Wine Teeth by Emily Harman

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It has been commonplace since the beginning of time (in wine terms that is!) to see wine drinkers with teeth that have been eroded away and stained by their regular wine tasting and drinking habits. At parties, bars and wine tastings it is often no challenge to identify those who have been enjoying red wine.

I guess in every day life it is not a huge concern. When you work in a wine role, you could be tasting anywhere between ten and two hundred wines in one day, sometimes more. Reams of wine know how is shared freely amongst everyone the wine community. Yet nothing is passed down to you on what to do to maintain the one set of adult teeth you are given.

It was not until I lived in Melbourne that I was fortunate enough to find a very meticulous dentist, who insisted on teaching me new ways to look after my teeth.  He quizzed me on everything relating to my dental hygiene, all my wine habits (both social and professional) and how all these overlapped with each other.

I remember recounting a tasting I went to earlier that week. It was a masterclass on wines from Heathcote. For those who have yet to experience these wines, they are a brilliant alternative for those who love the wines from the Barossa Valley. The wines are rich and full bodied – making them some of the best candidates for staining teeth from white to black after a few sips.

After the tasting I was due to work at Attica that evening and couldn’t bare the thought of any of our guests catching a glimpse of my teeth so I brushed my teeth until there was no trace of red wine to be seen. This wasn’t the first time either.

It turns out that brushing your teeth immediately after drinking or tasting wine is the worst thing you can do to your teeth and the enamel to protect them.

It is common knowledge that soft drinks are terrible for your teeth. It is often assumed that this is because of their high levels of sugar, but the high levels of acid found in these are also a big problem. Further to this the bacteria in our mouths use any sugar we consume to produce acid. When a tooth is exposed to acid regularly (for example if you regularly drink or taste wine), the frequent acid attacks cause the enamel to lose minerals.

Due to the levels of acid in all wine, brushing immediately means you are in effect brushing that acid onto your teeth so with every brush you are damaging your protective layer of enamel.

The enamel on our teeth is a one time only deal. So once it is gone, it is never coming back.

So what can be done?

  • Daily flossing – this is vital to keep your breath fresh and to reduce any staining in between your teeth.
  • Drinking and rinsing with water whilst tasting wine – water has a higher pH than wine, this can help to balance the acid in your mouth  – meaning the acid has less chance of attacking your teeth!
  • Avoid brushing soon after tasting and drinking.
  • Use fluoride rich toothpastes and products. Fluoride not only strengthens enamel but it also reduces plaque bacteria’s from producing acid that will cause the decay. Toothpastes such as Pronamel are designed to help reduce the damage of acid wear on teeth. I also use Tooth Mousse overnight, this is a crème that you leave on your teeth to help keep your teeth full of minerals.

It is about time!

Have healthy, happy teeth and drink well.

Feeding the Ox by Doug Wregg

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Doug is known for pioneering a new way of thinking and communicating about wine to make it exciting and engaging. Doug previously working in London as a Sommelier, is now a core part of the team at Les Caves de Pyrene

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be ~ Lao Tzu

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go ~ T. S. Eliot

We speak confidently about faults and flaws in wine, yet these are not cut-and-dried issues. Wines that are truly oxidised are dying the moment they hit the glass. They are brown, rusty, musty and lifeless.

Wines where oxygen is a factor in the elevage – either overtly (such as rancio Banyuls and Maurys from Roussillon, traditional yellow wines from Jura, Oloroso from Jerez, Madeira and Marsala), or more subtly, (think Loire Chenin, Chateau Musar Blanc, and northern Italian whites and Istrian wines with a certain amount of skin contact) – these wines not only last, but improve over the course of time. 

Whilst I may enjoy uncomplicated fresh wines – they are as snapshots of bright fruit – I do also appreciate the profound qualities of oxidative wines which are like paintings with a rich impasto of texture.

Yes, oxygen contact may confer fascinating secondary notes and layers of vinous flavour – it can soften and enrich the wine and bring forth aromas of honey, truffle, walnut, cooked pastry, humus, spice and toast. Those seductively complex integral liaisons of aroma and flavour can persuade one to return over several days and discover something new in every sniff and slurp.

Yesterday, I drank a beautiful natural wine that was fresh, utterly vibrant and charming beyond belief. Throbbing with health the flavours were clean and crunchy, the palate full of sap and zip with a trace of graphite minerality bringing the wine to an exhilarating close. This was real grapes-to-bottle stuff sans funk. This was an oxidative, low-sulphur wine.

Cue reeling and writing and fainting in coils from sceptics.

Yet I would venture that no-one would find such a wine remotely objectionable. Once enough people acknowledge that natural low-intervention wines are not only not “off”, but can also be deliciously flavoursome, then we will have advanced the tenor of the debate.

