Here is my January, 2009 column as it appeared in this week's Friday! Newsmagazine:
Acidity. That’s a pretty caustic word. It conjures up visions of car batteries gone bad or way too much vinegar on the chips. And it’s a word I prefer to avoid (like, well, battery acid) when I write about (or talk about) wine simply because of the negative pictures and presumptions it brings to mind.
So why am I here then, happily sipping on a 2006 Quails’ Gate Pinot Noir ($24.99/13.7% ABV), a wine made from estate-grown pinot noir grapes, admiring its absolutely gorgeous acidity? Well, the truth is, acidity in wine really can be a good thing.
Acidity gives wine its juiciness, its thirst-quenching and mouth-watering qualities, its spirit and its liveliness. It can make your wine a playful and enchanting sprite, lovable cheeky monkey or beautiful woman who is elegant and sophisticated yet approachable. Without decent acidity, your wine is boring. It’s flabby and flat, with no life, no verve.
That being said, you don’t want just acidity in your wine; instead, what you want is a balance.
And with what do you want to balance your wine’s acidity? With its fruit, alcohol content and tannins, of course.
This Quails’ Gate pinot noir is chalk full of cherries, spice, smoke and leaves from the forest on the nose (aroma). On the palate (taste) I find black cherries, red berries and spice. It’s certainly not one of those big, jammy “black-fruit bombs” made so popular by our Australian friends. No, this wine’s fruit is beautifully balanced to its acidity. Its tannins are silky and supple and give the wine great structure, meaning they (the tannins, that is) aren’t going to punch you in the kisser to make you pucker up. Balance again.
And then we have the alcohol content. Pour yourself a glass of this wine, give it a good swirl, and then take a look. What you see forming on the side of the glass are the “legs” (sometimes they’re called “tears”), which represent the alcohol content, not (contrary to what many people will tell you) the quality of the wine. If this wine were to have a 15% instead of 13.7% ABV content and the resulting stronger “legs,” then my guess is you’d not enjoy it because the alcohol would simply over power the fruit, acidity and tannins. You’d not have balance.
No question, this wine has great legs, but you’ll fall in love with its heart and soul, as we did tonight while we sipped it along side our home-made turkey soup. Yummy! If you don’t have a pot of soup on the boil, keep in mind that this wine will work equally well with a winter-time stew, baked salmon or ham sandwich.
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Quick Wine Notes
Here are three websites that will help you decide which wine to serve with what food: www.whatcomwineandspirits.com | www.natdecants.com
www.wineanddinebcnews.ca
Salut!
Copyright © 2009 Kathleen Rake. All rights reserved.
