Old Vines

You've probably noticed on some bottles of wine the term "Old Vines" and wondered what this means.

Old vines means exactly what it says, the vines are old. If a portion of a vineyard has old vines, meaning the vines could be upward of 125 years old, the vines yeild much lower crops than young vines but produce much more concentrated and intense wines. The term has no legal meaning in the wine world like "VQA" because a winery could call vines which are 20 years old "Old Vines." If you see the term on a bottle from a reputable winery then it is probably more likely that the wine is actually from very old vines.
A disease called dead arm can afflict old vines in some cases making the wine even more concentrated and intense. This disease is caused by a deep rooted wood rot in the arms of the vines. Over the years the arms of the vines will die individually until eventually the entire vine dies.

So I guess the old adage is true, but in reverse.

Wine is like women, it gets better with age.

Let's talk about Mar-Ket-Ing!

We've all fallen victim to the cute animals on some wine bottles (Aw! It's a cute little turtle!), only to discover that when we brought the bottle home it tasted more like childrens grape cough syrup than wine. This is what I call the Yellowtail epidemic. After Yellowtail became so popular because of the cute little kangaroo with the yellow tail on the label, wineries started catching on as to why it was selling so well. The wine is not good, the marketing is.

In the last 3 years, 18% of around 500 brands of wine have featured some type of creature on their label. These wines sell nearly twice the amount of wines without furry creatures on the front. Why? you ask...Because marketing works. You don't know what a wine is going to taste like until you buy it and bring it home so the only thing wineries can do to entice you to buy their wines is to draw your eye to their bottles with bright colours and cute animals. Once you've picked up the bottle, perhaps to read what they say it's supposed to taste like they make promises of "Blackberries, smooth tannins and currant." I have found that the reds are way too sweet (red wine is not supposed to be sweet) and the whites leave nothing special on your palate either.

Don't be afraid to pick up an "ugly" label. Not to say that if a label isn't bright and colourful that the wine will be good, just don't fall victim to selecting your wine based on the label alone.

I know not everyone is as big a nerd as me and might not want to read reviews before they shop for wine but it may help you to select a wine that is both affordable and pleasing to the palate.

My dad bought my uncle this book for Christmas called "Had a Glass: Top 100 wines under $20 for 2006." They are putting this book out every year with the newest wines. I glanced through it and found I had already tasted a lot of the wines in the book and liked almost all of them. If you see this book, it's probably around $15 or so, I suggest picking it up. It will save you time in the liquor store and you will discover some wines that you would never have tried otherwise.

Just because skunks are cute, little, furry, creatures doesn't mean they don't stink when you get too close to them.

Not a very long life...

If you are like me, when you open a bottle of wine, it's unlikely that you are going to enjoy it alone. I tend to open a bottle of wine (or two!) when I have company over or on special occasions with my husband (such as Valentines day) so it is unlikely that the bottle(s) are not finished the same evening they are opened. Once in a while after a really long day at work, I'll come home with aching feet and crack open a bottle just to wind down and enjoy one glass whether or not Rob will join me. In these situations I will then either invite someone over to enjoy the rest of the bottle the next day (if Rob will not) or I'll have another glass or two over the next couple of days and hope I finish it before it goes bad.

A bottle of wine is generally "good" for about 3 to 4 days after it has been opened. Not to say that you couldn't drink it after then (it's not going to kill you), it would just taste much more acidic, or start to smell like a wet newspaper once it is passed it's prime. The reason for this is oxygen. I know this seems strange because we're always being told to decant wines to let them "breathe" before drinking them, but this is only for short periods of time. The wine can become exposed to too much oxygen which turns the alcohol into an acetic acid making it taste a tad like vinegar.

I know it can be difficult to poor out what seems to be a perfectly good bottle of wine because you didn't drink it quickly enough, but sometimes we just have to make that sacrifice if we have left it too long.

So you see, wine is sort of like a puppy. If you neglect it for too long it will turn bad.

Cheers,
Andrea