Stefano Bellotti from Cascina degli Ulivi explains how this might be achieved.

“The other way we can do without sulphites is following the natural way of wine making using “managed oxidation” where oxidation is no longer viewed as a monster to fight but as a friendly component of wine. But this is only possible when using grapes of excellent quality. No yeasts, no enzymes, no vitamins, no salts. A natural fermentation and a careful use of lees. Lees contain many colloids that have an anti-oxidant and protective function but to do so, one needs to vinify in wood and that entails more effort and higher costs.

By using this method I have always produced red wines with no sulphites and a guaranteed stability of decades and lately I have also managed to produce white wines with no sulphites added that not only they are stable, but have – if anything – the opposite problem: they need a couple of years in a bottle to reach optimum harmony, a quality that they will maintain for several years thereafter.”

 “Reaching harmony.” Slow and fluidic elevage produces wines that are not fixed fruit-bombs instead they unveil their personality by degrees. Mutability, in my book, is to be celebrated – glasses one to five give you a thoroughly different experience as the wine moves and changes shape. Oxygen aids this process – a wine may not be oxidised if the addition of air enables it to articulate its nuances rather than rudely terminating the fruit. Yes, it serves as a kind of “inoculation”.

Meanwhile, there are numerous misconceptions about low-sulphur wines. One is that they can’t age because, deficient in sulphur preservative, they are unarmed to combat the process of natural decay. Whilst it is true that some wines are intended to be drunk in the freshness of youth (and are usually protected during their vinification by a layer of CO2), others have the wherewithal to last, having an in-built defence mechanism against oxidising.

One thinks of wines made by Giulio Armani, Dario Princic, Frank Cornelissen, Josko Gravner, Stanko Radikon and Emmanuel Houillon to name but a few.

As difficult and ornery as the wines may be when first poured, exposing them to air usually reanimates them. First impressions are not always reliable either. I can adduce numerous examples of wines that most experienced tasters would logically write off as undrinkable, which, after a day – or three days – or five –find their natural balance. The proof of this particular counter-intuitive pudding is in the tasting. These wines are living things that evolve in their own time. It is often said that what doesn’t kill them makes them stronger. In these cases, due to O2, they have constitutions as strong as an ox.

The most obvious examples are to be found in Jura where vignerons may either “top up” their wines or leave them to age under a veil of yeast. Because Jura is the spiritual home of the sous-voile style, and because these wines can age for decades, they are rightly cherished. Nevertheless, certain cognoscenti notwithstanding, they (the wines) are often seen as quaint ’n’ quirky period pieces.

What quirky wines! Cut yourself some nutty nutty slack and, if you’re suffering sotolon deficiency, pour yourself some liquid fenugreek…’ If you like your Savagnin or Chardonnay to have that sensation of “jaune” ne sais quoi, from a sojourn under a yeasty veil, you’ll love the uncompromising earthiness of these Jurassic wines. At just 50 hectares Château Chalon is home to the extraordinary Vin Jaune (“yellow wine”), made from the Savagnin varietal.

The grapes are harvested late and then aged in small oak barrels for a minimum of 6 years and 3 months (although some producers age their Vin Jaune for up to 10 years in barrel). The slightly porous oak barrels are, by design, not completely airtight, and a considerable portion – nearly 40% – of the wine therefore evaporates over the years (the so-called “angels’ share”).  No topping up is done. A thick layer of flor yeast, known as the voile or veil, looking like a white foam, develops on the surface of the wine and helps prevent excessive oxidation. This ageing method, similar to that used for fino sherry in Spain, but in France specific to the Jura (and Gaillac to a lesser extent), allows the wine to acquire its distinct flavours, characteristic of walnut, almond, spice and apple, before release. This remarkable dry wine, at its best immensely complex and very aromatic, is best appreciated after at least 10-15 years in bottle and has the ability, in good vintages, to age for a century or more.

How to describe a typical Château Chalon? Green walnut, caraway, fenugreek seed, pickled ginger jostle for attention with a hint of medlar segueing into peanut brittle and salted caramel. The finish is taut, verging on stony-metallic with gripping lemon-grazed acidity and an amazing nuttiness that reverberates around the palate for such a long time. If Chateau-Chalon were a book it would be A La Recherche du Temps Perdu.

Sake for the Wine Drinker by Ben Gardiner

Originally from Perth, Australia. Ben is part of the management team at Roka, Mayfair. Previous to this he was the Head Sommelier at Roka on Charlotte Street.

I was at my first Sake tasting and I was tasting Sake number five. I realised that they all tasted exactly the same to me. My fellow taster, the infinity talented and patient Natsuki, hummed thoughtfully over the his glass,

“Do you get that clear flavour of green apples?”

