RIESLING

Riesling, is one of the fastest growing wine varietals. Why is Riesling on the rise? Well, among wine lovers, Chefs and Sommeliers this varietal receives exceptional attention for its out-going, food-friendly character. Riesling has gained international spotlight in large part due to its amicable, foof-friendly versatility. As palates prefer a wider variety of food flavors, wines that can fit a broader food-pairing bill will see an increase in demand. This is where Riesling fits in the picture, it would be difficult to find a more accommodating wine for a broader range of food. If you are looking for a no fail wine for an appetizer table, Riesling is there for you. If you've got a spicy dish- again its a Riesling that will bail you out. Why is Riesling so food-friendly? On of Riesling's key pairing advantages for it's food adaptability is that there are so many regional influences and styles made from this single grape varietal. Rieslings are known for their balance of acidity and sugar. It's the acidity that allows it to encounter and woo a variety of difficult pairing partners. The acid allows the wine to handle hearty sauces, high-end meats and even lighter fare. It also off-sets some of the tangy flavors of ginger and lime. While the innate fruit factor (apple, pear, citrus and tropical flavors) and light sweetness of an off-dry Riesling lends it charm for tackling high-spiced foods.

ROSE CHAMPAGNE

Among wine drinkers who know their Champagne, rose Champagnes are considered the Creme de la Creme. They are more expensive than golden Champagnes, a reflection of the fact that they are more difficult to produce, and they're far more rare, forming only about 5% of exports. There are two methods for making them. The first-and historical- method involves letting some the base wine sit in contact with Pinot Noir skins until it picks up enough color to tint the wine pink. The other method, more modern and more common, involves adding a small bit of still Pinot Noir wine into each Champagne bottle before second fermentation. This method us preferred for several reasons, among them the fact that such Roses seem to age better. Both processes are complex, and achieving a certain exact coloration is difficult, as lineup of Rose Champagnes will attest. The colors range from baby pink to deep copper. Though often mistakenly thought of as light and fairly simple, Rose Champagne can be richer and fuller than golden. The basic blend counts for a lot. The Rose might be a blend of 80% Pinot Noir and 20% Chardonnay- or just the opposite. A Rose can be made either way, but when you drink them the impressions the two wines make will be quite different.

RED WINE HEADACHES

     These headaches are often accompanied by nausea and flushing that occurs in many people after drinking even a single glass of red wine. It's not associated with the consumption of white wine or other alcoholic beverages. No one knows for certain why this occurs. It probably has more than one cause.
     Many people have assumed its caused by sulfites, but this is not the case. Almost all wines contain sulfites. Many white wines contain more sulfites than red wines. There are sulfite sensitive people who have asthma problems from Red wine, but there are also a slew of other things they can not have which have sulfites whether its added or naturally occurring.
     Some experts claim that it can be caused by Histamines, Tannins, Serotonin and other enzymes that people cannot metabolize. Many experts say to try taking a Claritin an hour before or to drink a cup of black tea.

Foods containing Sulfites: Beer, Cookies, Crackers, Pickles, Olives, Salad dressing, Vinegar, Sugar, Shrimp, Scallops, Fruit Juice and Lunch Meats.

Foods containing Tannins: Tea, Soy and Chocolate.
There are certain wine styles with less sulfites and tannins. This is due to reduced Maceration time. Example: Pinot Noir, Sangiovese, Gamay, Tempranillo, Dolcetto and Barbera.

References:
Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
Harvard Health Letter
Tareq Khan M.D.

SPRINGTIME AND WINE

If you have not already used all your energy from the first burst of Springtime sunshine, on mundane things like yard work, then why not use it for some refreshing wine drinking. Most wines are as seasonal as food and clothing. So if your already updating from sweaters to sundresses then its time to update your wine wardrobe also. This a great time for sipping on and focusing on refreshing new white wines with high acidity and my favorite  Roses. Springtime inspires foods and holidays that reflect the life and love of the wine. Springtime menus vary as widely as the holidays. Easter menus can be so lovely and lively with ham, cheese potatoes, cranberry salad and Cinnamon are so calling for Pinot Noir, dry Riesling or a good sparkling Rose. The best lesson is to focus on the main protein of your meal.

