Vintage Story

Epistemological epiphany:
Life must be lived forwards,
but can only be understood backwards
Mercifully, life may be enjoyed sideways!

Full Moon: June 1, 2007. Allen Dale Olson a/k/a the Pontiff of Palate, Story Inn’s Wine Connoisseur. Copyright 2007 Story Bed & Breakfast, LLP, d/b/a Story Inn, all rights reserved.

SUMMER TIME AND WINES

            Survey after survey shows that wine has replaced beer as America’s beverage of choice. Even most baseball parks have wine bars (but only beer has vendors who move from aisle to aisle). Some say this change is because more women prefer wine than beer and point out that women buy more wine than men do. Others explain that basically, beer is beer, especially most of the beer coming out of enormous breweries, but wines vary from grape variety to grape variety, from the climates and soils in which the grapes are grown, and from the personality and talent of the producer.

            But wine versus beer is for another discussion. This issue is brought up here because we are entering the summer season, the time when you come in from mowing the lawn or when you head for the ball park or the fishing pond, where traditionally you seek out a cold brew. Today, you are just as likely to find a bottle of sauvignon blanc or pinot grigio in the cooler.

            White wines – even dry pink wines – are delicious hot weather drinks. Not oaky chardonnays or cloyingly sweet wines. Dry wines. Not chilled, merely cool. Cool retains the aromas, the nuances of flavor, the thirst-quenching acidity.

            But what about red wines? It’s true that robust, powerful fruit-forward reds just don’t seem right on a hot day. Even the Bordelaise set aside their prestigious, long-lasting cabernets during the dog days of summer. No Piemontese will crack open a beloved Barolo or Barbaresco in the heat of summer. But this doesn’t mean they abandon red wines altogether in warm weather.

            Try chilling your red wines. Blasphemous? Not any more. People where they come from know that a Beaujolais or a young Pinot Noir or a Chianti profits from a bit of cooling off. In Burgundy, the Pontiff has been served a Pinot Noir in an ice bucket. Cabernets, however, don’t like chilling and don’t respond well to a cooler. They don’t die, but they just prefer waiting for the heat and humidity to go away.

            Old rules concerning room temperature no longer apply.  Air conditioning and central heating have changed all that. Increasingly we refer to “cellar temperature” for both red and white wines – cellar temperature being somewhere between 45 and 60 degrees Farenheit.

            But we do not ice our wines, except for sweet ones or sparkling ones. Cool not cold. On the patio in July or August, let your Grenache or Dolcetto or Beaujolais rest in an ice bucket for about fifteen minutes.  Both you and the wine will be the better for it.

*** And if you have not yet done so, go to www.vinsense.org to learn how you can help us all obtain the wines of our choice delivered directly to our homes.

    Vintage Story is an e-newsletter authored by Ole Olson and published by the Story Inn, and is available free of charge to all who appreciate good wine. Vintage Story is published at each full moon. The author and the Story Inn specifically authorize the republication, reprinting and circulation of any issue Vintage Story so long as due credit is given to the author and to the Story Inn (which holds the copyright).

If any newspaper or website desires to make use of any issue of Vintage Story, we do request that you notify us. Thanks, and here's to your health!