WELWYN WINE SOCIETY
Wine Tasting in Hertfordshire - BLOG
Inevitably the Society was impacted by Covid and we were not able to hold any meetings for eighteen months and then it took a while to find a new venue, reconnect with members and ensure we were viable to continue. As a result of the committee's efforts this was all done and we met again for the first time since February 2020 in April 2022. Since then we have had 3 meetings, including an AGM with nearly 40 attending. Blogs will recommence when we identify a suitable Blogger!!
BLOG 6 December 2017
DID YOU KNOW
that ice wine is a dessert wine produced from grapes that have been frozen hard whilst still on the vine?
Temperatures must be below about minus 8 degrees Celcius when the sugars and other dissolved substances do not freeze but some of the water does freeze allowing ice to be separated from the juice. The juice must be pressed from the frozen grapes giving a small amount of juice with a high concentration of sugars which after fermentation gives a very sweet wine with high acidity and usually a low alcohol content of 8-12%.
Only healthy grapes will keep in good condition until the opportunity arises for an ice wine harvest. Production of ice wine is risky because the frost may not come at all before the grapes rot or are otherwise lost and it requires the availability of a large enough labour force to pick the whole crop within a few hours, at a moment's notice, on the first morning that is cold enough. The wine is thus quite expensive to produce.
Ice wine production is limited to that minority of the world's wine-growing regions where the necessary low temperatures can be reached with some regularity. Canada and Germany are the world's largest producers of ice wines but the USA and China also make them.
Expect to pay about £20-35 for a half bottle of genuine ice wine which goes wonderfully well with Christmas pudding. Happy wine drinking to all our viewers!
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BLOG 5 May 2017
DID YOU KNOW
that the Chinese are the largest consumers of red wine in the world?
This is not surprising because the population of China is ~1.3 billion. In 2015 the Chinese drank over 450 million bottles of a wine called Noble Dragon, a Carmenere/Cabernet Sauvignon blend, made in Yantai since 1930. Yantai is on the Chinese coast on the 38th parallel, about 250 miles west of the Korean peninsular. The producer is Chateau Changyu, China's oldest winery founded in1892, and one of its three main wine producers. It harvests grapes from six wine-growing regions in China and has eight magnificent Chateaux.
China's premier wine-growing region is in Ningxia province which lies 400 miles inland to the west of Yantai and is being called the Chinese Napa Valley. It produces fine wines from the Cabernet Sauvignon grape.
Details of the wine-growing and wine-making processes are sketchy but the use of modern methods and equipment is claimed. For their best wines, high-tech methods of grape selection and anti-counterfeiting labeling are being developed.
The Austrian winemaker Lenz Moser, who comes from 15 generations of a famous wine-making family, joined Chateau Changyu in 2013 and is the chief of nine international winemakers currently improving the wines. With their efforts, and with the knowhow being gained from the 100 French vineyards now owned by the Chinese, the quality of Chinese wine can only get better.
Berry Bros & Rudd have Ice Wine for £20/half bottle and several choices of Cabernet Sauvignon for up to £60/bottle. Noble Dragon is available in Sainsbury supermarkets for £8/bottle and Tesco supermarkets sell the superior un-oaked Cabernet Sauvignon Moser XV for £7/bottle.
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BLOG 4 November 2016
DID YOU KNOW
that it takes a clever person to identify a bottle of fake wine?
The market for costly fine wines has increased by 25% in the past decade, largely due to interest from wealthy Chinese buyers. Together with this incredible growth - and the enormous sums involved - is a huge increase in wine fraud. In 2013 it was reported that fake wines accounted for 20 per cent of global wine sales.
The notorious wine counterfeiter Rudy Kurniawan was eventually convicted. Wine expert Maureen Downey estimates that the ‘fine wine’ made by Kurniawan alone and still in circulation has a street value of £380m. She says “We're talking tens of thousands of bottles. He was doing it for 10 years.” Her website www.winefraud.com teaches fine wine lovers how to spot what is real and what is fake.
Detailed examination of the bottle, the label, the cork and the cap are important as is the absence of ‘typos’ on the label. Producers meanwhile are variously using radio-frequency tags, holograms and invisible markers in their attempts to safeguard the Grands Crus of the future.
At the University of Bordeaux, Professor Philippe Hubert passes gamma rays through bottles to determine if levels of radioactive caesium isotopes date the wine making to before or after the start of nuclear-weapons testing. He measures two or three bottles of old fine wine per month and one in three bottles is a fake.