THE RHONE VALLEY AND PROVENCE

There is another great region in France that is usually overlooked because of Bordeaux and Burgundy. It is justifiably famous for substantial wines that suit a dinner's main course. This is the Rhone Valley, which produces over 20,000,000 gallons of wine a year, mostly ordinary, but also including some superior types that are particularly well known and liked in the U.S.: the hearty red Chateauneuf Du Pape, the refreshing rose called Tavel and the big reds and whites of Hermitage. All these wines come from the southern part of the valley, near Avignon. Its wine is unusual because, unlike fine Burgundies or Bordeaux, which are each pressed from a single grape variety, it is usually made from a blend of grapes. For the best Chateauneuf Du Pape 12-13 varieties are used. Most experts recommend that it be given no less than four or five years to mature.

THE MEDOC

Are all the wines of Medoc of similar quality? By no means. The district is divided into two areas, the Haut-Medoc and the Medoc. The latter used to be called the low Medoc, but that term somehow sounded derogatory, the vignerons who had holdings there objected strongly, and they succeeded in getting the "low" eliminated. They had a right to feel sensitive, for their wines are good too; yet the best wines of the Medoc are indeed made in the Haut-Medoc section. So. narrowing down still farther, we find ourselves in the Haut-Medoc, which in turn is divided into 28 municipalities called communes. Four of  the best known of the are Margaux, Pauillac, St. Estephe and St. Julien (my personal favorite). Thus a bottle label saying appellation control, and St. Julien, pinpoints the wine as coming from one small commune in Bordeaux where red wines of almost uniformly outstanding quality are produced. There remains only the question of what specific vineyard in St. Julien grew the vine. And for the greatest wines of all, that is all-important. It is traditional in Bordeaux to refer to individual vineyards as Chateau. These Chateau's, incidentally, are not the imposing castles that you will find on the Loire River; they are generally spacious country houses, although some are little more than storage buildings in the vineyards. But whether the building be imposing or modest, the wine that many of the Medoc Chateau's put out is glorious. The owners guard the reputation of their labels jealously-some of them to the point of refusing to put their name on any wine at all if the year should be a bad one; then they sell their whole crop anonymously to a shipper to be blended. This happens rarely. There are a great many Chateaus in Medoc alone, and to settle some the confusion, a committee of Bordeaux wine brokers sat down in 1855 to divide them into five classes. The system is a simple numerical one. The top grade, for example is Premier Cru, which translates literally as "First Growth" but really means "vineyard of the top class."  When someone refers to Chateau Calon-Segur as a third-growth Medoc, which it is, he means that the Chateau produces wines of the third class; they are not quite as superb as those of the first or second growths. Yet even a fifth-growth Medoc is far from a poor wine. On the contrary, it is something special, for out of the hundreds of Chateaus that were rated in 1855, only 62 were deemed worthy of classification. Three were put in the first division: Lafitte-Rothschild, Latour and Margaux; and a fourth Haut-Brion was added, although it is not a Medoc at all but a Graves. So in addition to the warranty of quality supplied by the words appellation control on a Bordeaux bottle, one also has, for the finest wines, the name of the Chateau itself, and such words as mis en bouteilles au chateau (bottled at the chateau), which gives the buyer the assurance that the wine in the bottle was grown in a certain vineyard, by a certain man and bottled right there. The famous Medoc Chateau, along with many others in Bordeaux, owe their fame not only to the excellence of their wines, but also to their large size. Most of the great vineyards of Burgundy, the Rhine and the Moselle are divided among a number of proprietors, some of whom may own only an acre or two in a choice location, and each of whom makes a slightly different wine, following his own counsel. In Bordeaux, properties of 100 and 200 acres in single ownership are not unusual. Chateau Lafitte, for example. contains 150 acres under vine. The wine in all the Lafitte bottles of a given year is identical. This adds immeasurably to the ease with which a Bordeaux lover can pinpoint his favorites.

