Guiding principles on making, buying, and tasting wine.

1. Almost no one makes "bad" wine anymore. Even the old timers are sending their children and grandchildren to the University of Davis in California to get a four-year degree in winemaking. Hence all wine in the world is now being made the same way with a precise outlined series of steps.

2. Read any wine publication and you will notice most all of the wines are "rated" 88-92. These rating should be used as a guide and not a "bible". They help point you to wines you may want to try but by no means are they infallible. Also remember that recent research has shown that because of our genetic differences each of may taste a wine and our taste can be totally different from yours. The variation in the number of taste buds in human ranges from a low of 500 to a high of 10,000 and at the top end they are called "supertasters" Just means we all taste something different and it is understandable someone with 10,000 taste buds will taste something different than someone with 500.

3. It boils down to STYLE. Each wine maker now makes wine in a style that he likes. That style is based on his experience and the grapes that he has to work with. Each of us is going to like certain styles better than others and that is what we need to work with.

4. Wine should primarily be enjoyed with food. And certain styles of wines go best with certain foods. So we learn what wines improve our food experience and also what foods improve our enjoyment of wine.

5. When making wine the wine maker has things he can control and things he cannot control. By manipulating the things he can control he is able to make a wine with a certain style. Consider these examples:\

Things a wine maker cannot control:

1. The weather, hot and cold weather, rain and hail.

2. The soil the vines are planted in and the chemical composition of that soil.

Things a wine maker can control:

1. Timing of harvest of grapes

2. Total number of grapes harvested and used to make wine

2. Type of oak barrels he uses and purchases

3. Controlling fermentation of grapes when to stop fermentation, temperature that fermentation occurs.

4. Months of aging in barrels, stainless steel, or bottles

By controlling the above things the wine maker is actually controlling the following that determine the style of wine.

1. Alcohol content

2. Acid content

3. Residual sugars or "sweetness" of wine

4. Oak,tastes like vanilla, or "oakiness"

5. Tannin content or concentration of wine

So one style of wine maybe high alcohol, heavy oak flavor, high tannin as opposed to low alcohol, low oak flavor, low tannin concentration. Dependent on what food you are serving you would want to choose a particular style of wine.

Examples:

High alcohol, high tannin wine as a rule goes well with meat as the alcohol and tannin cut the fat in the meat and in a sense tenderize the meat. A California Cabernet with steak.

Low alcohol low tannin high sugar wine goes well with sweet desserts. You don't overwhelm the dessert with the wine and the sugars in the wine compliment the sugars in the dessert.  A Sauternes with Creme Brulee.

Viral Load and Covid-19

Covid-19 has thrown a monkey wrench in all of our lives. Clark and I have been quarantined at home now for two months and frankly have not done much. You would think we would have the best organized and cleanest house on the planet but sadly not. I also have terribly neglected this blog and do apologize to my loyal readers. We had two trips canceled due to the virus so really had nothing to report on. As I have sat at home for two months now and watched the Covid-19 pandemic evolve and the citizens of the world reaction to it I have decided to post a short blog on the virus to hopefully offer some factual information to you with sound scientific reasoning. Unable to travel and not having any extensive wine parties to offer I offer this article to help you navigate the reopening of the society. 

