Completely Biased

I peruse a number of quality blogs including tomsaaristo who posts daily on foodie related topics.  Tom recently did a series of wine blogs that went something like this:

“On Wine: Buying

Buying a wine for dinner might not be one of life’s easier tasks. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way. The fact is, even a small wine store can have hundreds of bottles and a large wine store can have thousands. So how do you get comfortable in a wine store?Three easy ways:First, choose a wine store where you feel really comfortable. Forget those places that are stuffy and make you feel like a dunce. Choose a wine shop where you can browse around and ask simple questions.

Second, shop in one section of the store for six months or so. Get to know the types of wines in that section really well before you move on. It doesn’t matter if it’s Bordeaux, Zinfandel, or Australian reds.

Finally, let food help you. If you’re making a spicy chicken dish, take that recipe with you. Find the clerk in the store who knows the most about food and ask for recommendations. You’ll be in for a really great bottle.

Wine shops are truly a lot of fun. So go out there and enjoy them!

On Wine: Cooking 

To some, a great cooking wine is a wine you drink when you’re cooking. But, of course, there are also wines that you need to add to a dish. So what are some considerations when you’re cooking with wine?First, never use a wine you wouldn’t drink yourself. If the wine doesn’t taste good, it’s certainly not going to add great flavors to the dish.Second, while you could use just white wine or red wine, try adding Port, Sherry, or Madera. All three of these wines are sensational and they pack a huge wallop of flavor.Port has a winey richness. It’s fabulous in beef stew.

Sherry has a complex, roasted nutty flavor that is great when you’re sautéing.

And Madera has a soft, nutty, caramel flavor that is fabulous when you’re just brazing meat or vegetables.

So remember: when you’re cooking with wine, make it count and make it sensational.

On Wine: Aging

Most of us age a wine for about as long as it takes to get it home from the supermarket. But is that a big mistake? Let’s say a friend gave you a bottle of wine for your birthday. Should you open it tonight or sequester it away for a few years?

The answer is: it depends.

The components in wine that allow it to age are sweetness, acidity, and tannin. A wine has to have one of those in fairly significant amounts if it’s going to withstand the test of time and actually taste better.

Sweetness is pretty easy to understand because most people have a jar of honey somewhere in their kitchen that’s been there for years. Sweet desert wines, like that jar of honey, last a really long time, even decades.

Wines like Champagne or German Rieslings that are crisp and have a lot of acidity also last a long period of time and still manage to taste fresh and lively.

And then there’s tannin. Wines like a Cabernet or Bordeaux that are high in tannin also age well over time because tannin is a preservative.

So if you want to put a wine away, it’s got to have either sweetness, acidity, or tannin.

If it doesn’t have one of these, you may as well just drink the wine tonight!

On Wine: Color

Most wine books advise you to look at a wine’s color before you taste. But what can you really tell about a wine from its color?Actually, two things: the color of a wine is a tip-off to its variety. Pinot Noir, for example, is always a light brick color, whereas Zinfandel is a dark, saturated, almost purple color.The color of a wine is also a tip-off to the wine’s age. All red wines get lighter as they get older and all white wines get darker.But here’s one thing you can never tell about a wine from its color, and it may surprise you: the intensity of the color is no indication of the intensity of the flavor.

It may be tempting to think of darker wine as richer and more flavorful than a lighter wine, but that’s not necessarily the case. The lighter wine well may prove to be the more flavorful.

In the end, you’ve got to taste a wine to tell anything about its flavor.

But of course, that’s the fun part anyway.”

The blog can be found here and Tom’s site full of wonderful recipes can be found here. The blog also includes some great gifs that we’ve featured in this post.