A recent method devised by Everledger and IBM involves attaching to the bottle a tamper-proof label which contains digital details of 90 items about the glass, the cork, the label, the wine itself and all previous owners. This data is duplicated on an external database and provides an accurate provenance for the wine.
Some top-class restaurants now insist on destroying the bottle of an expensive wine after the diner has consumed the contents so that it cannot be refilled with an inferior product and resold.
If you really must spend a fortune on a bottle of wine, then be very cautious before you buy.
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BLOG 3 August 2016
DID YOU KNOW
that many vintners are now making wine using ‘bio-dynamic’ methods?
Almost 500 wine-makers, including some high-profile wine-makers worldwide, have recently introduced bio-dynamic practices. Bio-dynamics is a holistic view of agriculture. Central to the issue is the calendar which divides days into Flower, Fruit, Leaf and Root categories according to the influence of the moon and stars on the ‘lunar and cosmic rhythms’ of the Earth. Bio-dynamic viticulture is the balancing this resonance between vine, man, earth and stars.
These wine-growers must also use the nine bio-dynamic preparations, as described by Rudolf Steiner in 1924, which are made from cow manure, silica and seven named medicinal plants.
For example, any one of cow manure, yarrow flowers, chamomile, stinging nettles or oak bark etc is inserted into an animal part such as a cow’s horns, a stag's bladder or the skull of a farm animal etc, buried in the ground and left to overwinter. The product is then added to a very large volume of water and sprayed onto the vines. No added chemicals, synthetic fertilisers, pesticides or commercial yeasts may be used. The grapes may sometimes be picked by moonlight before fermentation and wine making.
The reader must decide whether bio-dynamics is credible science or merely ‘mumbo jumbo’. However researchers at the University of California examined the results of blind tastings by experts of 47,000 Californian wines and concluded there was a significant improvement in wine quality when organic or bio-dynamic methods were used compared with conventional methods. In 2015 a rosé wine from the Sedlescombe Organic Vinyard in East Sussex made by bio-dynamic methods with the Regent grape was the outright winner at the International Organic Wine Awards, being awarded the only ‘top gold’ medal and beating 60 competetitors from eight European countries. Many people believe that it is the additional care employed in the wine making, rather than the biodynamic procedure, which results in improved wines.
Berry Bros.& Rudd, the London wine merchants, offer a range of bio-dynamic wines for your appreciation.
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BLOG 2 May 2016
DID YOU KNOW
that some people spend rather a lot of money on wine?
In 2010, some 2000 bottles from Lafite’s cellars were put up for auction by Sotheby’s in China. The 1869 Chateau Lafite had been valued at just $8,000 per bottle but due to a bidding war that astounded even the auctioneers, three bottles were eventually sold for $232,692 per bottle.
A bottle of 1875 Chateau Margaux that belonged to Thomas Jefferson was discovered in 1985 behind a wall in a Paris cellar. At auction it sold for $155,453 but whilst showing his new purchase to his friends, the buyer managed to drop the bottle and break it! Reportedly the residual wine tasted awful.
Rare & Fine wines of London offer a 1969 Romanee-Conti Burgundy Grand Cru, Cote de Nuits at £6000 per bottle, a 2011 Egon Muller-Scharzhof Scharzhofberger Riesling at £5,500 per bottle and a 2007 Napa Valley Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon at £2600 per bottle.
Lay & Wheeler offer a 1999 Château Pétrus, Pomerol at £2000 per bottle whilst Waitrose on-line offers a 2009 Chateau Mouton Rothschild at £900 per bottle and a 2010 Penfold’s Grange, Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon, for a mere £350 per bottle.
I suspect that most of our members will continue to buy affordable wines from Majestic Wine, from Waitrose or from Lidl, all in Welwyn Garden City, and from Village Wines in Welwyn.
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BLOG 1 February 2016
DID YOU KNOW
that Taittinger, the renowned French producer of champagne, has bought 170 acres of land at Chilham in Kent to create a vineyard? The land is currently used as apple and plum orchards. The trees will be removed and in 2017 the new owner intends to plant champagne grapes such as chardonnay, pinot noir and petit meunier on the south-facing slopes.
The domain will be called Chateau Evremond after an English bon-viveur, essayist and soldier Charles de Saint-Evremond (1614-1703) who championed the drinking of champagne at the Court of Charles II. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
The vineyard is expected to produce about 300,000 bottles of sparkling wine per year and the first vintage should be released for sale in 2021.
The London “Times” recently held a competition for its readers to suggest a name for this sparkling wine, which cannot be called champagne, and one mischievous suggestion was Franglais Fizz.