Vinnez – October 2011

Seeking Proper Wine Service

If you regularly order wine in a restaurant, you understand all too well the differences in quality of the wine service. During my travels around the U.S. and Europe, I experienced a wide range of styles of wine service, learning what works. Considering the typical restaurant wine markup of 100-300% over prices in local wine shops, it is completely reasonable to expect high quality wine service. Here are a few of my wine service tips.

1. Wine List – Any restaurant with a wine list should include basic information about the wines offered. This includes the winery or producer, wine name, region, varietals, and vintage. Too often restaurants omit the vintage year from their list or deliver a wine to the table that is younger than the vintage on their list. Vintage matters as some years are clearly better growing years than others. This is especially important for old world wines where the lack of irrigation and the potential for rains at harvest make the quality of the growing season correlated tightly with wine quality.

2. Glassware – Many restaurants use small bowl glasses that do not allow the bouquet of the wine to collect in the bowl and waft toward your nose. As flavors are mostly conveyed through your sense of smell rather than sense of taste, anything that decreases your ability to smell your wine will decrease your enjoyment of the wine. If you are stuck at a place that does not have quality glassware, consider using the water glass. It may have a bigger bowl than the regular wine glass. Considering the low cost of “restaurant tough” glassware I do not understand why any restaurant with a formal wine list does not use proper stemware to serve their wine. If you see quality glassware somewhere else in the restaurant, ask for it. Some restaurants reserve their good glassware for customers that spend more than a certain amount on a bottle of wine, something I consider both silly and insulting.

3. Serving Temperature – White wine is served chilled, but not ice cold. Red wine is served slightly chilled, about 60-65 degrees, not the restaurant room temperature of 75+ degrees. Do not be afraid to ask your server to cool down your red wine in a bucket of ice before serving, or let your white wine warm up a little so you can taste it.

4. Decanter – Often red wine requires a bit of exposure to air (i.e., oxygen) to “open up” and express itself. Good decanters have broad bottoms that expose a large amount of wine to the air. Water carafes are not a proper decanter. Simply opening up the bottle and letting it stand does not expose the wine to enough air to make much of a difference.

5. Tasting Wine – The ritual of the server pouring a bit of wine in your glass to taste is for you to confirm that the wine is of good quality (e.g., no cork taint) rather than to determine whether the wine is to your liking. If you think the wine has a defect, ask the server to try it. Often the defect is obvious (e.g., smell of a wet basement, oxidation, or vinegar) and the server will smell it too. The restaurant should then replace the suspect bottle with a new one.

6. Pouring Wine – Pour your own wine for yourself and your friends. About two ounces or two inches in the bottom of the glass is enough. There is no guarantee that a server knows how to properly fill a glass of wine and most put too much wine in the glass. This prevents you from experiencing its bouquet. Also, servers often fill glasses indiscriminately, providing wine to those who want more and others who do not. If you pour the wine yourself, only those who want wine will get it, and you will have the added benefit of chatting about the wine every time you refill a glass. In the end everyone will drink less wine but enjoy it more.

Although a few servers offered up funny looks when I followed these suggestions, most experienced wine stewards have nodded their heads approvingly. They then stop by my table to see how the meal is going and to chat a bit about wine. How bad is that?

Barry P. Chaiken, Proprietor
Chaiken Vineyards

info@chaikenvineyards.com
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Featured Photo Courtesy of  Don Guerwitz Photography – Street Urchin. Monywa, Myanmar (Burma).

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Malbec – Viticulture and Regions

Malbec is very susceptible to various grape diseases and viticultural hazards-most notably frost, coulure, downey mildew and rot but the development of new clones and vineyard management techniques have helped control some of these potential problems. When it is not afflicted with these various ailments, particularly coulure, it does have the potential to produce high yields. Too high a yield, as was the circumstance in Argentina until recently with their heavy use of flood irrigation, the wines become more simplistic and lacking in flavor. Malbec seems to be able to produce well in a variety of soil types but in the limestone based soils of Cahors it seems to produce its most dark and tannic manifestation. There are distinct ampelographical differences in the clones of Malbec found in France and in Argentina, with Argentine Malbec tending to have smaller berries.

Regions

Malbec is the dominant red varietal in Cahors where the Appellation Controlée regulations for Cahors require a minimum content of 70%. Introduced to Argentina by French agricultural engineer Michel Pouget in 1868, Malbec is widely planted in Argentina producing a softer, less tannic-driven variety than the wines of Cahors. There were once 50,000 hectares planted with Malbec in Argentina; now there are 25,000 hectares in Mendoza in addition to production in La Rioja, Salta, San Juan, Catamarca and Buenos Aires. Chile has about 6,000 hectares planted, France 5,300 hectares and in the cooler regions of California just 45 hectares. In California the grape is used to make Meritage. Malbec is also grown in Washington State, the northeastern tip of Oregon, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, British Columbia, the Long Island AVA of New York, Oregon, southern Bolivia, northeastern Italy and recently in Texas and southern Ontario, and in the Baja California region of Mexico.

France

At one point Malbec was grown in 30 different departments of France, a legacy that is still present in the abundance of local synonyms for the variety which easily surpass 1000 names. However, in recent times, the popularity of the variety has been steadily declining with a 2000 census reporting only 15,000 acres (6,100 hectares) of the vine mostly consigned to the southwestern part of the country. Its stronghold remains Cahors where Appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) regulations stipulates that Malbec must compose at least 70% of the blend, with Merlot and Tannat rounding out the remaining percentage. Outside of Cahors, Malbec is still found in small amounts as a permitted variety in the AOCs of Bergerac, Buzet, Côtes de Duras, Côtes du Marmandais, Fronton and Pécharmant. It is also permitted in the Vin Délimité de Qualité Supérieure (VDQS) of Côtes du Brulhois. In the Midi region of the Languedoc, it is permitted (but rarely grown) in the AOC regions of Cabardès and Côtes de Malepère. There is a small amount of Malbec grown in the middle Loire Valley and permitted in the AOCs of Anjou, Coteaux du Loir, Touraine and the sparkling wine AOC of Saumur where it is blended with Cabernet Sauvignon and Gamay. But as elsewhere in France, Malbec is losing acreage other varieties-most notably Cabernet Franc in the Loire.

The grape was historically a major planting in Bordeaux, providing color and fruit to the blend, but in the 20th century started to lose ground to Merlot and Cabernet Franc due, in part, to its sensitivities to so many different vine ailments (coulure, downy mildew, frost). The severe 1956 frost wiped out a significant portion of Malbec vines in Bordeaux, allowing many growers a chance to start anew with different varieties. By 1968 plantings in the Libournais was down to 12,100 acres (4,900 hectares) and fell further to 3,460 acres (1,400 hectares) by 2000. While Malbec has since become a popular component of New World meritages or Bordeaux blends, and it is still a permitted variety in all major wine regions of Bordeaux, its presence in Bordeaux is as a distinctly minor variety. Only the regions of the Côtes-de-Bourg, Blaye and Entre-Deux-Mers have any significant plantings in Bordeaux.

Source: Wikipedia