beautifully with the chocolate as well as the almond and orange bits - the warm flavors that I often associate with autumn.
What wine in your collection would you pair with chocolate this fall? Share your favorites!
Last summer, I wrote My Wine is Too Oaky, a post on oak and its influence on wine. Much of what I knew about the interaction of oak and wine was theoretical. Then I got to experiment with oak when making my 2017 vintage. I had purchased the wildly popular Red Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon from Artz Vineyards. Cabernet Sauvignon and other more tannic grape varietals make austere wine on their own so they benefit greatly from the softening effect of oak. But how does that really work?
Oak & Oxygen
Wine develops differently in an oak barrel versus a glass container. Oak barrels are porous and release a small amount of oxygen to the wine. The gradual release of oxygen, known as micro-oxygenation, takes the edge off of grape tannins, giving the wine a softening effect. Oak barrels also have their own tannins that further protect the wine from oxidation and reduction. Additionally, many winemakers favor oak for the phenols that impart flavors, such as vanilla, cocoa, and spice, to the wine. Glass carboys offer none of these benefits.
Wine in barrel and carboys
I got a 7.5-gallon tight-grained medium-toast new French oak barrel from Radoux Cooperage. There is a slight challenge with an unused small oak barrel. The newness and a larger oak surface area to volume of wine translates to a higher concentration of phenols in the wine. The amount of flavor imparted can easily overpower the juice, like an over-salted dish. Fortunately, a few friends had joined me in making that vintage so we had plenty of juice among us, about three times the volume of the barrel. The idea was that we would rotate the juice in and out of the barrel till we reached the taste profile we wanted.
Round Robin
After our crushed grapes and juice (known as must) had completed the alcoholic or primary fermentation, it became wine. The wine was pressed and then transferred into glass carboys for malolactic or secondary fermentation. During this process, the tart malic acid found in grapes was converted to softer-tasting lactic acid with the help of lactic acid bacteria.
In the early stage of malolactic fermentation, the wine was moved from one container to another at certain intervals to get rid of sediments. The process is known as racking. The discarded sediments, known as the lees, are primarily made up of dead yeasts and grape debris.
About three weeks into malolactic fermentation and during the third rack, we moved a third of our wine into the new barrel for the first time. The remaining two-third returned to glass carboys. We monitored the wines monthly; topping up, testing, and tasting. The wines remained in their respective receptacles for another two months before they all completed malolactic fermentation. We were pleased that all the wines did well even as different taste profiles gradually developed.
Racking wine from carboys into the barrel
When we were satisfied with the taste of the first batch of oaked wine, we racked it out of the barrel into the carboys. In its place, we pumped in a fresh batch of un-oaked wine. Thus, the round robin continued until all the wine had cycled through the barrel for one to two months.
Taste Test
The fun part of the experiment is the sample tasting! We tasted both oaked and unoaked samples over time. We took notes and observed the evolution of the wine, our ability constantly tested with a bit of voluntary intoxication.
After over five months of tasting during the round robin, the taste profiles of the different samples confirmed our theory:
The sample with little to no oak was bright with high acidity. The tannins remained coarse, and the wine ranged between low to medium-bodied.
The sample with at least two months of oak contact had more concentrated cherry, vanilla, cocoa flavors with medium acidity. The tannins were distinctly smooth and velvety, and the body was medium to full.
Tasting wine samples
My Verdict: By the time we were ready to bottle, all the wine had cycled through the barrel. We did a final taste test to ensure that there were no surprises. Thankfully, there were none. We blended the wine together and were delighted with the end result. At the time of this blog post, the wine has been aging for a month in the bottle. For a first vintage with oak, I pronounce it an overwhelming success. I look forward to tasting it after another five months of bottle aging. Stay tuned!
I remember my first wine tasting class. My notes went something like this: Appearance - Red/Gold/Pink Nose - Smells like wine Palate - Tastes like wine Body - Liquid? Finish - Glass is empty?
Bordeaux Blend Tasting
My interest in wine started during my consulting years in Northern California. While my palate was not quite discriminate, the proximity to Napa and Sonoma provided many opportunities to try great wines. I became intrigued by how one could train one's palate to get a fuller appreciation of the different types of wines - be they varietals, terroirs, or vintages. There was also the romantic notion of being able to blind taste like a Master Sommelier.
I recall fondly the Frasier episode where Frasier and his brother Niles were vying for the title of Cork Master of their wine club. To break the tie, they had a wine taste-off. I remember thinking, What fine palates they must have to be able to guess the wines with such precision!
