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.