What? No! “Oh yeah”

“Mmmm… and fennel on the finish”

“Uh-huh. And a bit…err...ricey?”

I cried a little inside. Years of tasting and the best I could do was ‘ricey’. Even as I type now a squiggly red line appears below that combination of letters to further remind me that this is not a real word.

It can be the same when tasting something new. You find yourself lost because tasting is all about remembering. You set up markers in your mind that steer the flavours in your mouth to a destination in your memory. With a wine you might be looking for a familiar acid or tannin structure or fruit or mineral character but these markers have little relevance for Sake. I had to reset my palate and break some old tasting habits.

For starters Sake contains around half the acid of wine. You do not get the same levels of tart malic and tartaric acid and there are not any strong citric characters here either (sorry Riesling fans!). Instead there is an abundance of lactic acid. It’s normal to expect some milky or even creamy notes in your sake especially among the less polished Honjozos and Junmais.

Then there is also the fact that Sake production does not allow any preservatives so most Sake are pasteurised, twice. This does mean no sulphur and no bad bacteria but it also means less nutrients, no good bacteria and none of the volatile living goodness that we take for granted in wine. Combine the pasteurisation with the fact that sake is often carbon-filtered for clarity and you get a product that tends to taste restrained and pared down.

This probably explains why our first sip of sake can seem a little flat or limpid and it’s also the reason why I love giving sake initiates unpasteurised (or, Nama) Sake. Nama Sake is wilder, sharper, brasher if you will and in that there is something more familiar for wine drinkers. Most sake breweries make a nama sake that is identical in production to their standard sakes, barring the sauna treatment, so tasting them together can be a particularly educational exercise. Fun too, if you do it right.

Natural wine fans and hipsters can take it one step further and hunt down some Muroka Nama Genshu (un-carbon filtered, un-pasteurised and undiluted) sakes. The higher alcohol content of this ‘pure’ style of sake also helps to push the volatile esters making it that little bit easier to smell what’s going on in your glass. Sake production generates twice the amount of aromatic esters that wine production does but somewhere between the filtering and pasteurisation you seem to lose a lot of the rawer aromas.

Starting at the more extreme styles of sake can actually seem more familiar to wine drinkers and working your way back towards more traditional styles suddenly becomes a much more rewarding journey. So grab a glass and get tasting. It’s time to start a new habit.

 

 

A Current Taste for Champagne

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Champagne served in Coupette glasses

Champagne served in Coupette glasses

By Emily Harman

It is really exciting that we live in a transient time, the everyday person on the street is more open to experiencing the new and happy to move away from but also return back to tradition. Champagne is classic wine choice for most, it conjures up feelings of celebration and occasion and for over 200 years it has been received as a very special wine that is associated with grandeur, festivity and extravagance. The Champagne flute is almost as notorious and since the 1930s, it has been common practice for a long time to see the two together.

But what is happening in Champagne today? Over the last decade especially ,Champagne has had a bit of a shake down. There are now a healthy sized handful of conscientious growers - who are looking after their vines and the soil they grow in. Their tiny parcels of vines are being farmed organically and even biodynamically in some cases. Working this way can be dismissed by larger producers in the region who claim, this is impossible in such a marginal climate, where growers are constantly battling with the climate.

These growers work on a small scale, Vincent Laval (Champagne Georges Laval), works his 3 hectares of vine by hand and horse throughout the year. All his wines are made by hand in the cellar, with bottles being riddled by hand also. Vincent and other like minded producers are picking their grapes when they are ripe so the base wine for their Champagne is full of character and a lot more flavour. Further to this, less dosage is added so the expression of the wine is really tasted. These Champagnes offer complexity and unique personality. 

The Grand Marques are still striving to achieve excellence through their brand styles and still remain with a strong foothold with the world of Champagne, producers such as Krug, Ruinart, Pol Roger and Salon are still highly respected and well received on the global market.

What else is changing? Along with the new revolution of 'Growers Champagne' that has spiked the interest of many wine professionals and enthusiasts, the vessel in which we serve our fizz is something that has been slowly evolving. Many cocktail bars there has been a push back to using the Coupette glass for both cocktails and Champagne, this is something that has spread to a number of restaurants. In the Sommelier world, we have long moved away from the Coupette and now the flute. What has taken their place?

The standard white wine glass from well respected glass manufacturers such as Riedel and Zalto has stepped in the Champagne flutes shoes. With the understanding that many of the wines from Champagne offer a complexity of aroma and flavour that is simply lost in the shape of most flutes. A white wine glass is considered more suitable than a red wine glass, due to the fact that the wider width of a red glass means that a larger surface area would result in a faster loss of carbonation!

Being served your favourite glass of bubbles in a wine glass can be a surprise, but purely for the enjoyment of flavour - it's well worth a try!