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Tuesday 04/01/08 - - Charles Shaw

Charles Shaw For Your Reading Pleasure

Best Wine for Each Occasion

Home wine racks are specially designed for storing bottles of wines in a horizontal position, to help preserve the quality of the wine. Storing your bottles in a wine rack is a great way to prevent the corks from drying out. If this happens, the cork can shrink and let air in, resulting in oxidization, which will spoil the taste. Wine storage racks usually have separate compartments for holding individual bottles, allowing gaps between each one to allow air to circulate. Ideally, wines should be kept at a consistent temperature of around 55 degrees farenheit, with a relative humidity of 70%, away from light.

There are really no hard and fast rules when choosing the best wine for each occasion - especially when you consider the fact that people are partial to certain wines depending on their personal preference and taste. Here are a few 'soft' guidelines to help you choose the right wine for the right occasion. This will give you a good idea on how to complement an occasion - and certain dishe - with the right kind of wine.

1. White Wines - white wines, being lighter and drier than red wines are best served during the earlier part of the evening or before the main course. Chardonnay, having wide appeal among most wine connoisseurs, is also perfect for serving along with rich tasting courses, especially those that have creamy sauces. Sauvignon Blanc, while not as dry as Chardonnay, still makes excellent company with salads, shrimp, and fish due to its fruity nature.

White wines are perfect for starting off an evening on the right foot, and are also wonderful for toasts and special occasions. Champagne is a regular fixture at weddings and is indispensable at such occasions.

2. Red Wines - red wines are great for main courses and are typically served during the latter part of any occasion. Their full bodied nature makes them a great complement to hearty meals. If you are looking for the wine that is most certain to please the most people, go for Merlot. It has a balanced mix of body and lightness that make it the perfect choice for most dishes. It particularly does well with poultry, pork and lamb.

The scintillating aroma of plum, vanilla and blackberry make Pinot Noir an intriguing proposition during special occasions. It is not as heralded as Merlot or Cabernet, so many people may not recognize its unique blend. It goes well with creamy sauces.

For spicy foods, Shiraz is a fiery complement. It has a peppery taste that will greatly enhance the flavor in barbeques, roasts, and chili or spicy dishes.

For a hearty, full taste, look no further than Chianti. Chianti is the best wine to accompany tomato dishes and poultry. It is wonderfully versatile in having varied range in price and quality.

During some occasions you may want to prepare servings of both red and white wine, and have your guests sample which they would have for the rest of the evening. Most people choose their drinks early on and keep them until the end of the reception.

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2008 - - Beer Wine

Another Great Beer Wine Article

I Love Italian Wine and Food - The Bascilicata Region

If you are looking for fine Italian wine and food, consider the Bascilicata region of southern Italy. You may find a bargain, and I hope that you?ll have fun on this fact-filled wine education tour.

Bascilicata is the instep of the Italian boot. This hilly and mountainous region is located in the southwest corner of Italy on the Ionian Sea. Parts of Bascilicata have been settled since the Stone Age. It was conquered by the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Normans. When the pirates came, the local inhabitants were forced to flee into the interior. Historically the region is quite poor. Its population is slightly more than 600 thousand.

Agriculture products include barley, citrus fruit, corn, potatoes, oats, olives, and tomatoes. While meat is relatively scarce, more and more sheep, pigs, goats, and cattle are raised. There is some industry including a major FIAT (automobile) factory. Tourism is becoming more popular, in spite of, and perhaps in part because of a lack of infrastructure.

Bascilicata?s administrative center is Potenza, a city of about 70 thousand. It is known as the coldest city in Italy and sometimes has snow. The city of Matera has at least two reasons to be proud. In September, 1943 it was the first Italian city to rise up against the German occupation. And Matera contains a prehistoric settlement, caves that have been occupied by people for at least 9 thousand years. In some places, the streets are actually rooftops. Parts of this area are now classified as a World Heritage Site.

Bascilicata devotes about 60 thousand acres to grapevines, it ranks 17th among the 20 Italian regions. Its total annual wine production is less than 13 million gallons, also giving it a 17th place. About 73% of the wine production is red, leaving 27% for white. The region produces two DOC wines, Aglianico del Vulture, reviewed below, and Terre dell Alta Val d?Agri. DOC stands for Denominazione di Origine Controllata, which may be translated as Denomination of Controlled Origin, presumably a high-quality wine. Only 2.4% of Bascilicata wine carries the DOC designation. Bascilicata is home to about two dozen major and secondary grape varieties, half red and half white.