The main concept I want you to gain from this is the concept of "Viral or Bacterial Load". Simply put Viral load is how many viral particles(or Bacteria organisms) you are exposed to. Our bodies are bombarded daily with viruses and bacteria. At any given point in time it could be one or two organisms or it could be millions. There are a variety of factors that determine what the viral load might be and a variety of factors that either increase or decrease the viral load. Many we cannot control. A few we can. So when facing a pandemic we need in-depth knowledge of what the risks are and how to reduce those risks and to fully understand and institute those measures that reduce the viral load to a level that presents a low risk to us and our families. The #1 issue regarding viral load that we can control is the concentration of viruses or bacterial particles in a measured space. One million particles in a one-gallon space area is a high concentration. One or two particles in that same one-gallon space or volume is a very low concentration. Obviously breathing air with the concentration of the higher one is going to lead to a high concentration of viral load. So to reduce risk we need to do things that reduce the concentration in a given area. The best way to lower concentration is dispersion. If I take a gallon of one million particles and put it my bathtub and get into the bathtub I get exposed a lot. But if I dump the gallon into my hot tub and get in it may be the same number of organisms but the concentration is significantly reduced. If I am standing next to you talking and you sneeze I get the full concentration of whatever is there.  If I am 6 feet from you or better yet 12 feet the amount, number, and concentration of whatever has 6 to 12 feet to disperse and lower the concentration.  The main way to reduce concentration is through hand washing. You are diluting the number of organisms as well as killing them and the concentration theoretically should go to zero. Inside a building the virus is confined and just hangs in the air. Outside the wind and weather and temperature disperse the virus in a matter of minutes if not seconds. Study after study has shown a rapid reduction in a concentration outside. The #2 thing to consider is the time of exposure. If you breathe air with a concentration of one million virus particles for one minute as opposed to one hour you obviously get more exposure with more time. But if the concentration is one or two virus particles being exposed a very long time could potentially expose you to the same number of particles. So the less time you are exposed, the fewer particles you are exposed to reducing viral load. The #3 way to reduce viral load is filtering. Most of us have filters somewhere whose sole purpose is to prevent whatever we are filtering from getting into something we don't want it to get into. We just made Lobster Bisque. We filtered the soup to remove the crab shells and other unwanted solids from the soup. With Viruses the best way to filter them out is with a mask. Over the past two months these are the three things other than quarantine that have clearly demonstrated close to a 95% reduction in the spread of infection and that is hand washing(lowers concentration) and face masks(filters out virus). At the same time the less time spent out when you must go out also helps. I am going to restaurants but I am no longer sticking around and gossiping for 2 or 3 hours. I go out to enjoy my meal and leave and go home reducing the time knowing I am reducing exposure. I also wear my mask when not eating and wash my hands coming and going to the restaurant and going and coming home. To me it is a small inconvenience but together makes a significant reduction in the viral load I am exposed to. 

Viral load is important as whether or not any given individual will actually become ill from the infection. Average humans with average immune systems most will not become sick if exposed to a very low viral load. Our immune systems are designed to daily protect us and make sure we don't get infected with small exposures. Otherwise there would be no human race. There have actually been experiments where volunteers were injected with one or two HIV viral particles and none of them got infected with HIV. HIV concentration varies in infected individuals from very high number of particles to very low number of particles in their blood and other humans exposed through for example a needle prick may or may not get infected dependent of whether or not the concentration of the HIV virus was high or low when they were exposed. Covid-19 is no different so average humans with good immune systems most likely will not get infected if exposed to low viral loads. The people who get infected get infected because they are exposed to a high viral load or they are more susceptible due to a weakened immune system. I suspect the majority of people who have died from Covid-19 were people with low immune systems and exposed to a high viral load. Other than knowing diabetics and heart disease and high blood pressure and older people have weakened immune systems we don't have a test that tells us for sure who is more susceptible. 

So you ask why is Covid-19 different from the regular yearly flu. We have not needed to wear masks in the past years when the flu came around. The answer has to do with the infectivity of the virus or how efficient it is in infecting you. Bottom line a lower viral load is needed to infect any given person with Covid-19 so it is even more important to lower the viral load with COVID 19. What you are trying to do is lower the viral load of Covid-19 that is too low to infect you. 

So the foreseeable future me and my family wash out hands many times a day and when out and about wear masks. We also add a layer of protection by putting a coffee filter inside our masks. There is no risk and it is one more mechanical barrier that might catch a few additional virus particles. It can't hurt and is not noticeable. We also try hard to not linger as long when out. Along with you we are looking forward to the day when this terrible pestilence is over. But until then please follow the above recommendations to help protect yourself and others.