I re-watched the episode recently and cracked up at the descriptors used during the taste-off. Now that I know a little more about wine, the descriptors did not make much sense. Neither "ripe, round, and thoroughly seductive" nor "dark, dusky, and supple" would have helped me identify a wine as Australian Shiraz.
That said, blind tasting is extraordinarily difficult. A lot of sommeliers will say that the underlying criterion for successful blind tasting is typicity. Typicity describes the quality in a wine that is typical of its geographical provenance and the varietal origins from which it is made. Even then, wine experts can be fooled, and the best of them are often humbled by the difficulty of that task.
Pinot Noir Horizontal Blind Tasting
Nonetheless, comparison wine tasting, whether blind or not, can be fun and very educational. Comparison wine tasting is when you put two or more wines that have something in common but also have enough differences so that the different notes picked up can be attributed to those factors.
A few years ago, we did a Pinot Noir tasting where we tasted through different expressions of the grape - Bourgogne (or Burgundy), New Zealand, California, Oregon, and for fun, a ringer bottle from Trader Joe's. Except for the ringer bottle, each wine reflects the typicity of its classification or geographical provenance. To make it easier, we provided the list of wines and corresponding descriptors to help the tasters narrow down the guesses. Still, it was hard, real hard. Most of us could not get even half of the wines right. But we had a blast. We learned a few things and hopefully burned the memory into our palate. New World wines are generally more fruit-forward, and Old World wines are generally more earthy.
Brady Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon Vertical Tasting
More recently, we did a vertical tasting of Brady Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon from 2010 to 2014. This time, it was not a blind tasting, and winemaker Kim Brady walked us through the different vintages. The great thing about vertical tasting is that you get to appreciate how wine evolves over time. Younger Cabs tend to be most fruit-forward and full of bold tannins. Older Cabs tend to lose some fruit in exchange for higher complexity and softer tannins. If your palate is not quite ready to pick up the difference, one telltale sign is the color. Older red wines tend to have a brick-ish hue whereas younger red wines tend to be deeper in color.
So you may not have the palate of a Master Somm. You can still have a blast with comparison tasting. Think about what you would like to learn about - the influence of terroir on a grape varietal, the evolution of wine in a bottle over time, or even just tasting different grape varietals from the same geographical area. You will find that the notes on appearance, nose, palate, body, and finish actually make sense, and you may be the next Cork Master of your wine club.
Oak in wine is like salt in food. It may enhance the flavor. But if you can taste it, you probably have too much of it.- A paraphrased but insightful observation of my wine class instructor.
My Oak and I
Oak in wine is indeed a controversial topic. When wine is in contact with oak, aromatic compounds from the oak are introduced to the wine. While there is no accounting for taste, wine geeks often argue about whether a wine is overoaked. That said, many of us are glad that the days of oaky California Chardonnay are behind us.
While there are different types of oak used for barrels (and in fact different types of wood), the two best known are French oak and American oak. Generally speaking, French oak tends to add subtle spiciness and silkiness to the wine while American oak tends to impart a stronger and sweeter flavor that is reminiscent of vanilla.
There are of course other factors that contribute to the influence of oak to the wine. For instance:
Toast level - higher toast leads to stronger flavor
Coarseness of grain - open-grain barrel releases aromatics sooner, and tight-grain releases aromatics later
Barrel size - higher ratio of oak surface area to volume of wine results in more contact
Time in barrel - more time in the barrel leads to extended contact
New vs neutral barrels - newer barrels have more aromatic compounds
Wine aging in new French oak barrels in Burgundy
However, an often overlooked benefit of oak barrels is that they introduce a small amount of oxygen to the wine (known as micro-oxygenation) during maturation. Oxygen is critical for the polymerization of phenolic compounds to stabilize the color and improve the quality of the wine. Recent research even suggests that fermenting wine in oak barrels leads to a better quality wine, but that requires another level of maintenance for the wineries.
Now back to the question, when is a wine too oaky? It just depends on how much you like the taste of oak in your wine.
Personally, I find the sweet vanilla flavor imparted by American oak detracts from my enjoyment. I tend to like my red wine silky with nuanced spices and leather notes. I also like older well-made reds and would forgo fruitiness for complexity. In fact, my favorite red wines are often aged in Slavonian oak, known for its tight grain as well as lower aromatics and tannins level. Any guess as to the wine?
My Verdict: If you are like me, you probably prefer the silky soft tannins that result from barrel aging but could go light on the aromatics. Then, depending on the grape varietals, keep an eye out for wine made in French oak (or even Slavonian oak). However, if you like stronger flavors, particularly of vanilla, then maybe American oak is more to your liking. Check out the technical sheet of your favorite wine and see what oak is used and for how long. There's always much to learn!
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