Widely grown international white grape varieties include Malvasia and Muscato. The best-known strictly Italian white variety is Malvasia Bianca di Basilicato. Virtually no Bascilicata white wine is exported to North America.

Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot are international red grape varieties that compose the Terre dell Alta Val d?Agri DOC wine. The best-known Italian red variety is Aglianico, which may have actually originated in Greece.

Before we reviewing the Bascilicata wine and Italian cheese that we were lucky enough to purchase at a local wine store and a local Italian food store, here are a few suggestions of what to eat with indigenous wines when touring this beautiful region.
Start with Acgua e Sale, Soaked Bread with Sweet Onion, Tomato, and Basil. Then try Grano con Rag? de Maiale, Savory Pork Ragout.
For dessert indulge yourself with Grano Dolce, Plump Wheat with Pomegranate, Chocolate, and Nuts.

OUR WINE REVIEW POLICY While we have communicated with well over a thousand Italian wine producers and merchants to help prepare these articles, our policy is clear. All wines that we taste and review are purchased at the full retail price.

Wine Reviewed

Cantine di Palma DOC ?Il Nibbio Grigio? Aglianico Vulture 2000 13% alcohol about $14

Let?s start with the marketing materials. ?Medium ruby in color with aromas of dried berries, leather, figs, dried flowers and spice. This medium-bodied wine has a rustic style, it?s quite assertive on the palate with some dusty tannins. It would be great with lamb chops or braised pork ribs and could reward 2-3 years further cellaring. (August 2005).?

This was a wine that I was rooting for, prior to opening the bottle. It is a hard life for many people in Bascilicata; perhaps that?s why the residents live longer than in most other Italian regions. But I didn?t have to cheat to like this wine. Interestingly enough, my supplier has dropped the price by $2 a bottle, which may be a first for the wines in this series. I might buy a half case and taste it over the years. And now to my review.

The first pairing was with meat balls and potatoes. The wine had a fine nose. It was quite full-bodied, and tasted of tobacco (I?m not a smoker) and cherries. While the wine was very pleasant it was shorter than I had hoped. It was quite enjoyable on its own.

My reactions were basically the same when tasting this wine with beef ribs, except that the wine was moderately long. It was easy to drink but not light.

Then I drank this wine with a grilled rib steak in my spicy, homemade barbeque sauce that included ketchup, Dijon-style mustard, horseradish, fresh garlic, and black pepper. The accompaniments included potatoes cooked in chicken fat (a specialty of a local supermarket) and a tomato and red pepper salsa. The wine was really excellent. It held up well and tasted of dark fruit and tobacco.

I didn?t have any Bascilicata cheese so I had to settle for two other Italian cheeses. Isola is a Sicilian fresh cheese made from sheep?s milk. The Isola cheese was powerful, strong smelling and strong tasting, especially when you crunched into a peppercorn. Even though it was getting a bit long in the tooth, the cheese intensified the Aglicano?s fruitiness. Montasio is a cooked, full-fat, semi-hard cheese made from cow?s milk and aged for several months. It has a pungent smell and a strong, pasty taste. It comes from the Friuli-Venezia Giuli of northeastern Italy. This time the wine and cheese pairing was not as successful, but the combination was still satisfying.

Before giving my verdict, which I believe you can guess, I do have one final comment. In spite of what I have read, this wine is not very tannic. I would not recommend keeping it until 2020, or even 2015, as some others suggest. But I do recommend buying it now, and even storing it for a few years.

Levi Reiss has authored or co-authored ten books on computers and the Internet, but to be honest, he would rather just drink fine Italian or other wine, accompanied by the right foods. He teaches classes in computers at an Ontario French-language community college. His wine website is http://www.theworldwidewine.com

A synopsis on Beer Wine.

Best Wine for Each Occasion

Home wine racks are specially designed for storing bottles of wines in a horizontal position, to help preserve the quality of the wine. Storing your b...

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