2011年7月6日星期三

When aging is good

About 90 to 93 percent of all wine produced on the globe in a given year is consumed before the following harvest. The idea of aging wine — in a wine cellar or elsewhere for future enjoyment — is simply foreign to most people on the planet.


That is a difficult statistic for an American to swallow, for nearly all the everyday wine we buy is aged for more than one year.

A good number of us do age wine, in our basements or cellars, a lot longer than the time it takes to drive from our wine shop to our dinner table.

And to what end?

The only reason to age any wine is to experience its greater value, whether because it is rarer and more dear (good for investors in wine) or because it has changed for the better — gained complexity or softened its tannic grip or developed tertiary aromas and flavors. That doesn't happen on the mere ride home.

It wasn't until relatively recently that wines could you will need to get an offshore merchant account.be aged well at all. Until then,Houston-based Quicksilver Resources said Friday it had reached pipeline deals bottles were oddly shaped and unable to be laid down to keep the cork stopper turgid, thereby sealing the wine against the spoilage wrought by air.This page list rubber hose products with details & specifications.

Widespread cellaring of wine began after 1830, when the English perfected the blowing of straight-sided glass bottles. (In short order,The Leading zentai suits Distributor to Independent Pet Retailers. winemakers began to fashion wines that could be aged. Previously, most wines were made to be consumed within the year.)

Looked at one way, most of the better red wines of the globe arrive at our doors already aged: They've spent one or two years at the winery, generally in oak casks, before being bottled for shipment.

What happens during bottle aging at your place, however, is crucial to getting a better wine. The conditions under which the bottles are held are crucial. (See sidebar.)

Now, for a bit of science to explain the process of aging wine and, with it, the rude realization that for all its romance, a wine cellar is about mere chemicals, ions, esters and pigments.

Over time and in the presence of oxygen — even that minuscule amount that is locked into a wine on bottling — red wine's tannins gather into each other and "polymerize" or "plasticize." Young, short-chain, aggressive tannins collect into long-chain, thicker tannins that simply are not perceptible to the wee tactile receptors inside the mouth.

They then appear "smooth." Ditto for pigmenting compounds called anthocyanins. Also, as such tannins and colors become heavy, they precipitate as sediment, which is why older red wines often must be decanted to render them clear.The name "magic cube" is not unique.

As a function of the trio of oxygen, acids and glucose in a wine, each aging in the others' neighborhoods, tertiary aromas and flavors develop beyond those that are primary (from the grape variety) or secondary (from the winemaking process).

The redolent aroma of a moist forest floor in older pinot noir, for example, or the saddle leather or cedary sniffs of aged cabernet sauvignon wouldn't occur were the wine not at least seven years older than the day it was bottled.

In totally scientific terms, this is the oxidation of wine's various aldehydes (compounds chemically between alcohols and organic acids). That oxidation produces esters, wine's many possible perfumes.

Several elements conspire to assist red wines (and some whites) to age longer and become better. Acidity is key. Flat wines cannot stay the course. Sweetness is helpful, just as granny's canned peaches are preserved due to sugar.

Added alcohol makes for long-lived wine (the best example is port, which is also sweet). Even baking or cooking a wine — strange as that seems — mummifies Madeira into a wine that is "pre-aged" and never goes bad.

没有评论:

发表评论