Some Grist about Grapes

This is a slight departure from the "true mission" of the Lab. These reports are intended to enlighten and educate. We are not in the business of giving scores or choosing favorites (except in the yet-to-be-announced category of BUBBLEDOME, where we will, in fact, make a very subjective effort to find our favorite sparkling wine). We are certainly not here to tear anybody down.

But as a by-product of our recent experiment with the Parducci Sustainable Red 2005, we made a little game of guessing the varietal (which kinds of grapes were used to make the wine) as the bottle says only Red Wine. I guessed Petite Syrah, Merlot and Viognier. I couldn't really detect the Viogner, but I've noticed it's often used as a blending grape and I thought this made my guess sound more sophisticated. My wife guessed, "You are such a dork. Seriously."

To see who had won, I typed in the web address printed on the back of the bottle. It re-directed me to the main page of the Mendocino Wine Company. They have awarded themselves a ribbon for being the first carbon-neutral winery. On the surface of it, they seem to be doing good things: using solar power and recycled materials, employing sustainable farming practices, and swapping out old, incandescent bulbs. But they are also buying carbon credits. I don't understand this. I get that companies should focus on core competencies (apparently, like polluting) and that out-sourcing things like planting trees allows for improved economies of scale. But I still don't get carbon credits. Can I buy sobriety credits? Say I go out to a boozy dinner and get pulled over on the way home. If I've pre-arranged to buy sober-credits from my kids who are too young to drink, can I keep swerving my way down the road? You can well imagine, there are some guys at the Lab who think this would be a terrific idea.

Anyway... you're probably wondering who won our little "guess the grape challenge." So I'll tell you: No one!

There is exactly zero mention of Sustainable Red at the smugly green Mendocino Wine Company website. Not in the Our Wines section. Not in the Buy Our Wines section. Zip. Nada. If you were going to produce self-congratulatory wines to celebrate your carbon-neutrality (there is also a white version: Sustainable White) and you went so far as to register a product-specific domain for each (www.sustainablered.com & www.sustainablewhite.com) wouldn't you at least have some mention about the actual wines on the website?

My wife says this is proof she won.

Finding Fault 1.2: The History of Heat

You may remember that yesterday, the Lab tasted two bottles of inexpensive red table wine. One had been cooked inside a hot car until the cork had almost pushed itself out of the bottle. The other was stored in a wine fridge set at 55°.

I tasted these two again today. There was little difference. The cooked one was still better, although the other had benefited marginally from some time in the air.

Should we take from this that some exposure to heat might be good for young wine? Just enough to hasten the aging process without oxidizing the bottle into vinegar? Good questions.

I am, by training, a historian. I even almost finished my Ph.D. Some of my fascinatingly esoteric work on the semiotics of liberty is actually available online. You are no doubt wondering, why am I delving into my curriculum vitae? Because when in doubt, I go to my roots.

And my roots are research (mostly on wikipedia), and they yielded some interesting results.

The first is related to the myth of the ideal temperature of 55° (which is 13° Celsius). This guy, who apparently managed to finish his Ph.D., surmises that, "the 13°C temperature makes historical sense since wine storage in France is typically in caves and the natural underground temperature is around 13°C." In other words, not science of the sort we run here at the Lab, but tradition and history are the primary drivers behind 55°.

The second tid-bit (a technical term for historians) is related to Madeira, a fortified wine that was a favorite of both pirates and early Americans. This strange elixir was crafted on Madeira, a Portuguese island off the North African coast. The English King exempted the eponymous brew from the Navigation Acts of 1651 which limited American imports to mostly British goods. Since you probably can't name a decent English wine, Madeira was available without real competition in Colonial America, and so became a wildly popular way to get drunk. As a still wine, Madeira wasn't very good by most accounts. But when a cask was dosed with brandy as a preservative and sailed through the Tropics, Madeira evolved into something special. In fact, Madeira was not considered fully matured until it had made a voyage, preferably two, around the world. Eventually, the Madierianese (made that up, don't know what folks from Madeira are really called) figured out that heat and oxygenation were the key factors involved, and cleverly devised a way to heat and stir their product in a sort of wine-making greenhouse called an estufa. And thereby saved a lot on travel expense.

