Tag: wine

How to Taste Wine Like a Pro in Three Easy Steps 

Just taking a sip is not the right way to taste wine. Fortunately, learning the process to taste wine doesn’t take too long.

1. Appearance

First, you hold your glass by the stem, not up around the top as you can often see in movies and TV series about wine. Look at everything: the appearance of the wine, which must be brilliant and clear; the color, whose depth, intensity and nuances give information about the grape variety or varieties, and its evolution which indicates the possible age of the wine. For example, for a red wine with an earthy red color, you would call it “brick,” which indicates that you are dealing with a rather old wine. The same goes for a white the color of old gold.

2. Smell

The next step is to bring out the aromas, rotate the glass a little. Professionals do it with their arms in the air, but a neophyte risks spilling and staining their clothes. Let your arms rest on the table and create a circular movement that will “shake” the wine and allow it to release aromas.

Using your nose, you can perceive any defects: the smell of cork or sometimes something musty, toasted. This is probably what is called reduction, as opposed to oxidation. This is a sign that the wine needs air; a decanter should help free it. The aromas must be clear and expressive. They could be primary and reminiscent of fresh fruit, with hints of vanilla, characteristic of barrel aging, or more or less evolved, attesting to a long stay in the cellar.

3. Flavor

Finally, it is in the mouth that you get a definitive idea of the wine by perceiving, through feedback, the heaviest aromas, and by tasting the flavors. The acidity, sweetness and bitterness (which attest to, among other things, the presence of tannins) constitute the body of the wine. What you’re looking for is an attractive harmony, an equilibrium, and above all, the answer to the only question that is worth asking: do I like this wine?

This article was first published on Le Point

Source: How to Taste Wine Like a Pro in Three Easy Steps – Frenchly

Trump could target French wine with tariffs

That bottle of French wine may be getting more expensive. 

That bottle of French wine may be getting more expensive.

President Trump said Monday that he plans to “do something” about the European Union tariffs imposed on American wine, saying the U.S. pays too much to export wine to France while the U.S. imposed low tariffs to import French wine.

“France charges us a lot for the wine. And yet we charge them very little for French wine,” the president told CNBC.com, adding that California winemakers have complained to him about the EU tariffs.

“So the wineries come to me and say…’Sir, we’re paying a lot of money to put our product into France, and you’re letting’ — meaning, this country is allowing — ‘these French wines, which are great wines, but we have great wines too — allowing it to come in for nothing. It’s not fair,”’ Trump said.

Source: Trump could target French wine with tariffs

‘Quoi, just two glasses?’ French urged to cut down on their drinking

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France on Monday launched a national campaign to encourage the wine-loving French to cut down on their drinking after a study showed that a quarter of them over-consume. But many still feel that “a nice meal can’t be enjoyed without a good wine”.

France has one of the highest alcohol consumption rates in Europe, with the country trailing behind only Estonia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic in the quantities of alcohol it drinks, according to the World Health Organization. This drinking culture – largely attributed to wine, which represents 58 percentof France’s total alcohol consumption – on Monday prompted the public health agency and the National Institute of Cancer (INCa) to launch a national campaign, with recommendations for the maximum daily intake of alcohol.

I’ve never seen, to my knowledge – unfortunately, perhaps – a youngster leaving a nightclub drunk because they drank Côtes-du-Rhône, Crozes-Hermitage or Costières-de-Nîmes.

“For your health, alcohol should be limited to a maximum of two glasses per day, and not every day either,” they wrote, a limit that 24 percent of French adults regularly surpass. Alcohol is the second-biggest cause for preventable deaths in France after tobacco, killing some 41,000 people each year.

Forty-year-old Caroline from Paris, who did not want to give her real name, said that she grew up “literally swimming in wine”.

“In my family, our meals together have always been extremely important, and there has always been wine on the table.” Continue reading “‘Quoi, just two glasses?’ French urged to cut down on their drinking” →