THE GREAT WINES OF FRANCE

The truth is that there are only a few great wines. That is the miracle and the mystery of wine, that the vine-the Vitis vinifera- has traveled right around the world, and yet in only a few fate-favored places is great wine produced. What do I mean by "great" wine? Simply this: Certain spots in some magical way combine the right soil, the right amount of sun, the right amount of rain, the right angle of slope- all these things for the right kind of grape to produce wines that in their balance, their bouquet, their subtlety of flavor and often their longevity, are unmatched by any others. They are all different from one another, having in common only their nobility, which they express in endless, enthralling ways; and it is a good thing that your palate will prefer this one and mine prefer that one, so that there will be no end to the delightful debates over their respective virtues. But in this select company all are superb, and all unique. Each is a creation that could not be duplicated chemically, or even naturally in another spot- not even by using the same grapes and importing the same soil and the same workmen with the same methods of cultivation and harvest. Move the vine and the wine will be different. There are vineyards in Burgundy where the vines at the top of the hill yield a far finer wine than do  those a few hundred yards farther down. Half a mile away the situation may be reversed; the lower slope may be the favored one. Why on vineyard should produce an ordinary wine and another across the valley should produce an a supreme one, no one knows; but that is the way it is, and we should be grateful that in a standardized, machine-made world there is on article that cannot be turned out to pattern. There are so many great wine regions in France, but, I cannot delay any longer in dealing with the world's greatest wines, the ones ideally suited to accompany the main meat course of any meal: the fabulous French wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy. Both of these regions produce red and white wine- and in each the best is generally conceded to rank with best in the world. Bordeaux comes in tall, slender bottles and has been called the Queen of red wines. It is subtle, inclined to be on the light, dry side, with an aftertaste that is indescribable.Its appeal is discreet and aristocratic. By contrast, Burgundy is the King. Its bottle is stouter in shape, with sloping shoulders, and the wine is stouter too. It is heavier, "chewier"; it hurls its imperial brilliance at you with a shout. Getting to know the Bordeaux and the Burgundies, with their apparent infinity of place names and complicated labels, seems a hopelessly confusing task. Actually it is simpler than it seems, for the French government has established regulations to aid the wine lover. These are the famous Appellation control laws, put into operation in the 1930's. Their aim is not only to prevent such sharp practices as the adulteration of good wines with bad ones and the use of misleading labels, but also to try to force each district to produce the very best wines that it is capable of. To that end, the laws specify the exact boundaries of each district, the kinds of grapes that may be grown in those districts, and even the amount of wine that can be produced per acre in each district. In Medoc district of Bordeaux, for example, the general quality of the wine is very high, and Appellation Control laws are aimed at keeping it that way- the Medoc is subject to stricter standards of quality than the other wine-producing districts in both Bordeaux and Burgundy.

BORDEAUX: Let us take up Bordeaux first. With no exception, without even a rival, this all-important area stands supreme for the extent, quality and variety of its wines. Every type of unfortified wine is made there: delicate and full-bodied reds, dry and sweet white wines, even a little Rose. The wines of Bordeaux run the full gamut of quality and price, from obscure local pressings that sell for a few cents a bottle and are drunk on the spot (they are not worth shipping), to the great Chateau names like Lafite and Haut-Brion, which ring like bells in the imagination of the wine lover, and which, for a good vintage, command upwards of $100 a bottle-when they are available. The boundaries of the Bordeaux region are defined by the Appellation Control laws. Any wine grown there, so long as it conforms to other provisions of the laws, may be labeled Bordeaux- Bordeaux red, Bordeaux white. Primarily, that designation guarantees the place of origin. It says nothing about the quality. To find a somewhat better grade of wine, one does not buy a mere Bordeaux; one should select a bottle from a certain part of Bordeaux region, which is divided, again by the laws, into two dozen separate districts. Many of these produce rather undistinguished wines, but five of them produce some of the greatest wines in the world, and the quality within those five districts is so superior that there is an obvious advantage for the grower in any one of the five in labeling his wine as coming from there. The five are: Medoc, Graves, St.Emilion and Pomerol, renowned for their reds, and Sauternes, for its supreme dessert wines, which are white.