So clearly, heat can be beneficial in the right circumstances. Without further research, the Lab feels it would be irresponsible to make formal recommendations based on this single, idiosyncratic study. But if you find yourself with an extra bottle of inexpensive, not-great, too green wine, maybe take it for a drive in the sun, give it a little heat. Couldn't hurt.

(image: © James Steidl | Dreamstime.com)

Finding Fault #1: Cooked?

It's generally agreed that wine should be stored between 55 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Perhaps not coincidentally, if you dug a deep hole in your backyard, this is the same temperature you would likely find at the bottom of it. It's why we put wine in cellars.

Deep in the cool ground is one thing. Excessive exposure to heat is another altogether. According to wikipedia, my new source for everything, "Wines that are stored at temperatures greatly higher than [55 degrees] will experience an increased aging rate." We call this "cooked." Cooked wines can oxidize, lose taste, color and aroma. We call this "flattening."

It is also the most widespread and common fault in wine (again according to wikipedia). So we at the Lab, decided to "cook" a bottle to see what happens.

We started with two bottles of identical wine. Something called Sustainable Red from Parducci (2005) that I bought at Whole Foods for $10/ea (which means you can probably find it for $6 somewhere else). The folks at the Mendocino Wine Co who own Parducci are pretty smug about their greenness, they claim to be the first carbon-neutral winery. As I drive a Prius hybrid, I'm happy to be working with them.

It was in the mid-80s in LA yesterday, hotter still inside my car which I intentionally parked in the sun, leaving one of the Sustainables inside. The other, I put in my 55 degree wine fridge. After 90 minutes, the cork on the bottle had actually burst through the seal. That's an undoctored photo of the unadulterated pushed-cork to the right. I think if I'd let it go another 30 minutes, I would've spent the afternoon looking for seat covers.

After the exposure, I put both bottles in the fridge. The real fridge, not the wine one. And let them both get cold. An hour before opening, I took them out of the fridge to warm back up to something closer to room temperature. I opened both bottles and let them breath in the bottle for 30 minutes. I marked one of the bottles with a black dot, and put a rubber band on the stem of a wine glass. I then asked my wife to pour a glass from each bottle, and make a note of which bottle went into which glass. As I had failed to tell her that I spent my day driving around with an inexpensive bottle of red wine riding shotgun, she had no idea what we were doing. This way, we both managed to taste "blind."

Up first, no rubber band: Jammy notes on the nose with some pleasant oakiness. Ripe plum and bright red fruits. A drying, tannin finish with an interesting, almost chalky texture on the tongue. My wife loved this. And I thought it was pretty good.

Rubber band was next: Herbaceous nose, green cedar and something astringent. In the mouth, pretty indifferent, uncomplex stuff. But the finish was exceptionally bitter. Actually made my wife gag a little.

My wife looked at me crossly, and held up the offensive glass. "What did you do to this?" I told her I cooked it. Showed her the pictures. She nodded at me in the motherly, patronizing way that I've seen her use with the kids when they do things like jam frozen peas up their nose.

"So which one had the black dot?" I asked. She turned over the card where she had written her key, and made a face.

We were both VERY shocked to discover the wine we both preferred had been my motoring partner. The bitter wine that made my wife choke was, it turns out, the one from the pristine conditions of the cellar.

Conclusions? First, I'd say the experiment isn't over. I'm putting both bottles back in the fridge and plan to taste them -- again blind -- tomorrow. Second, it may be that "an increased aging rate" is a good thing for an inexpensive, young-to-the-point-of-green, wine to endure. I'm not advocating that you leave cheap wine in the sun. Then again, if you only paid $4.99 for it. Why not?