Boxed Wine Basics

You’ve probably seen them at your local wine or liquor store: cardboard boxes filled with wine, often being carried out by embarrassed shoppers wearing sunglasses to hide their identities. Okay, at least I’ve seen them. 

Boxed wines, or “casks” as they’re sometimes referred to, have a bit of a reputation for being the tacky sort of thing your alcoholic aunt might purchase. Fortunately, the times are changing! 

Here are a few good reasons to consider buying boxed wine:

How-to: Wine Tasting

There’s a little more to tasting wine than swirling your glass around with a raised pinkie finger. Here’s how to get the most out of your wines and simultaneously look like a real wine connoisseur. 

Prepare: Having the proper conditions for tasting a wine can make all the difference. First, you’ll want to select the proper glasses for the wine you’ll be tasting. Red wine glasses are usually a bit larger, rounder and domed. Here are some examples from Riedel: 

Secondly, ensure that the wine is chilled to the proper temperature. Lighter wines should be chilled for longer. Although many people drink their reds at room temperature, chilling them slightly can result in a better tasting. Here is another helpful chart with recommended serving temperatures: 

Look: It’s tempting to start sipping right away, but first stop and take a good look at the wine. What’s the colour like? Aged wines tend to be darker in colour. Young reds tend to be more vibrant in colour, with mature reds taking on brown hues. Young whites are usually lighter while older whites can be golden. If you tilt the glass, you can also take note of the wine’s legs. Does the wine leave thick, lingering streaks inside the glass, or does it run back down quickly? This will help you determine the body or density of the wine. Finally, a good wine should have clarity and should not be cloudy or dull. Having a white background (e.g. a napkin) can be helpful when judging a wine’s appearance. 

Sniff: Sorry to disappoint you, but we’re still not ready to taste yet. Swirl your glass vigorously to help release the wine’s aromas. If you take a whiff before and after swirling, you will definitely notice a difference. What fruit aromas can you smell? Are there oak, spice, or floral notes? Are there a combination of aromas that result in a complex nose? Most importantly, does it smell pleasing? This is also a good way to tell if a wine has gone off before tasting it: a sour or vinegar-like aroma is never a good sign. 

Taste: Here’s the fun part. Take a sip and let the wine coat your mouth. Let it sit on your tongue for a few seconds before swallowing. What flavours are most prominent? Is it sweet, dry, or somewhere in between? Does it feel light, heavy, “chewy” (this means the wine is high in tannins), or smooth in your mouth? It’s also important to remember not to judge a wine by the first sip: give it a fair chance! On the second sip, you can breathe in through your mouth or “slurp” the wine to add air which releases more of the wine’s flavours. Take note of the finish as well. Is it short, lingering, complex? 

The fun part about wine tasting is that even with these guidelines, taste is an incredibly subjective matter. Try tasting wines with a group: do you pick up on different aromas and flavours? You'll probably have different opinions on the wines too: even if it received a 95 from a wine critic, you might think it tastes awful. So next time you try a new wine, keep these tips in mind!

Wine Lingo, Part 2

Happy Wine Wednesday! As promised, here is a continuation of my previous post on wine terms. 

Finish: the lingering flavour and sensation of the wine after drinking. It can be short, long, dry, complex…you get the idea.

Ice wine, or “Icewine”: a sweet dessert wine made from frozen grapes. They can be red or white depending on the grapes used. Ice wines are usually a fair bit more expensive than other wines because of the strict conditions required to make them, but it's worth it. 

Nose: the overall smell or aroma of the wine. 

Sugar scale: a numerical system used to describe how dry or sweet a wine tastes, with 0 being the most dry. This system is being phased out and replaced with the more vague qualitative categories of extra dry, dry, off-dry, medium sweet, and sweet. 

From the LCBO website. 

Tannins: more common in reds, tannins are what make your mouth pucker after taking a sip and make a wine taste more dry or bitter. Tannins come from contact with the grapes’ seeds, skins, stems, and sometimes wooden barrels that the wine is aged in.

Varietal: the type of grape (or grapes, if it's a blend) used in a wine. Different appellations are conducive to growing different kinds of grapes, which is why some areas are known for a certain type of wine.

Vintage: the year the grapes were harvested in. Not all wines specify the vintage, because sometimes they use grapes from different years and hope that no one will notice the difference. 

VQA (Canada only): stands for Vintner’s Quality Alliance. In Ontario, a VQA wine must use 100% Ontario grapes and jump through a series of hoops before they get to put a special sticker on the bottle. 

I'll keep adding terms as I think of them. Next up: a review of the brand new Trius White 2012!

Nice Legs! Wine Lingo 101

There’s quite an array of terminology to describe a drink that is essentially fermented grape juice. Some of them are less obvious than others, and some sound like they were made up by someone who had already started on the wine. So, here are some of the basic terms you might hear if you hang out around seasoned wine drinkers. 

Acidity: the right amount of acidity gives wine a crisp, refreshing taste. Too much and you’ll feel like you’re drinking sour patch kids.

Appellation: a geographic region where grapes are grown. 

Aroma: specific scents you can pick up after sniffing a glass of wine, such as peach, cherry, or blackberry. The aroma depends heavily on the grapes used.  

Body: the fullness, density, or weight of a wine in your mouth. 

Bouquet: the overall smell of the wine, usually reserved for older wines that have been aged in oak barrels.

Brix: a fancy scientific scale used the measure the sugar content of unfermented grapes. The higher the Brix, the higher the alcohol content will be.

Dry: the opposite of sweet, not the opposite of wet. 

Legs: the streaks that a wine leaves after swirling it around in your glass. Lighter-bodied wines will have thinner legs that dissipate quickly, while full-bodied wines cling to the inside of the glass.

I'll be adding more terms in a future post, and eventually compiling a separate page of wine terms. Until then, go impress people with your fabulous new wine vocabulary.