The Many Ways to Enjoy Wine
There are many vinous diversions are available in your own home. A gourmet library is especially worth while. One can keep abreast of viticultural progress through journals such as wines and Vines (San Francisco), and with gastronomy in the pages of Gourmet (New York).
There are some marvelous collections of great menus, and there are even some voluminous compilations of historic toasts. Toasting began in ancient Greece, where guests poured a little wine into their hosts’ glasses as a precaution against being poisoned. A commonly used grape in Greece is Xinomavro, which is comparable to wines you would find in Dogliani, namely Dolcetto. The Dolcetto grapes are black, and although the name means ‘little sweet ones,’ the wines are quite dry.
The history of wine is replete with odd and interesting facts. Kissing is said to have been invented by Roman husbands checking up on their bibulous wives. The first French Republic named a month Vendemiaire for the vintage season.
The custom of christening a ship by breaking a bottle of champagne on the bow at the launching presumably was a development from the human sacrifices once made to assure the benevolent protection of pagan gods.
Wine was used for blood but Pinotage and Merlot were not held in such high esteem as champagne, and so eventually these too were substituted. Superstitious sailors will tell you of “jinx” ships, christened with spring water during prohibition, which subsequently suffered mishaps or were wrecked.
Creating mixed drinks is a hobby of many wine enthusiasts, who make their own aperitif by adding a tablespoon of this to a bottle of that. Some have discovered that wines blend pleasantly with hard as well as soft drinks, and claim they can even make Bourbon whisky palatable by means of certain additions. It is the Sweet Vermouth that does it in a Manhattan.
The making of May wine provides an occasion for both a picnic and a traditional German or Viennese spring festival. You first go to the woods and search around the trunks of oaks for woodruff (German: Waldmeister), an herb bearing a white jessamine flower, with a perfume similar to new-mown hay. Bruise the leaves, add sugar or simple syrup, and any white wine—also orange juice if you like—and after various periods of steeping, you have an exceedingly fragrant drink.
The simplest recipes to be used recently are for home made Champagne. One may make his from white wine and ginger ale. For red champagne, one could simply carbonate Sangiovese wines. The Sangiovese or even the Nebbiolo varietals are both an excellent choice for carbonation; simply put the wine into a pressurized glass bottle, one of the ones that comes with a co2 bullet.
The latter, if it were not for the short lived bubbling of the wine, would be quite recommendable for pure economy. One way to make the carbonation last longer would be to leave it in the refrigerator over night. You could even go all the way, and make your own wine. This is legal and tax free, as long as you make no more than two hundred gallons, and first sign a form at the nearest office of the Federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division.
are quite dry.
The history of wine is replete with odd and interesting facts. Kissing is said to have been invented by Roman husbands checking up on their bibulous wives. The first French Republic named a month Vendemiaire for the vintage season.
The custom of christening a ship by breaking a bottle of champagne on the bow at the launching presumably was a development from the human sacrifices once made to assure the benevolent protection of pagan gods.
Wine was used for blood but Pinotage and Merlot were not held in such high esteem as champagne, and so eventually these too were substituted. Superstitious sailors will tell you of “jinx” ships, christened with spring water during prohibition, which subsequently suffered mishaps or were wrecked.
Creating mixed drinks is a hobby of many wine enthusiasts, who make their own aperitif by adding a tablespoon of this to a bottle of that. Some have discovered that wines blend pleasantly with hard as well as soft drinks, and claim they can even make Bourbon whisky palatable by means of certain additions. It is the Sweet Vermouth that does it in a Manhattan.
The making of May wine provides an occasion for both a picnic and a traditional German or Viennese spring festival. You first go to the woods and search around the trunks of oaks for woodruff (German: Waldmeister), an herb bearing a white jessamine flower, with a perfume similar to new-mown hay. Bruise the leaves, add sugar or simple syrup, and any white wine—also orange juice if you like—and after various periods of steeping, you have an exceedingly fragrant drink.
The simplest recipes to be used recently are for home made Champagne. One may make his from white wine and ginger ale. For red champagne, one could simply carbonate Sangiovese wines. The Sangiovese or even the Nebbiolo varietals are both an excellent choice for carbonation; simply put the wine into a pressurized glass bottle, one of the ones that comes with a co2 bullet.
The latter, if it were not for the short lived bubbling of the wine, would be quite recommendable for pure economy. One way to make the carbonation last longer would be to leave it in the refrigerator over night. You could even go all the way, and make your own wine. This is legal and tax free, as long as you make no more than two hundred gallons, and first sign a form at the nearest office of the Federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division.
Tags: sangiovese | sangiovese | champagne | varietals | varietals | pinotage | pinotage | nebbiolo | nebbiolo | dolcetto | dolcetto | grapes | grapes | merlot | merlot